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<\/a>The other\u00a0night, Keith and I attended the opening of the 3rd annual Driftless Film Festival<\/a>.\u00a0 We saw Beasts of\u00a0the Southern Wild<\/a>, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2012\u00a0Sundance Film Festival.\u00a0 The movie\u00a0centered on\u00a0a single father and his young daughter and the trials of raising her amidst the uncontrollable turmoil that surrounded them.\u00a0 It was so good that\u00a0after it was\u00a0over I just wanted\u00a0to go home, drink some hot cocoa, and cry some more.\u00a0 I did.<\/p>\n About twelve years ago, Nicholas Langhoff (one of the founders of the DFF) came to the town of Mineral Point.\u00a0 Let me first explain that Mineral Point is no ordinary town.\u00a0 Most of the people I’ve met who have moved here were simply overcome with the feeling that this place was something special and that it would be a nice place to live.\u00a0 Keith and I were going to buy a house in Madison five years ago.\u00a0 On a whim, in the middle of winter, we drove around and ended up in Mineral Point on High Street.\u00a0 The historic\u00a0buildings made me feel as if I were\u00a0in a story book.\u00a0I remember being taken by the\u00a0display window at the Bohlin Gallery.\u00a0 There were large hand blown glass ornaments hanging and twirling, showing off their various swirly colors.\u00a0 Next to it, the crumbling brick walls of what used to be an old gas station, now it is\u00a0the Set in Stone Wine Bar.\u00a0 Then there was the pig on Bruce Howdle’s roof.\u00a0 For Nick, what sealed the deal\u00a0was watching a\u00a0very\u00a0unique movie at the Mineral Point Opera House in the middle of the afternoon.\u00a0 There he met Phil Mrozinski, now the executive and artistic director of the festival,\u00a0and an instrumental part of the house’s restoration efforts.\u00a0 That experience for Nick\u00a0and later living in Mineral Point ignited the idea of the film festival, in an unknown town, in this place called the Driftless Region.\u00a0 His good friend Darren Burrows<\/a> (founder)\u00a0came on board as well as\u00a0area resident Jeremy Patnaude (founder), the general manager of State Theaters, a movie cinema chain in Southwest Wisconsin.<\/p>\n Fast forward to the fall of 2010, it finally happened. Now in its third year, participating movies are being shown in six theaters and in six different towns in the area. People are excited and are inspired to create. Young film-makers Will Crotz and Eve Studnicka (festival coordinator) are hard at work on a documentary capturing the essence of Mineral Point. New restaurants have opened up, buildings are being restored, and more and more people are starting to call this place home. I believe that the Driftless Film Festival\u00a0is one of the reasons for the recent revitalization along with\u00a0the many intelligent and creative citizens who care about this area. We’re happy that the Driftless Film Festival has made its roots and is now part of the cultural identity of this place called the “Driftless Region”.<\/p>\n
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