06/13/2026
🩵🥹 to all who made this….I hope these words remind you that your hard work matters and you make a difference. Proud of you all. 🥰
I got to watch Roommate about two weeks ago. This is a locally produced film, with a surprisingly killer sound track and some real North Dakota-cana. I won't spoil anyone of the film exactly in reviewing it, as I'm not exactly reviewing it, but I have some things I wanted to say.
I believe strongly in local art as being a product of magic. I think there is something to say about the production of Hollywood or the history filmography for the sort of ways we can consume a product or the history of that arts development.
But I have virtually no interest in any of that. I know a person with particular opinions about movies that are about the opposite of mine. They produce lists of the best or most cinematic films, deconstructing the technique and visual language of the piece like eating a nutty bar layer by layer (which is peak way to eat a nuttybar). I get the classics. I like Godfather. But I don't watch movies for that.
I don't watch movies for the goal of the best performance. I watch them for what they can tell me about being human, about the creativity and need to express ourselves, the millions of little thoughts and challenges and limitations and considerations that all blend together to create a product you cannot predict.
And movies can be both. I think Roommate has a lot of really valuable scenes that stick out in memory. I'm just paving this road for folks to understand a layer to a local movie that makes it something special in its own right.
Local art to me is often the purest form of a particular expression and creativity. Because it's not just whatever product comes out at the end, it is a collection of a living, breathing community. It's a dialogue as much as a script. It's putting life and meaning into the very environments that are captured, that so many of us live in every day. It changes the people who make it through the experience of play and expression and challenge. It is a movie. Yes. And it is memories across dozens of people. It's moments in time and growth. It's alive and beautiful and what I want of art.
As I watched it, I thought about all the ways they considered the angles they choose for their scenes. The sets they choose. How they choose the lighting and outfits. The things they didn't include and why. A billion tiny decisions adding up to earn just fleeting moments of cinemography. And with it a conversation with the viewer, a language made through the context of the show more than the script or the people, but everything. A language of story that is told at once and in multiple dimensions and meaning and contexts.
I think all local art to a degree has this power, when you know where to look for it. Not just in movies, but anything that's created. It all matters, it's all priceless, it's all the stuff of our cultures and communities and place in time. All ways I engage with local art is with this mindset and understanding of its intrinstic value in the world.
And so, when you do find the opportunity to watch this in the future. You should take it. If you haven't explored local art you should. The commodification of art into a product to fill homes and eyes has hollowed out so much of what it meant to be human or connected and if it's been a while, remind yourself.
