Flag Country

Outlier Moving Pictures' new poetry film is based on Dave Bonta's haibun poem, "Flag Country," which tells a story about an unplanned stop during a road trip, arrested to see an enormous flag at a car lot in Orbisonia, PA. Our mesmerizing views of the flag furling and unfurling in the wind, along with the "skywritten" text, induce the hypnotic state described in the poem, accompanied by a soundscape that conducts a whirlwind tour of American aspirations and moments of civil dissent, revealing the challenging gaps that continue to exist between our ideals and our actual achievements.

  • Pamela Falkenberg
    Director
  • Jack Cochran
    Director
  • Dave Bonta
    Writer
  • Pamela Falkenberg
    Producer
  • Jack Cochran
    Editing and sound design
  • Pamela Falkenberg
    Cinematography and production design
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Other
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 51 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 29, 2019
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    4K digital video
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Avalonia Festival IV
    Jacksonville, FL
    United States
    December 8, 2019
    Award winner, Avalonia Bruce Springsteen Blind Faith Award
  • North Dakota Human Rights Festival
    Fargo, ND and then touring three other ND cities
    United States
    January 9, 2020
    World Premiere
    Official selection
  • Copper Coast Film Festival
    Swansea, Wales
    United Kingdom
    March 1, 2020
    European premiere
    Official selection
  • Show Me Justice Film Festival
    Warrensburg, Missouri
    United States
    April 30, 2020
    West of the Mississippi premiere
    Official selection
  • Splice Film Festival
    New York, New York
    United States
    June 20, 2020
    New York premiere
    Official selection
  • Small Axe - CO-VID Film Awards
    Tolpuddle, Dorset
    United Kingdom
    July 17, 2020
    Semi-finalist
  • ARTS x SGDS Festival
    Brooklyn, NY
    United States
    August 12, 2020
    Brooklyn premeire
    Official selection
  • Buffalo International Film Festival
    Buffalo, NY
    United States
    October 8, 2020
    Northern NY premiere
    Official selection
Director Biography - Pamela Falkenberg, Jack Cochran

Pam’s bio:

Pam is an independent filmmaker who received her PhD from the University of Iowa and taught at Northern Illinois University, St.Mary's College, and the University of Notre Dame. She directed the largest student film society in the US while she was at the University of Iowa, and also ran films series for the Snite Museum of Art in South Bend, IN. Her experimental film with Dan Curry, Open Territory, received an individual filmmaker grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as grants from the Center for New Television and the Indiana Arts Council. OT screened at the Pacific Film Archives, as well at numerous film festivals, including the AFI Video Festival, and was nominated for a regional Emmy. Her other films include museum installations, scholarly/academic hybrid works shown at film conferences, and a documentary commissioned by the Peace Institute at the University of Notre Dame. She wants to make lots of different kinds of films with Jack, but she is especially proud to have been the one who suggested that Jack's poems should be made into films.

Jack's bio:

Jack is an independent filmmaker who has produced, directed, or shot a variety of experimental and personal projects. As a DP he has extensive experience shooting commercials, independent features, and documentaries. His varied commercial client list includes BMW, Ford, Nissan, Fujifilm, Iomega, Corum Watches, and Forte Hotels. His features and documentaries have shown at the Sundance, Raindance, Telluride, Tribeca, Edinburgh, Chicago, Houston, and Taos film Festivals, winning several honors. His commercials and documentaries have won Silver Lions from Cannes, a BAFTA (British Academy Award), Peabody Awards, and Cable Aces. Some notable credits: Director of Photography on Brian Griffin's Claustrofoamia, Cinematography for Antony Thomas’ Tank Man, Director/Cinematographer of Viento Nocturno, and Cinematographer of Ramin Niami’s feature film Paris. Jack was trained at the University of Iowa Creative Writers Workshop as well as the University of Iowa film studies program. He has written poetry all his life, but he never knew what to do with it until he shared his notebooks with Pam, who said, "You're a filmmaker -- shouldn't your poems be films?"

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Jack Cochran and Pamela Falkenberg are making personal films together again under the name Outlier Moving Pictures. They hope their new films will be worthy of the name -- avoiding the usual patterns and approaching their subject matter from the margins (which sounds better than saying that as filmmakers they're oddballs and cranks). Pam and Jack met in graduate school and made films together when they were young. Jack went on to become a professional cinematographer working out of LA and London, while Pam stayed in the Midwest, where she was a college professor and independent filmmaker before dropping out to work in visual display. Their first film together, "The Cost of Living," based on some of Jack's short poems, was accepted by several film festivals, including the Queens World Film Festival (2019), the Buffalo International Film Festival, the Denver Underground Film Festival, and the Cornwall Film Festival; was nominated for two awards at the 2017 Jim Thorpe Film Festival; and took the award for best experimental film at the 2016 WV FILMmakers Festival. Other short poetry films have screened at the Ò Bhéal Poetry Film Festival (2016, 2018), the Juteback Poetry Film Festival (2017, 2018), the Festival Silencio (2017) , the Filmpoem Festival (2017), the 6th CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival (2017), the 6th and 7th International Video Poetry Festival (Athens Greece, 2018), the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival (2018), the REELpoetry Festival (2019), and the Newlyn Film Festival (2019). Recently completed is an experimental documentary essay about the North Dakota landscape and Teddy Roosevelt, "Teddy Roosevelt and Fracking," which showed out-of-competition as a work-in-progress at the WV FILMmakers Fest in October 2017 and premiered at the Queens World Film Festival in March 2018, where it was nominated for three awards (Best Cinematography, Best Director, and Best Documentary Short), taking the award for Best Documentary Short. "Teddy" has also screened at the 2018 Ekofilm Festival in Poland, the 2018 Buffalo International Film Festival, the 2018 Go West Film Festival, and the American Presidents Film and Literary Festival at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Museum and Library in October 2018, where it was nominated for two judges awards and won the Audience Choice Award. Along with that, a series of shorts about photo opportunities and roadside attractions in Texas (the first installment of which, "Prada Marfa," premiered in the True Texas Travel category at the Thin Line Festival in April 2018), and some brief experimental romantic comedies based on Craigslist's Missed Connections, a compilation version of which, "Missed Connections Anthology," premiered at the Austin Spotlight Festival in April 2018, and screened for the second time at the KinoDrome Festival in Cleveland, OH in September 2018. Their other most recent poetry films are collaborations, with Dave Bonta on "In West Virginia," from his book, "Failed State," and with Lucy English on "The Shadow," and "The Names of Trees," for her Book of Hours project (http://thebookofhours.org/). Their most recent and upcoming festival appearances include Carmarthen Bay in Wales, the Ozark Foothills Film Fest, the Lisbon Film Rendezvous, the Riga Digital Forum, Small Axe @Tolpuddle, Mister Vorky, DEA, All Together Now, VASTLAB, the Dallas Medianale, and the Hombres Videopoetry Competition Short List screening.