ABOUT US

Above: BBFF founders, jurors and folks from the Oklahoma Film & Music Office at the first BBFF in 2014.​

Pictured left to right: Lucas Ross, Bri Hermanson and Margot Douaihy (all jurors), Shanley Wells-Rau (founder), Katie Lovasz (OF&MO), Kelsey Wagner (founder), and Yousef Kazemi (OF&MO). Not pictured: Christina Rich-Splawn and John McNeese, both founders.

We're a small but growing annual film festival providing opportunities for student filmmakers to show their short films on the big screen. The 2022 Festival will be held at our new home at the historic Burford Theatre in Arkansas City, Kansas. To learn more about the Burford Theatre, please visit our website here.

The BisonBison Film Festival recognizes, promotes and showcases the work of emerging filmmakers enrolled in colleges, universities and trade schools in mid-America:  Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas and Arkansas. 
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ABOUT OUR NAME
The scientific name for American buffalo is Bison bison. Technically, there are no buffalo on this continent -- "real" buffalo are in Asia and Africa (water buffalo, anyone?).

Those shaggy beasts stampeding across the open prairies of North America are actually bison. Bison bison to be exact.

A creature important to our heritage, both Native American and European, and one that remains important today as we learn to restore native prairie lands. Despite the shameful mass killings for sport and near extinction of this animal in a century past, it has survived.

Artists and independent filmmakers have not been hunted from horseback, but it will take careful nurturing to ensure that thoughtful, educated filmmaking survives. We hope to be a part of that.