Short and Feature, 103 min, Not rated Q&A with Director Rich Brauer
A short film and a feature presentation of mysteries and radio
Michigan Premiere
Director: Brad Etter
Narrative Short, United States, 2023, 13 min, Color
Shortly after receiving a vintage radio as a birthday gift from her husband, Julie begins to hear mysterious coded messages. As she struggles to figure out the meaning, she also has to convince her dismissive husband Roger to believe the ominous warnings.
Great Lakes Connection: The writer and producer, Ms. Ashleigh Marie Thornton, is a Chicago native, and the director, Mr. Brad Etter, is a Chicago native as well! The voiceover for the Radio DJ was provided by Mr. Tony Mazur, who is from Cleveland, Ohio.
Q&A with Director Rich Brauer
Director: Rich Brauer
Narrative Feature, United States, 2024, 90 min, Black and White
It’s Christmas eve, 1963, and a winter storm rages outside. The small wilderness AM radio station does what it can to entertain and inform its listeners who live across the vast reaches of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The station’s only staff on this particular night is the DJ, who really just wants to put in his time and finish his shift at midnight.
But things change when he gets a visit from the telephone repairman and senses that there might be something else to this man. In any case, the DJ really doesn’t care and tries his best to ignore him. The problem however, is that the man won’t leave.
The drama that follows, contained within the cramped walls of this remote cement block structure, unravels the challenge that making the distinction between citizen and criminal can be a difficult and perhaps impossible task.
The DJ gets more for Christmas than he bargained for.
This fictional story takes place near Marquette, Michigan in 1963.
Director: Rich Brauer
Writer: Rich Brauer
Producer: Rich Brauer
Key Cast: Noah Durham, AJ Guertin, James Ricky
Rich Brauer is president of Brauer Productions, Inc., an independent film and video production company he founded in 1977 after graduating with a B.A. in Motion Picture Production and Undersea Photographic Technology from Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, CA.
Brauer received the Michigan Filmmaker of the Year award at the 2009 Traverse City Film Festival, presented by filmmaker Michael Moore. Past recipients have been actor Jeff Daniels, writer Kurt Luedtke, and actress Christine Lahti.
Brauer has written and directed 11 feature films and hundreds of corporate, non-profit, educational and commercial projects. He enjoys supporting independent filmmakers.
He co-founded the Maritime Heritage Alliance in 1982 and the Inland Seas Education Association in 1989. He also serves on the board of directors of COGNITION, a science and learning center in Benzie County, Michigan.
He has three adult children and 7 grandkids and lives on an old fruit farm on Old Mission Peninsula near Traverse City, Michigan.
Because it’s set in 1963, we felt producing The DJ on Wallaker Hill in black and white offered a legitimate visual experience. The plot, characters, pacing, camerawork, lighting, sound and the storm itself all converge in what humbly reminds us of a film that Alfred Hitchcock might approve of.
© 2014-2024 Soo Film Festival, Inc. All rights reserved.