Film: Students’ low-budget short picked for film fest

FAYETTEVILLE — A 12-minute film produced by a trio of students in the University of Arkansas’ honors college will be screened Thursday (May 31) and again Saturday (June 2) at the sixth annual Little Rock Film Festival.

The low-budget short, The Children of the Mother Beaver, will be shown as part of the Made in Arkansaw/Arkansas Shorts: Warm-Blooded Cold-Hearted showcase. The film — written and produced by classmates John Erwin and Zach Harrod with the help of Lindsay Strong — was inspired by Friedrich Gerstacker’s novel Die Regulatoren in Arkansas, an 1846 depiction of Arkansas’ Wild West days. The young filmmakers had studied the book in a class and then expounded on the themes of vigilante justice.

The three shot the film over eight days, mostly in Elkins, on a budget of about $10, Erwin has said. Costumes came from thrift shops and filming was done using a Canon XF 100 video camera.