Mike Scholtz will receive the 2018 Ted M. Larson Award from the Fargo Film Festival.
The award represents the festival’s highest honor, and is given to an individual whose commitment to cinema demonstrates outstanding, longtime contributions to one or more of the following areas: film education, film production, film culture, and film criticism and history.
Mike is a Wrenshall, Minnesota-based filmmaker who produces videos and TV spots for Hailey Sault, a healthcare marketing firm in Duluth.
Mike’s documentary work has screened at film festivals, movie theatres, and venues around the world including SXSW, Slamdance, the Banff Mountain Film Festival, the National Geographic Society, the Explorer’s Club and the Fargo Film Festival.
Mike’s love of film was cemented by trips to Weld Hall at Minnesota State University Moorhead, where an unforgettable character named Ted Larson hosted the Summer Cinema Series on Monday evenings. Mike went on to study film with Ted as a teaching and office assistant.
After college, Mike began making films of his own. His first documentary was about a silent film pioneer from Casselton, North Dakota who had the audacity to be a woman in an industry dominated by men. Broadcast on Prairie Public Television in 1998, “The Angela Murray Gibson Experience” featured an extensive interview with Ted Larson about the role of women in the
development of cinema.
To his neverending delight, all of Mike’s films have screened at the Fargo Theatre. “Wild Bill’s Run” followed the leader of an ill-fated Arctic snowmobile expedition who later turned to a life of crime. “Wicker Kittens” explored the world of competitive jigsaw puzzling. And “Lost Conquest” tackled the widespread myth that Viking warriors invaded the state of Minnesota on at least two separate occasions.
In 2004, Mike helped a group of friends convert a 90-year-old barn into a movie theatre where they launched the Free Range Film Festival. The festival continues to screen independent films
every summer to a dedicated audience in the heart of northeastern Minnesota’s organic farm country.
His latest film, “Kinderchomper,” profiles a mild-mannered artist from Minnesota who leads a double life as a villainous professional wrestler in Japan known for eating babies. The movie premieres at the 2018 Fargo Film Festival on Wednesday, March 21st at 7:00 p.m.