The Kansas International Film Festival wraps up tonight at the Glenwood Theatre (9575 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park). One of the final films closing the fest is Left Field, a goofy and touching documentary about kickball -- the playground game that in recent years has been co-opted by twenty- to thirty-something jocks, hipsters and geeks.
A couple of guys with local ties -- Chris Batte (producer) and Ben Steger (director) -- collaborated on Left Field, their first feature-length film, which plays at 5:20.
Left Field is less about kickball games and wins and losses. The focus is more on the people who play the game.
"As we got more and more into it, we realized that there was this
really amazing community of people -- artists, musicians, there's
lawyers, architects," Batte says. "The kickball was fun and
interesting, but we didn't think it was going to be interesting enough
for a film. But we thought these people's lives were much more
interesting."
Batte tells The Pitch that he always wanted to make a film but didn't know how. He had several friends who played in a kickball league at a park near his Chicago home. After two years of prodding, Batte finally checked out a game.
"When I got out there, it was a lot of hilarity," Batte says. "A lot of
drunken shit talking, and everybody kind of shed any kind of social
inhibitions and just went out and had fun. I just laughed the whole
time I was out there."
He and Steger, who met at the University of Kansas and both now live in Chicago, decided to make a short film about a kickball team's "rise to fame and glory." They quickly cobbled together footage of games and player interviews, but before they could start editing the footage someone broke into Steger's apartment and stole the footage.
The two reassessed and decided that they were, Batte says, "a lot more
committed to this project than just a short film." They decided to make
a feature-length film about not just one team but the entire league.
"Three years later, here we are," Batte says.
Warning: Spoiler alert!
Documenting people's
lives is always unpredictable. Sometimes unexpectedly bad things happen, such as when one of the main characters, named KC,
took a bad fall at his apartment.
"Our friend has this freak accident and
actually passes away, and we saw this community really come together
and be a family," Batte says. "I think they were a family beforehand, and this community expressed that intimacy through these events and
really just took over the central theme of the film.
"We all became very close," Batte adds. "When this tragedy
happened, our immediate response was that we were all worried about our
friend. ... We were there at the hospital with the family and friends
throughout the whole two weeks that he was in a coma. Our concern was
taking care of them and doing everything we could to help them out."
Batte and Steger discussed whether to incorporate KC's death into the
film. They talked to KC's girlfriend, Sarah, and KC's family and their
friends in the league. Everyone agreed that they KC should be included.
"KC was an artist and a musician. He loved being in front of the
camera," Batte says. "He would have wanted us to make it part of it. We
were praying for a happy ending. We were praying for him to come out
and recover and everything was going to be hunky dory. Unfortunately,
that didn't happen."
When Batte and Steger set out to do the film, they'd agreed that their
main philosophy was to be honest with the audience
and their subjects.
"To ignore that this had happened would have been ridiculous," Batte says.
Left Field has screened at film festivals in Atlanta, New Hampshire and Colorado and was recently accepted into the Austin Film Festival in late October, Batte says.
If you miss Left Field tonight, there's a free screening on Saturday, September 26, at 2 p.m. at the Spencer Museum of Art (1301 Mississippi St., Lawrence) on the University of Kansas campus.
Comments (0)