A year ago I wrote a piece about right-wing cinema and film criticism. I made the point that in its current embryonic state, when dissident right cinema finally emerges, it must be seen in the context of being avant garde, potentially raw and outsider art. Such rare work should not simply be looked at and quickly glossed over, but rather examined in granular detail, attempting to find what might be unique about it.
From “The Future Of Right-Wing Cinema“:
“Left-wing academic film culture is very good at judging work on its merits and in context, they are very open to raw, amateurish and outsider art in search for something unique, special and entirely new within it. On these terms the left’s film criticism is quite advanced and adventurous. They have countless film journals, institutions and entire courses dedicated to this.
We need to make sure right-wing critics and audiences are ready for any new wave of cinema our movement produces, and have the sophistication to deal with it properly on zero budget, outsider and embryonic terms.”
Once Upon A Time In Minnesota was in production when I first wrote that piece. Now the movie is finished and has sparked a bit of lively conversation. It’s a supernatural horror film based on Minnesota’s Scandinavian heritage. A young woman escapes a cult to then go on a therapeutic road trip with old friends to a cabin in the wilderness.
Watch the full “Once Upon A Time In Minnesota” movie here:
Martin Lichtmesz has written an interesting review of Minnesota, but I think his piece makes the mistake of looking at the work as conventional cinema. Most of his article is about online twitter arguments he had with others like PhilosophiCat regarding the movie. I’m actually glad this is taking place because it means Minnesota is creating artistic debate. Criticism and discussion often precedes a jolt of creativity like with the French New Wave.
Let’s look at the film on two different levels. On the surface, Minnesota is a largely technically competent low-budget horror that succeeds in being entertaining on those merits. Rather than going for any kind of lofi aesthetic (i.e iPhones or VHS), Minnesota’s ambition was to look like a Hollywood film, with good use of cameras and nice looking lenses. Various exterior scenes pop with exaggerated colours of nature. Camera movements are smoothly done on gimbals or Steadicam rigs. Dialogue is all clearly recorded and nicely sweetened in post-production. The film came from the White Art Collective, which has mostly focused on music, so they had plenty of emotive soundtrack material.
There are moments where it’s rough around the edges because its ambition to look and sound like a conventional Hollywood film is more risky on a low budget. If this were shot like a documentary, it would be easier to make it seamless. But attempting a big-budget feel will inevitably create moments that don’t quite hit the mark when done on a shoe-string. Even when only a few moments, they will stick-out in a largely otherwise professional and glossy aesthetic.
Jenny Bean as Eva in Once Upon A Time In Minnesota
The cast of actors are really good. I think Jenny Bean sells her traumatised state as a former cult member quite well. She has this constantly worried look, reminiscent of Sissy Spacek in Carrie, which creates anticipation of the horror to come. Her romantic interest, a man she left before joining the cult, is a believably earnest corn-fed sort of guy that successfully builds up their romantic tension again. Comic relief on the road trip is delivered by Alma Lahar, who gets all kinds of corny lines that verge into meme-worthy meta-comedy. He made me laugh a few times. It’s an acting troupe that could become well-known performers in a new kind of alternative cinema.
Let’s go beneath all the technical and stylistic surface. What Minnesota offers in substantial uniqueness is an esoteric sub-structure and in-jokes for the dissident right audience. I don’t want to spoil all these revelations and punchlines, but they are threaded through the film to either wink that they are one of us or punctuate with humour. Thematically, the horror is based around European folk mythos and the film is very much rooted in nature, from its well-captured wilderness settings to the interiors of the wood cabin where the film concludes.
Jenny Bean as Eva in Once Upon A Time In Minnesota
The biggest issue with the film is not that it doesn’t succeed on a technical or thematic level. The problem is it’s just too short. At 50 minutes, it sits as a mid-length feature or one episode of a TV show. Things are wrapped up a bit too quickly. I think the second act could have been drawn-out much more and a greater sense of tension created before the ending. But this shows that audiences are left wanting more, so it’s not the worst criticism to have. Things are also left a little open ended, so if there were a sequel or another episode, I would have watched it immediately.
Minnesota largely sidesteps being overtly political, they went rather for artistic passion first than grafting artifice around ideology. It’s a horror film steeped in Hammer and Gialo. Yes, there are nods and winks to our guys. No, there isn’t a diversity quota being adhered to. But they were consciously having fun with the genre first rather than ramming talking-points down our throats. There is more expression of identity here than there are polemics.
Symbolism from Once Upon A Time In Minnesota
What about the bad review and public debate about the film? Well I think some of the negativity has failed to see this film in proper context. Coming from a niche subculture of White nationalism, this film should be seen like early Evangelical Christian cinema. Martin Lichtmesz does draw this comparison in his review, but I think he fails to appreciate how ethno-nationalists are operating cinematically from within a vacuum and he sees the comparison negatively, rather than something of this scale coming from nothing being quite the leap. Other commentary has been more supportive and appreciative of what they see as green shoots and exciting potential.
Evangelicals were well aware that their own movies had problems, but they kept supporting the industry, developing it over time, where it eventually became more sophisticated and viable. With Christians, I think they had a bit more they could have drawn from, like the work of Andrei Tarkovsky and other poetic cinema, not to mention their more solid financial base, but like the right-wing, they have their own issues with a limited or philistine art culture. Christians are largely locked-out of sophisticated film discourse and have hence locked-on to a Hallmark sensibility.
One big exception was Catholic filmmaker Mel Gibson, who tapped into this market with The Passion Of The Christ and showed great grass-roots solidarity with protestants to break box office records for both independent and R-rated cinema. The Passion was an artistically uncompromising project that transcended the usual TV-movie treatment of the subject matter. Highly cinematic and uncensored in terms of violence around the crucifixion. His film was accused of anti-Semitism with its depiction of Jews conniving to kill Christ. Gibson would be entrapped 18 months later by police as part of an attempted cancellation of the artist by Hollywood.
Interestingly enough, both Evangelical cinema and the White Art Collective come from similar impulses. Both of them have a strong foundation in music first and are essentially trying to carve out separatist artistic space. Music is much closer to cinema than theatre and so it’s a natural progression to start making movies. And creating your own film narratives is important if you want to forge a separate community or zeitgeist outside the mainstream.
Gentile Gentleman as Cedric in Once Upon A Time In Minnesota
Martin Lichtmesz’s review ignores Minnesota’s genuine outsider bona fides and esoteric content. This was always my fear when such work would finally emerge, that we simply couldn’t approach things with the nuance that leftists give obscure cultural artifacts within their milieu. And in this sense, the team that built Minnesota have to some degree led an artistic charge with arrows in their backs. That’s not to say that Minnesota is a masterpiece. But it’s a very successful proof of concept, evidence that our scene can in fact create their own movies to a good technical standard, be entertaining and speak directly to an ethno-nationalist audience.
Now the thing I want to contribute to this discussion the most is what to do with Minnesota. I don’t think it should just exist as a block of time on YouTube or its DVD physical media release. Within the film are various sequences that should be injected into meme culture via TikToks and Youtube shorts. These range from melancholic moments to the more corny punchlines (like the diner scene). Someone has to go in and start slicing and dicing (this may not be the filmmakers themselves). Despite the cinemascope aspect ratio, Minnesota’s imagery can easily be cropped to vertical TikToks because things are usually framed with lots of space in the composition. Some of this material can be clipped as-is or perhaps reprocessed like hype edits or Hyperborean memes with FX and different soundtracks. This is modern film promotion and memes are really our scene’s most successful artform, so I would love to see this film threaded through social media and continue to live as a piece of culture. This has been done successfully with the low-budget films of Jonathan Bowden – teenagers are reediting them into reflexive experimental shorts.
Known for his powerful speeches, oratory skills and writing, Jonathan Bowden also left us with two low-budget experimental films. These feature his own expressive central performances. Venus Flytrap (2005) and Grand Guignol (2009) have been given an entirely new life in meme culture where Bowden is an ever-changing and evolving character reflecting upon the modern age. Bowden passed away in 2012.
Minnesota is definitely worth watching. If you are a nationalist with an appetite for culture, this film is for you. It can be found on YouTube or a DVD copy can be purchased directly on eBay. I recommend that Lord Wolfshield basically go and make another film within this genre and build on what he’s just done. If Wolfshield makes something like this again, with all the new experience and knowledge gained, I think he could truly break through and make something talked about beyond our sphere. The film proves the viability of us making our own feature narratives and that such filmmakers are worth investing in.
The release comes at a time when Australian nationalists have dropped a super-successful documentary of their own. If a bit more work is generated, we will have a genuine artistic movement and little industry emerging. Wolfshield has stated his goal is to build a new institution from the ground up completely outside the antiwhite system. Beyond being something cool to watch, Minnesota will hopefully have an interesting afterlife within meme-culture and as a proof of concept that inspires others to tackle a feature film project.
John MacDonald is a film critic and teacher of media in New South Wales.
