BROKEN BOW—A love for the Nebraska Sandhills and the ranchers who reside here has been expressed in the recent film “Ocean of Grass, Life on a Nebraska Sandhills Ranch” as filmmaker Georg Joutras captured the story of the more than 120-year-old McGinn family ranch near Anselmo, Nebraska. The film premiered at the Tiffany Theater in Broken Bow during the State of Art and Music Festival held in June.
The film was originally scheduled to show one time at the theater but ended up staying at the theater for five weeks with multiple sold-out shows. Tiffany Theater owner Stuart Fox said he and the staff were blown away by the attendance as more than 400 people attended the film in its first weekend.
“A few days before the premier we were worried because we only had 30 or 40 tickets sold and the filmmaker was on his way, you know, and we wanted it to be a packed house and so we were a little worried but there was nothing to be worried about. It sold out that first day and then all of the theaters sold out on Sunday,” Fox said.
Fox told KCNI/KBBN the theater was interested in hosting the film in conjunction with a fundraiser and on Wednesday, August 8 he and theater manager Tania Kreitman presented a check to the Custer County Foundation donating half of the film ticket proceeds.
“We were just thrilled to be able to do this. It was probably a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Fox said.
A check was presented to Custer County Foundation board members and Executive Director Lindsay Divan in the amount of $2,665.38.
“It’s above and beyond what we were expecting. And we’re just grateful that they chose the Custer County Foundation to start with. They reached out to us and said hey, we’ve got this great movie coming and we’d love to donate a portion of it to the foundation, which is, you know, a visit I love to get,” Divan said.
The more than two-thousand dollar donation consisted of half of the tickets sales from the June 9 and 10 premier and fifteen percent of the ticket sales from the remaining weeks.
“We were very excited about it and like I said, it’s well above what we anticipated and you know, it’s really going to help the foundation and you know, give back to the community, and just increase the impact that we have in the Custer County area,” Divan said.
