The great plains of South Dakota received silver-screen recognition when Dances with Wolves was filmed across the state in 1990. Now- the Sci-Fi Movie “Dust of War” which was shot just outside of Pierre is premiering at a festival in California.
“Dust of War” tells the story of a lone soldier who battles a brutal warmonger in order to rescue a girl fated to save humanity. This is South Dakota native Andrew Kightlinger’s feature directorial debut. He says his movie premieres at the Comic-Con Festival in San Diego on July 18th.
Kightlinger says he wants to bring recognition to what he calls the “savage beauty” of South Dakota.
“One of my kind of mission statements as a filmmaker and one of the reasons that I insist on continuing to make movies here is because there’s a certain untapped energy to this state that I feel like a lot of movies- a lot of filmmakers have yet to exploit. Every filmmaker I’ve known that has come to visit this place has fallen in love with the visuals here. When we go there I’ll definitely be tapping South Dakota. We proudly made this film there- I’m convinced that we couldn’t have made it anywhere else- there’s only so many places where you can emulate Harvey Dunn’s kind of masterful brushstrokes and our goal was to capture that on film in as many ways as we could and South Dakota’s the only place for that,” says Kightlinger.
Kightlinger says about 75% of the cast and crew of “Dust of War” are from South Dakota.
He says Comic-Con is one of the largest pop culture events in the world and calls it the Sturgis Bike Rally of the entertainment industry. He says this festival showcases movies- videogames- comics- and more.