Montana State filmmaker earns regional writing award

BOZEMAN - Trent Pietsch sat alone in his watch tower.

As he waited for incoming training flights on a naval base in Texas about 13 years ago, 19th century philosophers Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche kept him company. Their writings were influential for his own short stories, which he penned between work hours.

"The readings people get in their college classes where they go, 'Ugh, this is dense,' well, that's where I live," said Pietsch, a 40-year-old former Navy pilot from Whitehall. He is now a second-year filmmaker at Montana State University in the College of Arts and Architecture.

It was shocking, he said, to find 14 different words were all he needed to earn a Northwest writing award for his film submitted to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' collegiate competition. Pietsch was also one of two nominees in the competition's solo storytelling category. Judges reviewed about 150 student submissions from across Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Washington and Wyoming in both university and high school categories.

Pietsch's experimental film, "O Muse, Tag 27," explores a poet's frustrating attempt to put words on a page over 27 days. The poet, played by Pietsch, communicates with an otherworldly muse, whose Germanic whispers represent a "creepy" internal dialogue pulled from the poet's consciousness, he said.

Repetition is key in his film; his script sometimes repeats just one word or phrase per scene, such as "water" or "words." A combination of the two, "words are water," is a central line in the seven-minute film that represents the poet's ideas beginning to burst forth like a flood. Pietsch said the framing of his piece also expresses the many things writers want to say but can't, lest they start to lose their readers' attention. Pieces of his face and body are cut off in the frame, creating a sense of claustrophobia as the poet sits at his typewriter.

Though "O Muse, Tag 27" demonstrates the woes of creative writing, the craft is why Pietsch returned to college 18 years after earning a business degree from the University of Oregon. Prior to attending MSU, he spent 12 years in aviation, both in the military and for a commercial airline. Now, his goals include sharpening his writing skills and opening a film studio in Bozeman.

"I think I've been able to hone my writing to a level where I'm like, 'Oh, maybe I'm actually kind of getting good at this a little bit,'" he said.

Liana McKelvy, a lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures in the College of Letters and Science, said Pietsch's writing is concise yet layered with historical references and decades of lived experience. In her German text and cinema course, which Pietsch took in the spring, students analyzed screen adaptations of novels and created their own.

McKelvy often looked over Pietsch's assignments twice and discovered new insights after each read. She said she was impressed by his interpretation of the novel "The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum," which used Roman mythology and poetry to discuss exploitation in German tabloid culture. Pietsch's insights often helped his peers think critically about their own literature analyses, McKelvey said.

"Trent somehow unpacks the central theme of the book and is talking about something you've never thought of before, and you're like, 'How did you do that in only two paragraphs?'" she said.

Film instructor Alexa Alberda, who taught the aesthetics of film production course in which Pietsch created his piece, said his ability to research topics "entirely" produces a confident filmmaking and writing style. She believes this bravery is necessary for first-year film students submitting their pieces for larger critique.

"'O Muse' was definitely a darker edge than what I've seen from him in class," Alberda said. "I see a lot of students who put themselves in their own films, and it's neat to see which parts of their personality come out. Trent's film was very well thought through from start to finish."

His film will also screen in Germany this fall as part of the short-film festival Filmgarten Berlin. Organizers received roughly 70 submissions this year, and 22 films made the cut for October's event, Pietsch said.

"These accolades are motivation for me, more than anything," he said. "It's a little pat on the back. Like, 'Hey, keep going, keep submitting stuff, keep writing and keep creating.'"