State Theatre to screen Sioux Falls music documentary

By John Hult, for Pigeon605

A locally produced feature film about Sioux Falls’ self-made 1990s punk rock scene will have its theatrical debut this summer in the city’s oldest surviving movie house.

The renovated and reopened State Theatre will screen “I Really Get Into It” from June 24-27.

Opening night will include a question-and-answer session with filmmakers Brian Bieber and Brienne Maner, as well as with Terry Taylor, a Sioux Falls native who became an all-ages show promoter in his teens, and Andy Heller, host of the Sioux Falls podcast “Fat Dude Digs Flicks.”

The first 150 ticket buyers will get a limited edition poster designed for the event by Sioux Falls visual artist Marc Wagner.

All filmmaker proceeds from the screening will be donated to The Transformation Project, whose mission is to support and empower transgender youth, young adults, and their families while educating communities in South Dakota and the surrounding region about gender identity and expression.

“I Get Really Into It” tells the story of the all-ages music scene that emerged from the late 1980s into the 1990s in Sioux Falls, led by teens who wrote, recorded and promoted their own music.

Many veterans of the do-it-yourself scene moved on to adult entrepreneurship, starting businesses and leading nonprofit organizations in Sioux Falls and beyond. One particularly memorable scene in the film animates a mid-’90s confrontation between punk kids and their tormentors recounted by Patrick Sayler, who now manages the Sioux Falls Food Co-Op. 

Opening-night viewers will have a chance to sample an “I Really Get Into It” IPA from Look’s Marketplace — a business whose brewmaster and general manager also have connections to the ’90s punk rock scene. 

“There are a lot of people who grew up playing abrasive guitar music in Sioux Falls who are pushing things forward culturally today,” Bieber said. 

The film was released last year on DVD. Some product packages included the kind of marketing ephemera that defined the mid-90s music scene: a self-published zine, buttons, “Greetings from Nordic Hall” postcards, posters, stickers and cassette tape copies of the film’s soundtrack. Bieber’s “a big fan of merchandise,” having come from the all-ages scene himself, so the product list has grown in the months since the initial release. The DVDs are sold both online and at Total Drag and Last Stop CD Shop, and everything on the website will be on sale at the premiere at a punk rock-style merch table.

The film’s in-person premiere at the State follows a virtual screening in December, which raised about $600 for Children’s Inn. 

The charitable donations are a nod to an all-ages music tradition, Bieber said, as well as to the support he and Maner have gotten already from fans who bought the film on physical media.

“We didn’t want it to seem like we were double-dipping, so to speak,” he said. “There’s a long tradition of doing benefit punk rock shows, so we wanted to carry that on.”

The recipient of the profits for the June 24-27 screenings was chosen in part as a response to the transgender legislation debated by state lawmakers in Pierre year after year, including a bill on transgender girls in sports that sparked controversy this year.

“Trans kids have had a really crummy year,” he said. “On the legislative level, they’ve been attacked, and it’s infuriating, so this is a way to show support to The Transformation Project during Pride Week.”

New documentary tells the story of all-ages music scene in Sioux Falls