🎬 "The Boom" is an eerie short film inspired by the Longfellow Boom

Late one evening last fall, Ajuawak Kapashesit was sitting in his Longfellow apartment when he heard a thundering crash in the distance.

It wasn't a gunshot or an airplane. It sounded more like a bomb, but with a different tenor.

It was, plainly stated, a boom.

He went online to see if anyone else had heard the commotion. During what cascaded into a late night of internet research, he, like many before him, slowly came to learn that the mysterious noise had not only a name — the Longfellow Boom — but a robust mythology. And, most compellingly of all, it remained stubbornly unexplained despite decades of sleuthing.

That night triggered a series of events that ultimately resulted in The Boom, an 11-minute short film inspired by the phenomenon and the uncertainty around it, much of it filmed in the neighborhood. He's now shopping it on the film festival circuit, starting with a premiere at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival on April 14 and 18. Tickets are on sale now.

Background

Ajuawak, who is Ojibwe and Cree, grew up on the White Earth Reservation and moved to the Twin Cities to study linguistics at Macalester. He's spent his professional life focused on preserving and revitalizing Indigenous languages.