Marit Ehmke, a soon-to-be graduate of Montana State University, cherished her dad’s old Nikon camera.
It was a trusty sidekick as she documented grain elevators and flora near her family’s wheat farm in the small town of Healy, Kansas. Its strap was slung across her shoulder on car rides to 4-H photography projects and when she modeled for her three older brothers’ photo shoots.
It was a lens through which Ehmke saw her town in a different light, she said, a common theme in her recent film projects for MSU’s three-year Science and Natural History Filmmaking program.
“Being able to see people tell their stories is powerful,” Ehmke said. “When you combine images and sound, it just kind of gets to you in a way that just reading something doesn’t.”
Ehmke, 35, will graduate with a master’s degree from the College of Arts and Architecture on May 9, following the submission of her thesis project, “The Heart of Winnett.”
She spent three years researching and producing the film, which highlights educators’ roles in a statewide struggle for rural education. Ehmke visited the small town of Winnett, located just over three hours north of Bozeman, and spoke with three middle school teachers, who worried about their students’ futures due to funding and staff shortages. Ehmke found there are many hundreds of teaching vacancies in Montana and that more than 80% of them were in rural school districts.
Ehmke, who graduated high school with a class of 15, said Winnett reminded her of home, from its sweeping golden fields to the middle school teachers dedicated to providing for their students. Her own middle school teacher, with whom she has kept in touch, was the first to suggest featuring rural education in her final project.
“I wasn’t sure what to expect, being this awkward little filmmaker coming into a town where I didn’t know anybody, but I was so impressed with how warm and welcoming the community was,” she said. “It reminded me how important it is to share stories of people who are the salt of the earth.”
Hugo Sindelar, Ehmke’s thesis chair and director of MSU’s Science and Natural History filmmaking program, said he was impressed by her doggedness in representing Winnett truthfully and celebrating its successes as well as its struggles. Ehmke’s knack for observation stems from her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Kansas and her experience as a designer and photographer for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
Sindelar met with Ehmke over the course of a year to discuss her film, watching as she worried about intruding on the town but later gained the confidence to connect with its residents, he said.
“I learned a lot about how educators see themselves in Marit’s film, which was really powerful,” Sindelar said. “They see themselves as educating our next generation of farmers and ranchers. It’s important for students to have access to rural education so they can run their businesses and grow our food, providing their services to the whole region.”
Ehmke plans to post the film, which is nearly 13 minutes long, on her website, air it on Montana PBS and enter it in film festivals after graduation.
Ehmke is no stranger to film festivals. One of her master’s projects, “The Grove,” was screened at the 2021 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The film followed volunteers from Bozeman’s Crosscut Mountain Sports Center while they managed conifer trees with controlled fires to preserve aspen groves. Ehmke said it was helpful to collaborate with her peers on sound and interviews, learning from each other.
Working alongside filmmakers who “know what the heck they’re doing” was one driving force pushing her to join Montana PBS on MSU’s campus in 2021.
She said she couldn’t pass up a lifelong dream of working for the very network she watched as a child. Growing up, she had only four TV channels, one of which was PBS. She became enraptured by the likes of “Bill Nye the Science Guy” and “Reading Rainbow.”
During her time at MSU, Ehmke became a filmmaker and editor in Montana PBS’ LearningMedia program, which creates programming for educators to use in pre-kindergarten classrooms all the way through high school.
“I can’t overstate the role PBS played in my life growing up, so I kind of wanted to give back in that way,” she said.
The program hires graduate students in film and education to collaborate on programming, including Montana PBS LearningMedia’s Parks of Montana series. Ehmke worked with a team to feature many of Montana’s 55 state parks as a resource for educators who want to supplement student field trips. Ehmke’s largest undertaking was the project she pitched, narrated, edited and filmed: “First Peoples Buffalo Jump.”
“She’s got some great pieces that will live on the Parks of Montana collection page forever and that we know will already be used in classrooms,” said Nikki Vradenburg, director of education at Montana PBS. “That’s what’s really exciting: Teachers now have these resources when they plan a field trip to these parks.”
Ehmke’s enthusiasm for filmmaking seeped into every interaction with her Montana PBS coworkers, Vradenburg said, from requesting feedback on rough cuts of episodes to showing up for meetings holding notebooks crammed with questions. Ehmke also helped deliver 500 activity kits to preschoolers and donned PBS character Molly of Denali’s felt costume, waving to children from the station’s vehicle.
“We miss her around here,” Vradenburg said. “She was one of those students who we felt was like a full-time staff member. I hope she continues to share her vision with the world.”
Ehmke returned to Kansas this year to work on her family farm and apply for jobs at television stations nearby. In the meantime, she will develop her next film projects, creating a short film from her family’s undigitized home movies and producing a documentary on Ogallala Aquifer’s limited water resources in Kansas.
After three years in the filmmaking program, Ehmke advises master’s students to become familiar with all aspects of filming rather than pigeonholing themselves within a certain career path.
“The people I met through the master’s program and the opportunities that came from Montana PBS really made me the filmmaker I am today,” she said. “It’s such a great incubator for becoming a better artist. I couldn’t recommend it more, you know what I’m saying? Five stars!”
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