Red-carpet premiere of Medora brings North Dakota story to Jamestown

Jamestown is getting a North Dakota story of its own Friday when Bison 6 Cinema at 2400 8th Ave. SW hosts a red-carpet premiere of Medora: Empress of the Badlands. Daniel Bielinski, the film’s director and producer, is set to be on hand with another producer for questions, turning the screening into a local conversation about how the movie was made and why Medora’s history still resonates.

For Stutsman County moviegoers, the appeal goes beyond a night at the cinema. The film reaches into one of the state’s best-known place names and into the origin story behind it, following Marquis de Mores and his wife, Medora von Hoffman, as they arrive in 1883 Dakota Territory and try to build a home, a town and a meatpacking empire. Promotional material says the couple faced prejudice, persecution, sabotage from beef trusts and violent attacks from local roughnecks.

Bielinski has said the project was more than a decade in the making. He also serves as director of the Dramatic Arts program at the University of Mary and founded Canticle Productions in 2018, a company that has built its slate around North Dakota stories, including A Heart like Water, Sanctified, End of the Rope and Hazel’s Heart. That background gives the Jamestown stop a strong local-production angle, especially for residents who follow regional arts and filmmaking.

The production itself stayed close to home. Exterior scenes were shot in Medora, interiors in Bismarck, and the work reportedly took six weeks of six-day shoots, including construction of Western-town sets. The film has already moved through a statewide rollout that began in Bismarck on April 17-18, then continued in Medora, Williston, Watford City, Belfield, Minot and Devils Lake before reaching Jamestown.

The premiere also fits the larger pattern around the film’s release: more event than routine showing. In Medora, premiere-day programming included a 2 p.m. movie premiere, a 4 p.m. social hour at Rough Riders Hotel and a 5 p.m. buffet dinner, underscoring the way the movie is being presented as a civic and cultural gathering as much as a feature film. For Jamestown, that makes Friday’s screening another sign that downtown can still serve as a stop for statewide stories, not just local ones.