Brooks: Movie crew at the State Fair is making ‘an homage to Minnesota’

Our state fair is a great state fair. But why? One Minnesota filmmaker is determined to find out.

Look for Alec Fischer and his documentary film crew at the 2025 Minnesota State Fair, wherever llamas are costumed, crop is art and milk is all-you-can-drink. They’ll be filming before the gates open and after the last firework fizzles out. Three years of work. Hundreds of hours of footage. All in an effort to capture what makes the fair the fair.

The Minnesota State Fair is crowds and concerts and cookie buckets. But to Fischer, director and producer of the upcoming documentary “The Fair,” it’s so much more.

“I wanted to do something that was an homage to Minnesota,” said Fischer, who worked at the fair as a suburban high schooler, dispensing Sweet Martha’s cookie buckets.

“Minnesotans who love the fair will see something new,” he said. Those who’ve never had the pleasure will “be able to see what the modern Midwest is like, through the eyes of the fair.”

These are divisive times. It’s easy to live in your own isolated version of Minnesota, surrounded by people who look like you, vote like you, watch the same cable news shows you do, and hold the same views about whether ranch is a dressing or a condiment.

The fair brings the fractured state together. Rural and urban. The left and the right. Pronto pup people and corn dog people. Because you don’t have to agree that ranch is a condiment to know that it would taste better battered, deep-fried and shared with a few million friends.

The documentary’s trailer begins with the familiar — the earnest 4-H kids, the butter princesses rotating in a refrigerated case under the sculptor’s knife.

But below the surface fun of the fair lies its soul. The reason families return here generation after generation. The reason couples get married on the Giant Slide and grieving families write the names of their loved ones across fairground memorial benches and commemorative tiles.

“The fair is sacred to a lot of people,” said Fischer, who began filming in 2023. He produced the trailer to give future audiences — and anyone who might want to donate to the project — a chance to see the fair the way he sees the fair.

His cameras captured Minnesotans who took the oath of citizenship during the fair. He filmed congregations worshiping downwind of the Pronto Pup booths, tweaking the lyrics of the hymns for the occasion: “Come dance in the forest, come play at the fair.”

“There are moments like that, that everywhere,” he said. “Just little reminders that people are so dedicated to this place. So many special memories.”

The summers Fischer spent at the fair as a teen, shuffling equipment between Sweet Martha’s cookie stands, came in handy during the long, crowded days of filming.

“Little did I know that, now that I have to get equipment carts through the fair on a packed Saturday, I actually have a system for that,” he said. “I joked with Martha [Rossini Olson] and her family, ‘Thank you for unknowingly preparing me. … It helped a lot.’”

After long years and long hours of filming and editing, Fischer hasn’t fallen out of love with the Minnesota State Fair yet.

“I’ve fallen more deeply in love with it,” he said. “I already had a respect for what happens, but seeing the passion from every single person — from the vendors to the fair staff to coordinators and volunteers. There’s no way you can’t fall deeply in love with it, being around that energy all the time.”

For more information about the documentary — and to discover the crew’s favorite fair foods — visit thefairdocumentary.com.