Month: April 2014

Memphis enjoys an embarassment of riches when it comes to film festivals. Springtime belongs to On Location: Memphis International Film & Music Fest, now celebrating its 15th year. The schedule is eclectic but can be summed up by the event’s name: There are a lot of offerings from around the world, several from Memphis and the region, and then a whole lot of music-related movies. Like a quality generalist physician, On Location: Memphis is good at a lot of different things. Here are a few things we’re looking forward to most (all showings are at Studio on the Square, unless noted otherwise).

Thursday

The festival kicks off with, appropriately enough, a red carpet event. At Malco’s Paradiso, the stops will be pulled out for attractive man Armand Assante, whose heyday was in the ’80s and ’90s (I, the Jury, The Mambo Kings, 1492: Conquest of Paradise). Assante is here with In Between Engagements, a film about four couples negotiating their interconnected relationships. The film is directed by Croatian filmmaker Dominik Sedlar, whose credits include the documentaries Searching for Orson, about the great director Wells, and Yulia about the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (which Assante narrated). Both Assante and Sedlar will be in attendence for a Q&A following the screening, which begins at 7:30 p.m.

Friday

Adelante is a film out of Pennsylania highlighting the ethnic confluence of Mexican and Irish Catholics who are working together to revive a parish outside of Philadelphia. It screens on Friday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m.

On Friday at 7:15 p.m., the narrative feature Fall To Rise follows an injured dancer who struggles to return to prominence. The film stars Katherine Crockett and Daphne Rubin-Vega.

Highly influential Memphis musician Tav Falco takes center stage on Friday at 9:30 p.m. with The Films of Tav Falco. The 96-minute program will consider the films by, of, and about Falco, known for his group Panther Burns and his collaborations with Alex Chilton.

Saturday

You may not know who Drew Struzan is, but you almost certainly know his work. The documentary Drew: The Man Behind the Poster takes a look at the illustrator who created the artwork for films such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Back to the Future. The film shows at 1:30 p.m.

Princeton Holt’s film Chloe, set and filmed in Nashville, is intriguing. It follows a young singer-songwriter (Naama Kates) who goes to Nashville to find fame and get her demo heard. Holt and Kates developed the story long distance and then met in Nashville, cast the film in 48 hours, and shot it in four days. The film screens at 5:15 p.m.

Sunday

The last day of the festival features, among other things, two Southern/criminal justice documentaries of note.Missing Micah is about Memphian Micah Rine Pate, who was last seen alive in April 2009. Her husband, Thomas Pate, reported her missing after leaving for a jog, but before long he copped to shooting her (accidentally, he says) and lead the police to her body. The film tries to get to the bottom of things and screens at 3:30 p.m.

Gideon’s Army takes a look at three idealistic public defenders in the South who try to rectify criminal system injustices against the accused indigent. The organization Gideon’s Promise seeks to change the way we think about crime and punishment. The film screens at 5:30 p.m.

On Location: Memphis International Film & Music Fest Thursday, April 24th-Sunday, April 27th

Malco’s Studio on the Square and Paradiso

OnLocationMemphis.org

“In the very heart of the City of Memphis, there is a forest. As old as history, and just as tangled.” So begins Steven John Ross’ adaptation of Peter Taylor’s The Old Forest (the screenplay is by Ross, David Appleby, Susan Howe, and Joseph Mulherin). The film was made in Memphis and came out in 1984, long before there was a film scene in town. (See Chris Davis’ interview with Ross on page 48.) Thirty years on, The Old Forest is back for an encore, playing at On Location: Memphis International Film & Music Fest this Saturday. The film was produced by the then-Memphis State University’s Department of Theatre and Communication Arts and only could have happened with Taylor’s permission. It’s a remarkable work and well worth seeing, either for the first time in years or the first time ever.

The Old Forest is set in the actual Old Forest in Overton Park. (In light of our city’s appetite for concrete, it’s kind of amazing it’s still there.) It takes place in 1937 and considers the convergence of high society Memphis with increasingly empowered, independent-minded women of less proper social standing. Caught in the middle is Nat Ramsey (Peter White), scion of a cotton family. Dinner-table conversation turns to the Cotton Carnival and Nat’s engagement to Caroline Braxley (Jane Wallace), a beauty whose family is no less well off. The problem is that Nat has more fun with the likes of Lee Ann Deehart (Beverly Moore) and her pals (played by Shannon Cochran, Amy Shouse, Kathryn Murry, and Cynthia Moore): women who are relatively liberated, liberally educated, who don’t have wealthy families to have to please, and who like to dance, drink, neck, and drive fast, just like the boys. Or, as the film has it, “Girls who weren’t heirs to anything, and they couldn’t have cared less.”

Nat and Lee Ann get in a fender bender in the Old Forest. Nat sustains a head injury, and Lee Ann flees the scene. The police want to know where she went and if she was hurt. The threat of scandal is right there beyond the horizon. It just wouldn’t do for it to make the papers. Nat’s engagement to Caroline, her reputation, even their family’s interests are suddenly all imperiled. Even the mayor is concerned.

The film is narrated wonderfully by Taylor himself. Lines leap out of the plot. About the Latin poetry class Nat takes at Southwestern (now Rhodes), postponing the wedding: “the only way to experience the very isolation I dreaded so much.” About the Old Forest itself: “Men here have always been wary of this place.” About a women’s boarding house: “I hope I never see the day your sister Nancy lives in one of these places.”

The Old Forest pops, with perfect period costumes (Candice Cain), cars, and locations (art directors Chris Wright and Thurston Hall Prewitt), Benny Goodman on the radio, and an excellent dramatic score by Mark Blumberg. The whole production made me think more than once of Downton Abbey.

White is great as Ramsey. He evokes thoughts of Christopher Reeve, with a powerful confidence, but also a Southern intelligence that anachronisticly calls to mind both Walton Goggins and Timothy Olyphant.

The Old Forest is better than either adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Admittedly, that bar is low, but The Old Forest clears it by a mile. ■