With the COVID pandemic still paralyzing the film world, the Sundance Film Festival is partnering with Indie Memphis to bring cutting-edge cinema offerings to the Bluff City. In an ordinary January, filmmakers and execs from all over the world would gather in Park City, Utah, for America’s premiere independent film festival. But this year, the “festival flu” can kill you, so Sundance is learning from other festivals, such as Oxford and Indie Memphis, and putting on an online and in-person festival. Expanding their reach coast to coast, Sundance is hosting film screenings at socially distanced venues January 28th-February 2nd.
In all, more than 70 feature films will play Sundance either virtually or at in-person screenings around the country. Ten of them will screen at the Malco Summer Drive-In. Memphis’ opening night film features a former filmmaker who got his start at Indie Memphis. Kentucker Audley’s most recent win at Indie Memphis was 2012’s Open Five 2. Now based in Brooklyn, he teamed up with Albert Birney in 2017 to direct and star in Sylvio, a comedy about a “small town gorilla” who becomes an unlikely reality TV star. Audley and Birney’s follow-up is the romantic sci-fi fantasy Strawberry Mansion, which will premiere on January 28th. Audley stars as James Preble, a “dream auditor” in a future world where people must pay royalties if intellectual property appears in their subconscious minds. James meets an artist, played by Penny Fuller, who makes him question everything he thought he knew.
Friday, January 29th, features two films. I Was A Simple Man by Hawaiian director Christopher Makoto Yogi, whose 2018 film August at Akiko’s won an Honorable Mention at Indie Memphis, is the portrait of a dying man who remembers his less-than-idyllic life in Oahu. The second film of the evening is Cryptozoo, an animated film about a couple who stumble onto a supernatural zoo for Bigfoots and Mothmen.
Saturday and Sunday will also have double features, including Rebecca Hall’s Passing, which stars Tessa Thompson as a Black woman trying to appear white in 1920s America, and All Light, Everywhere, a “essay film” by Theo Anthony, the documentary director behind 2016’s enlightening urban eco-saga Rat Film. Another promising documentary in the lineup is Ailey, director Jamila Wignot’s portrait of the modern dance pioneer Alvin Ailey.
Stay tuned for more coverage of Sundance in Memphis. Tickets and passes are available at the Indie Memphis website.