The 11th Annual Oxford Film Festival brought large, enthusiastic crowds to its new location at the Malco Oxford Commons theater as well as to its traditional home base at The Lyric. Local and regional films such as Killer Kudzu and Memphis-made Being Awesome and Meanwhile in Memphis were crowd favorites, and a Mississippi shorts screening proving particularly popular. A panel discussion with animator Kent Osborne from the Cartoon Network’s hit show Adventure Time packed in fans of all ages.
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The slate of winners for the festival’s Spirit of the Hoka awards, announced at a gala ceremony at The Lyric, was topped by Teddy Bears, a dark comedy by writer Thomas Beatty, who co-directed with Rebecca Fishman.
The documentary feature Hoka was won by Bending Steel, Dave Carroll and Ryan Scafuro’s affecting chronicle of a would-be modern day Coney Island strongman named Chris “Wonder” Schoeck.
Actor Barry Nash won a special jury prize for his white-knuckled performance as a maimed motivational speaker in Bob Birdnow’s Remarkable Tale of Human Survival and the Transcendence of Self.
In the shorts, Evan Curtis’ stop-motion Snowdysseus took the Hoka in the animated category, and dynamic ink drawing Virtuos Virtuell by Maja Oschmann and Thomas Stellmach won the experimental crown.
Winners in the fest’s increasingly crowded Mississippi categories included Jimbo Mathus’ expressionist puppet epic Poor Lost Souls for music video. Landscapes of the Heart: The Elizabeth Spencer Story, Rebecca Cerese’s portrait of the 90-year old Mississippi writer, won the state documentary crown, while Jackson Segars’ Mississippi farm family saga Evergreen took home the narrative feature Hoka.
