Zaire Love’s “Etto” won Best Hometowner Narrative Short.
More than 170 films screened at the 26th Indie Memphis Film Festival, which ran from October 24 to 29, 2023. Audiences flocked to the opening night film, Raven Jackson’s mesmerizing All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt; Jeanie Finlay’s documentary Your Fat Friend; a sneak preview of Jeffrey Wright in the blistering satire American Fiction; and even Celine and Julie Go Boating, a 50-year-old, three-hour experimental film from French director Jacques Rivette. The biggest ovation this reporter witnessed was for Joann Self Selvidge and Sarah Fleming’s searing documentary Juvenile: 5 Stories, which brought the Friday night audience at Playhouse on the Square to their feet.
Memphis-based filmmakers provided many of the festival’s highlights. In the shorts categories, A.D. Smith’s masterful sci-fi short “r.e.g.g.i.N,” Mark Goshorn Jones’ “Squirrel Meets Boris,” Noah Glenn’s “Bike Lane Ends,” Martina Boothe’s “Dare,” and Janay Kelley’s “Kiss Me Softly” stood out in an extremely competitive field. Among the eight Hometowner feature films, Jessica Chaney’s I Am packed Playhouse with its empowering message for Black women overcoming anxiety. Sissy Denkova flew directly to the festival from Bulgaria, where she was promoting the theatrical release of her heartfelt comedy Scent of Linden, to present it to the Memphis immigrant community which inspired it.
At least one filmmaker made Indie Memphis history at Saturday night’s awards ceremony. Zaire Love is the first director to ever win both Best Hometowner Narrative Short (for “Etto”) and Best Hometowner Documentary Short (for “Slice”) in the same year. (In 2017, Matteo Servente won Best Documentary Short and a special MLK50 social justice award for a narrative short. Love is the first director to win Best in both categories.)
The festival jury awarded Best Narrative Feature to Mountains, director Monica Sorelle’s story of Haitian workers facing gentrification. Best Documentary Feature went to Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, directors Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson’s portrait of the Tennessee-born poet. Alicia Ester’s documentary The Spirit of Memphis, which was one of two festival films with scores by IMAKEMADBEATS, won Best Hometowner Feature. The Best Departures Feature, awarded to experimental and cross-genre works, went to Sebastián Pinzón Silva and Canela Reyes’ La Bonga. The Sounds Feature award for best music-related film went to Clyde Petersen for Even Hell Has Its Heroes, a documentary about Seattle doom metal pioneers Earth.
Donna and Ally, winner of the Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmakers Award at Indie Memphis 26.
In the National Shorts category, “Benediction” by Zandashé Brown won for Narrative, “This Is Not A Sports Film” by Lily Ahree Siegel won for Documentary, “Amma Ki Katha” by Nehal Vyas won in Departures, and “Be Thyself” by Daniel Rosendale won the After Dark category, which includes horror and sci-fi. In the Music Video categories, director Jasia Ka took home the National award for “Slut” by Pollyanna, and Lawrence Shaw won the Hometowner category for “If You Feel Alone at Parties” by Blvck Hippie, led by the director’s brother Josh Shaw. The Duncan Williams Screenwriting Award went to The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed by Joanna Arnow. The Ron Tibbett Soul of Southern Film Award, a special jury prize that dates back to Indie Memphis’ origins, went to Mississippi River Styx by Andy McMillan and Tim Grant, which also received an honorable mention from the Documentary jury. The Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award went to Donna and Ally, which was jubilantly accepted by director Connor Mahoney and the cast. Best Poster Design went to An Evening Song (For Three Voices).
Two short films you will be seeing at future Indie Memphis Film Festivals are “55 South” by Best Hometowner Feature winner Alicia Ester and “Friend Shaped” by Lo Norman, both of which were awarded $15,000 IndieGrants.
The Vision Award went to Molly Wexler, the local producer and Indie Memphis board member who stepped in to run the festival while they searched for new leadership in 2021. The Indie Award, given to Memphis film crew members who have proven themselves invaluable over many productions, went to Laura Jean Hocking, who may have also set another Indie Memphis record by editing three feature films, two music videos (one of which she also directed), and a short film that appeared in this year’s festival.
Black Barbie won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 26th Indie Memphis Film Festival.
The Audience Awards, as determined by ballots passed out during festival screenings, were announced on November 1. Zaire Love added to her hardware haul by winning the Audience Award for Best Documentary Short with “Slice”, while A.D. Smith took home Best Narrative Short with “R.e.g.g.i.n.” The Audience Award for Best Hometowner Feature went to The First Class by Lee Hirsch; the documentary about Crosstown High screened before a sold-out audience at Crosstown Theatre. The audience chose Josh Cannon’s pastoral music video for Bailey Bigger’s “Arkansas Is Nice” as their favorite. For Poster Design, the audience voted for Juvenile: 5 Stories.
Juvenile: 5 Stories‘ Audience Award-winning poster. (Courtesy True Story Films)
In the national competition (which should really be renamed the international competition), the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature went to Lisa Steen’s Late Bloomers. For documentary feature, Indie Memphis ticket buyers chose Black Barbie. You can read my interview with director Lagueria Davis here. The Sounds feature Audience Award went to Augusta Palmer’s The Blues Society. You can read Alex Greene’s interview with the director about this important Memphis story at this link. The Departures feature choice was The Taste of Mango by Chloe Abrahams.
In the National Shorts categories, the top vote-getters were “Hickey” by Giovanna Molina for narrative and “Please Ask For It” by Allison Waid for documentary. The Departures winner was “Prep” by Raymond Knudsen, and the music video prize went to directors Seretse Njemanze and Jehnovah Carlisle for “So Misunderstood” by Jaklyn.
Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks face death in Joe vs. The Volcano.
Saturday morning of Indie Memphis’ busy weekend kicks off with a cartoon. Robot Dreams (Oct. 28, 10:30 a.m.), the first animated film from Spanish polymath director Pablo Berger, tells the story of a Dog and his Robot as they knock around an animal-inhabited Manhattan.
This year’s Hometowner Documentary Shorts Competition (Oct. 28, 12:45 p.m.) is stacked with talent. Lauren Ready, Indie Memphis’ most decorated documentarian, is looking to take home her sixth trophy with “Empty to Enough,” which she co-directed with Nicki Storey. But that’s not going to be easy with a-list Memphis lensers like Zaire Love’s “Slice,” Jordan Danelz “Klondike,” and Aisha Raison’s “The Blues” in the mix.
“Empty to Enough” Courtesy: Forever Ready Productions
Un rêve plus long que la nuit (Oct. 28, 1:45 p.m.) is a recently restored experimental film from 1976 by French artist Niki de Saint Phalle. As the New York Times said, “the sheer diversity of papîer-mache penises is astounding.” The Plot Against Harry (Oct. 28, 3:40 p.m.) by Michael Roemer is another recently-restored cult favorite screening this year.
On what other Saturday night would have a choice of seeing Keenan Ivory Wayans outlandish 2004 comedy White Chicks (Oct. 28, 6 p.m.) or Ira Sach’s twisty erotic drama Passages (Oct. 28, 8:15 p.m.). But you don’t have to choose! “Chick Passages” is like the Barbenhiemer of Indie Memphis.
If you need a little horror in your Halloween weekend, look no further than 1973’s Messiah of Evil by Willard Hyuck and Gloria Katz, who are probably better known for their work with their friend George Lucas. They later went to earn screenplay credits for American Graffitti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and did uncredited punch ups on Star Wars. The husband/wife team’s debut is raw and terrifying.
On Sunday there’s a pair of high-profile local films, Scent of Linden (Oct. 29, noon) and The Blues Society (Oct. 29, 3 p.m.). A revival screening of Vojtěch Jasný’s The Cassandra Cat (Oct. 29, 11:15 a.m.) is a hot ticket. The trailer speaks for itself.
The Waynans tribute continues with the classic Blacksploitation farce I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (Oct. 29, 4:45 p.m.).
Or, if you’re in a completely different mood, you can watch indie legend Todd Haynes directs Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman in May/December Oct. 29, 6:15 p.m.). (Comparing schedule and run times suggests a “Sucka/December” combo is theoretically possible for the brave/weird.)
You can round out your Indie Memphis weekend and get into the swing of Halloween with horror master Dario Argento’s Italio-disco slasher fest Tenebrae (Oct. 29, 9:15 p.m.)
Or, you can end on a more positive note, with the last-minute addition to the festival Joe vs. The Volcano (Oct. 29, 9:30 p.m.). Artistic Director Miriam Bale’s mother recently passed away, and this was her favorite movie. Featuring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in their prime, and an absurdist plot that touches on issues of life and death, it’s basically the definition of a cult classic — and perfect for Indie Memphis.
Black Barbie won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 26th Indie Memphis Film Festival.
The story of Lagueria Davis’ timely documentary Black Barbie is actually a part of the film. It started almost a decade ago when she moved from Fort Worth, Texas, to Los Angeles. Looking to break into the business, she asked her aunt for a place to live. Actually, “My mom asked because I was too shy, since I only met her twice as a kid, and she didn’t know me as an adult,” the director says. “She said, ‘Yes, yes, you can stay with me.’ I was like, ‘I’m pretty independent person. I’ll be with you two to three months tops.’”
Her aunt was a doll collector, and longtime employee at toymaker Mattel. Davis didn’t play with dolls very much growing up, but she was captivated by her aunt’s story of how the Black version of the Barbie doll came to be. “I was just struck by how I didn’t know about Black Barbie, and I never even thought about Black Barbie, to be honest. It was a really eye-opening conversation with her, and I was struck with the sense of history having been lived. I don’t even know if this story would be something we would read in any text or history book. These are stories from front lines, from people who’ve lived it. It’s also people who look like me who are telling me these stories, not someone with a different gaze or perspective. … My aunt is kind of the key and Black Barbie, the door which we can unlock and open and walk in to talk about these greater themes of representation as it relates to Black women and Black girls in particular.”
The film BlackBarbie traces the development of the dolls, from Barbie’s meteoric rise to the top of the toy box to the various experiments with racially diverse dolls, both successful and unsuccessful, by Mattel and other toy companies. Davis tracked down Kitty Black Perkins, a fashion designer who, after designing clothes for Barbie for years, finally convinced Mattel to allow her to design a Barbie with Black skin. “Why did it take 21 years? Because that’s what was happening.”
At one point, Davis and her collaborators recreate a famous sociological experiment, which was cited in the landmark school desegregation case Brown vs. Board of Education, where children were asked their opinions of dolls with different shades of skin. “It was so fun. Our producer, Aaliyah Williams and our associate producer, Brianne Klugiewicz, they were the ones who set out to find the children. We shot it at a charter school in Los Angeles, and we put out a notice to them who then put out an APB, if you will, to other charter schools. We got submissions, and then I also put out a casting call, so to speak. And so, we got a few children from that pool of children. We worked with Dr. Amirah Saafir, who decided we should group them in threes with their peers. That makes them more comfortable, so they would be able to talk and play. We had the dolls there for them to interact with and not make it a forced choice situation, and we had a spectrum of children and dolls. Then it was just like, ‘Let’s make it conversational.’”
In addition to setting toy history straight, Davis brings a wide variety of voices on the screen to discuss the impact Barbie has had on children, race, and femininity. “I thought it was really important to have several different voices, from academia to fanatics to people who didn’t particularly see her as progressive. … I just wanted a spectrum of voices and a spectrum of thought from people who were a part of the community, but could also speak to diversity of thought within that community, because it’s not a monolithic experience.”
After working for years to create this unique documentary, Davis’ project got a big boost in interest this summer when Greta Gerwig’s Barbie unexpectedly became the biggest grossing film of the year. Black Barbie has now appeared in 75 film festivals, and was recently purchased for distribution by Shondaland and Netflix. “I felt like the story that we were laying out for Black Barbie, the doll, is very much parallel to the story of making Black Barbie, the documentary, and getting it out there. And it’s funny because I think my brain is kind of wired to connect dots.”
Black Barbie screens in competition at the Indie Memphis Film Festival Saturday, October 28th, at noon at Playhouse on the Square. Individual tickets and passes are available at the Indie Memphis website.
Author Aubrey Gordon in Your Fat Friend. (Courtesy Glimmer Films)
“I wanted to make a film about fatness,” says Jeanie Finlay.
The English director first appeared in Indie Memphis with her 2015 film Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, a portrait of Jimmie Ellis, the masked singer who inspired rumors that Elvis had faked his death. She has a knack for finding great cinematic characters in real life, such as Freddie McConnell, the pregnant trans man in Seahorse. When she got the nod to document the creation of the final season of Game of Thrones for The Last Watch, she concentrated not on the series’ big stars, but on the special effects guy who made the fake snow, and the background performer who had been marching with the same pretend army for the better part of a decade.
This time around, the theme came first, then she found blogger Aubrey Gordon, and the film Your Fat Friend was born. “I read the first piece that Aubrey wrote that went viral,” Finlay recalls. “It had this emotional intensity, and she was anonymous. You know me, I like a masked person. The fact that she was anonymous meant that she could speak to politics and be free rather than be distracted in stupid conversations.”
You might say Finlay was lucky to find Gordon before she became the successful author of What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat and the co-star of the podcast Maintenance Phase. But really, the director was just one of millions of people who found truths in Gordon’s message of body positivity. “Speaking about the personal politics of what it means to live in a fat body just seemed really powerful,” she says.
Originally, the idea was for Gordon to write the voiceover for an essay documentary. The film simmered on the back burner as Aubrey’s career took off and Finlay made Seahorse and The Last Watch. But when they finally met in person, Finlay decided she had found a new character to focus on. “She seemed like this hugely charismatic person with a really complex interior voice. As soon as I met her, I was like, ‘Oh, I think she is my film … Then I met her mom, and I met her dad, who struggled to even say the word ‘fat.’ I knew that this film lay in the space between her and her parents — the act of becoming visible to the world, but also to her family. So I abandoned a year of work, because I wasn’t feeling it.”
Just when the film seemed to be coming together, the pandemic hit. “I was out in Portland in February, 2020, and I left cameras there because I was coming back.”
Instead, Finlay found herself directing shoots in the Pacific Northwest from the other side of the world, in her native Nottingham, England. “I taught Aubrey how to use one of the cameras, and then I hooked up with three different camera people in Portland: Michael Palmieri, Donald Mosher, and Lindsay Tranel …This isn’t my first time at the rodeo, but I want to learn on each film. One of the things I learned on Seahorse was that I couldn’t always be there. It’s not just, ‘I’m the director!’ This is a collaboration. And so I bought a microphone to stick on her camera and a cradle, so she was always ready. I was checking in all the time, ‘Have you filmed this?’ It was just to get the building blocks. I become possessed by the film once I start making it.”
These remote shoots yielded one of the most powerful moments in the film. Gordon filmed herself opening an email to find out that her first book had been accepted for publication. “It was pretty weird, wild, intense ride,” says Finlay. “Her writing just blew up. Everyone recognized the thing that I saw in her writing that was really special. She got a book deal, then her second book comes out, and it’s a New York Times bestseller. She launched Maintenance Phase, and it’s become wildly popular, because it’s so clever and smart and brilliant.”
When the coronavirus had subsided enough for Finlay to return to the states, she was able to capture Aubrey in her element as the podcaster got her first taste of fame. “It’s hard to shake off a whole lifetime of conditioning and value judgments,” says Finlay. “At the beginning, Aubrey said to me, you can put the camera wherever you want. I don’t care. So it was a real liberation, and I wanted to really celebrate her body, the volume of it, because she’s monumental. With her voice, her height — she’s 5-foot-10 — she’s big in every way. I wanted to make people sit with her fatness, because I think it’s uncomfortable for some people.”
The response to Your Fat Friend has been anything but uncomfortable. “I put all of my heart and soul into all the films I make, but this was really a film I made for myself. I made the film that I wished I’d been able to watch when I was 13 years old. Someone once told me that I would never be loved because I was fat, and it really shaped my self-identity. I wanted to make a film for that vulnerable teenager, sort of say, look, this is a construct, and people don’t know how to treat your body and soul with tenderness. So I was super nervous when we showed it at Tribeca [Film Festival]. We sold out all our screenings in less than half an hour. I know Aubrey’s got a big following, but then it just felt like more pressure. When the film ended, everyone stood up. I went, ‘Oh my God, Aubrey! Everyone’s leaving! Remind them there’s a Q and A!’ Then I realized, ‘Oh, this is a standing ovation.’”
Your Fat Friend screens on Wednesday, Oct. 25 at 6:00 p.m. and Friday, Oct. 27 at 2:45 p.m. at the Indie Memphis Film Festival. Tickets and passes are available at the Indie Memphis website.
Before he became Academy Award-Winning Director Barry Jenkins, the filmmaker brought his debut Medicine for Melancholy to Indie Memphis in 2008. He’s always kept in touch with his indie film roots, even after winning the Best Picture Oscar for 2016’s Moonlight. In 2019, he served as a judge for the Indie Memphis Black Filmmaker Residency for Screenwriting. “I enjoyed the process so much that I thought that there should be two grants, one for someone who’s not Memphian, and then also for someone local. So I matched the grant that Indie Memphis was offering.”
The project that got Jenkins’ nod for the residency was All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt by Raven Jackson. “It was a bunch of proposals,” says Jenkins, but what caught his eye about this one was the originality of the vision. “Usually, people create a ‘lookbook,’ and that lookbook or mood board has all these images of things that they didn’t create. It’s like, I’ll take an image from this film, or an image from this fashion spread, or the image from this sort of photographer’s work. It was clear that Raven’s mood board, her pitch deck, was all her own imagery, which I thought was really cool. You could see very clearly what her aesthetic was, and she spoke about how she saw the film, how the film would feel … She just had a very clear voice, and with the material she provided it was very obvious she could back that voice up, that she could do what she said she was going to do.”
The Tennessee-born filmmaker spent two months in Memphis finishing the screenplay before shopping it to Hollywood producers. “Raven had her pick of outfits she could have gone with,” Jenkins says. “It was a very competitive situation between A24 and a couple other companies to finance the script,” he recalls. “The script came back to me, not through Indie Memphis, but through very professional channels, because people were reading it once Raven had completed the script. So, shout out to the Indie Memphis residency. It certainly was good for her! People were talking about how it was unlike anything they had ever read. And then once I read it, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is really damn cool. Let’s knock on Raven Jackson’s door again and figure out if there’s a way to help her make this film.”
Jenkins’ production company Pastel produced the film along with A24, filming the bulk of it near Jackson, Mississippi. “Some of her [Raven’s] lineage is from Mississippi, and there were a few locations that she specifically was interested in, and things that she had seen in imagery from her childhood. There were churches that she had read about that were in the Jackson area in Mississippi, and they were still there and still existed. Organically, the film sort of rooted itself in Mississippi.”
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt premiered last January at Sundance. It comes full circle as the opening night film of Indie Memphis 2023. “I think people are kind of just in awe of how tactile the film is,” says Jenkins. “It ignites your senses, which is crazy, because you’re watching these images projected on a flat screen in a theater, and yet they feel three-dimensional. You can tell it’s that Southern light, but also in the sounds, the movie really envelopes people. There’s a very standardized way that we become accustomed to watching television and watching movies, and the films have a certain rhythm and a certain logic. Raven has created this thing with a logic that doesn’t have any fidelity to any of those things. I think when people see the film for the first time, it’s a very unique experience, is what I’ll say. There are some people who grew up in regions like this, the one depicted in the film, who do feel like they’re taken home. And then there are other people for whom this world is completely alien, and they feel like they’ve been invited to a place, immersed in someone’s very real memories of what it’s like to be a young Black woman growing up in the American South.”
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt screens at Crosstown Theater on Tuesday, October 24, 2023 at 6:30 p.m. as the opening night film of the 26th annual Indie Memphis Film Festival.
One of the videos in competition is “Flame” by Raneem Imam. Director Adam Itayem shoots the singer/songwriter/producer in striking silhouette against a Mississippi River sunset. It’s a fitting setting for Imam’s smooth electropop. Take a look.
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Leonardo diCaprio and Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon.
When I asked Craig Brewer why people love Hustle & Flow, he attributed the film’s success to DJay, memorably portrayed by Terrence Howard. DJay is a pimp and low-level drug dealer, but he’s also an aspiring rapper who loves Shug (Taraji P. Henson). DJay veers back and forth between doing good — creating music, building community, and giving Shug hope — and doing bad — exploiting women and hurting people. The audience roots for DJay to do the right thing, and the drama is whether or not he will transcend his circumstances and emerge a more complete person.
Martin Scorsese’s new masterpiece, Killers of the Flower Moon, is animated by the same moral tug of war. Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a veteran returning to his hometown of Gray Horse, Oklahoma, after serving as a cook in the Army during World War I. The not-exactly-war-hero is taken in by his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro, in rare form), who insists on being called by his middle name, King. Things have changed since Ernest went away. Oil was discovered on land belonging to the Osage tribe, upending the racial hierarchy to which the white Oklahoma establishment was accustomed. Scorsese deftly demonstrates the new power dynamic in a sweeping tour of the town, ending with a white car dealer on his knees begging a well heeled Osage couple to buy one more luxury automobile so he could feed his family.
King Hale (Robert De Niro) advises his nephew Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Killers of the Flower Moon.
The exception to the ever-present racial tension is King Hale, who has earned the Osages’ admiration with his generosity and fair dealing. In public, he treats them like any other rich landowners. He even pushes Ernest into courting an Osage woman named Mollie (Lily Gladstone). Ernest, a simple man who just wants a woman who “smells good,” goes along with the plan, first becoming Mollie’s driver, then worming his way into her bed.
Ernest courts Mollie as her driver in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Onscreen chemistry is a delicate and elusive thing; I daresay there has never been an onscreen couple like Gladstone and DiCaprio. Mollie is impassive and reserved. Ernest is twitchy and clingy, always looking for the right lie to fit the situation. His come-ons to Mollie are transparently lame, but he eventually wears down her defenses. Gladstone reveals Mollie’s shifting, layered motivations with an uncanny subtlety. She and her sisters, like many of the newly flush Osage women, take trophy white guys for husbands. But while her family is rich on paper, she is in a state-ordered conservatorship, because she has been declared “incompetent” on the basis that she’s not a rich white guy, so why should she have money? Marrying a white man means that her children will be the masters of their own financial fates — assuming she and the family fortune live that long. For one thing, the Osage are plagued by diabetes, which Dr. James Shoun (Steve Whitting) tells Mollie is caused by trying to eat like white people. For another, the wealthy Osage are being murdered for their money and the mineral rights to their oil fields.
Mollie (Lilly Gladstone) and Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) are married by King Hale (Robert DeNiro) in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Scorsese spends the first part of this 206-minute epic methodically doling out the beats of Ernest and Mollie’s weird romance. He paints Ernest as a kind of thick schlub who lucked into a supportive family and the love of a good woman. Mollie thinks she can trust Ernest because his lies are so transparent. Then, the director casually reveals that Ernest is also a bushwhacker and bank robber. In fact, the man orchestrating the murder of the Osage is their biggest champion, King Hale. He’s methodically killing off Mollie’s sisters while waiting for her elderly mother Lizzie Q (Tantoo Cardinal) to join the ancestors. Once Mollie is the sole heir of the family fortune, Ernest will kill her with tainted insulin, thus bringing her oil rights under King’s control.
Cara Jade Myers, Lilly Gladstone, JaNae Collins, and Jillian Dion as the four wealthy Osage sisters targeted for murder in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Killers of the Flower Moon is based on a 2017 nonfiction book by David Gann, subtitled The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. After the Osage organize a trip to Washington D.C. to plead their case to President Calvin Coolidge, the newly formed FBI shows up in the form of Agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) and starts digging into the locals’ secrets. Scorsese brings all of his thematic threads together in a jaw-dropping scene where White meets with his investigators on a lonely Oklahoma hilltop. As they piece together King Hale’s genocidal plot, they see in the distance men fighting a grass fire, their forms shimmering through the heat and flame like souls condemned to hell.
Scorsese’s complete mastery of form allows him to shift tones and genres at will. At various times, Scorsese invokes the grandeur of Kurosawa and Lynch’s interior visions. What starts as a frontier epic becomes a period romance, then a howcatchem murder mystery. When John Lithgow shows up as a federal prosecutor, we’re in a courtroom drama. Many of Scorsese’s recurring themes are here — organized crime, toxic masculinity, mystic spirituality, polite society’s constant undertone of violence — but changing the setting from familiar environment of the Northeastern urban centers to the Oklahoma plains has provided new perspective, and a wider canvas. Killers of the Flower Moon is an exceedingly rare gem: A late-career breakthrough from one of America’s greatest artists.
When the curtain rises on Indie Memphis 2023 at Crosstown Theater on Tuesday, October 24th, it will be into a film world in chaos. For the art of cinema, it’s the best of times. The financial success of films like Everything Everywhere All At Once, Barbie, and Oppenheimer have proven that audiences are hungry for original ideas after decades dominated by corporate blandness. For the film business, it’s the worst of times. Tensions within the increasingly consolidated industry came to a head this year with twin strikes against the studios by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG/AFTRA).
Like the old saying goes, the problem with the art of film is that it’s a business, and the problem with the film business is that it’s an art. In a world where so much film discourse is devoted to the business end, Indie Memphis artistic director Miriam Bale’s job is to foreground the art. “A lot of what we do as programmers is to try to have something for everyone, but also be really selective, so that no matter what you go see, you’re gonna have a good experience,” she says. “We’ve always tried to keep those very DIY, slightly weird, funny, and bizarre films that are so important to our identity. But in the last few years, we’ve expanded to have a lot of bigger titles and more international titles — the whole art house and beyond.”
One of the highest profile films screening at this year’s festival is American Fiction (Oct. 26th, 5:30 p.m.). Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who tries to expose the shallow stereotypes embedded in media by writing a satirically bad book that leans heavily on tired Black tropes. But instead of exposing the publishing industry’s hypocrisy, Monk finds himself perpetuating it when the book becomes a bestseller. Cord Jefferson, who won a writing Emmy for HBO’s Watchmen, makes his directorial debut adapting Percival Everett’s novel Erasure. “A piece of art has never resonated with me so deeply,” he says.
He says Network and Hollywood Shuffle were his inspirations as he tried to set the perfect tone for this difficult material. “I don’t want this movie to feel like we’re scolding anybody,” he says. “I wanted to make sure the satire never traveled into farce. I wanted it to feel authentic to real life.”
May December
Among the other hotly anticipated films is Todd Haynes’ May December, starring Julianne Moore, Charles Melton, and Natalie Portman, whose performance is already attracting Oscar buzz. Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera (Oct. 28th, 5:50 p.m.) is a comedy/drama about a hapless English archeologist who falls in with a crew of unscrupulous grave robbers. “Those are two of the best films I’ve seen all year,” says Bale.
One of the festival’s goals, Bale says, is “redefining prestige. We do that with some of the new films we play, but we also do that with some of the older films we play.”
When deciding how to celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, Bale says, “I’ve noticed a lot of organizations are showing the classic documentaries on hip-hop. We wanted to find a different way to mark this important anniversary. Two just absolute bangers are Friday and Belly.”
Friday
One of the GOAT stoner comedies, F. Gary Gray’s Friday (Oct. 27th, 6:20 p.m.) launched Ice Cube’s film career. Belly (Oct. 27th, 10:30 p.m.), by music video legend Hype Williams, features Nas, DMX, and Method Man as New York gangbangers expanding their empire. “What’s interesting about those films is that they influenced indie film, but they were both by music video directors before they got big, and they’re starring rappers.”
“We’re always evolving,” says Bale. “I’m always listening to feedback. After the pandemic, we had a lot of heavy films. So this year we’ve leaned more to the comedy.”
The festival is truly redefining prestige with a tribute to the Wayans Brothers, including White Chicks (Oct. 28th, 6:10 p.m.) and Keenen Ivory Wayans’ 1988 Blaxploitation romp I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (Oct. 29th, 4:45 p.m.), which Indie Memphis executive director Kimel Fryer says is her mother’s favorite movie. “I am a huge Wayans fan,” Fryer says. “I don’t know if anyone knows that about me. I have literally seen every Wayans movie, good, bad, or ugly.”
Bale’s mother recently passed away, and in tribute to her on what would have been her birthday, the final film of the festival will be one of her favorites: Joe Versus The Volcano (Oct. 29th, 9:30 p.m.), the 1990 cult surrealist comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (in three roles).
It’s a perfect fit for Indie Memphis’ eclectic spirit. For 26 years, it’s been the only place in Memphis where you can see unique films like Czech director Vojtěch Jasný’s film The Cassandra Cat (Oct. 29th, 11:15 a.m.). “It’s about a cat with sunglasses, who takes off his sunglasses and literally sees people’s true colors,” says Bale. “If that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will.”
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
The opening night film has a special connection to Indie Memphis. Writer/director Raven Jackson was the recipient of Indie Memphis’ 2019 Black Filmmaker Residency for Screenwriting.
Originally from Tennessee, Jackson lived in Memphis for two months while finishing her screenplay, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt. Academy Award-winning filmmaker and Indie Memphis alum Barry Jenkins judged the applicants that year, and once Jackson was finished, he took her under the wing of his production company Pastel. “We do a lot of things at Indie Memphis, but to watch a film go from seed to this incredible flower has been just so rewarding,” says Bale.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
“The way that everything came together is really beautiful,” says Fryer, who saw the film at its Park City, Utah, premiere. “I’m at Sundance for the first time ever, and I’m a first-time executive director from Memphis. I’m completely out of my element. I walk in, I watch this film, and I felt like I was back at my grandma’s house. … I have never seen rural America portrayed as beautifully as this, especially with Black people at the helm. It brought tears to my eyes.”
The film tells the life story of Mack, a young Black woman who grows up in 1960s Mississippi. Jackson uses long, meticulously composed shots to take the viewer inside Mack’s memories of love, loss, and connection. “Some films you watch, right? But some films you experience,” says Fryer.
Jackson and her cinematographer Jomo Fray will be in attendance for opening night on Tuesday, Oct. 24th, at 6:30 p.m. Then on Wednesday, the pair will be at Playhouse on the Square for an in-depth discussion about the film and their process. “The [Terrence] Malik comparisons have come up, but really, I feel like it’s doing something different,” says Bale. “People are having such emotional responses. She made something kind of new, and I can’t think of anything more exciting than to witness the birth of it.”
Thank You Very Much
As I watched Alex Braverman’s fantastic new portrait of comedian Andy Kaufman, Thank You Very Much (Oct. 29th, 2 p.m.), the word I kept writing in my notebook was “deconstructed.” Kaufman took apart stand-up comedy, TV variety shows, professional wrestling, and even human behavior itself, and then reconstructed something new (and often disturbing) out of the pieces. It’s a tribute to Kaufman’s commitment to the bit that when he died in 1984 at age 35, many people believed it was yet another put-on. “It is a daunting, overwhelming subject matter to try to tackle,” says Braverman, who self-identifies as a Kaufman superfan. “But what could be more fun?”
Braverman managed to get unparalleled access to Kaufman’s best friend and writing partner Bob Zmuda and his girlfriend Lynn Margulies. “We were lucky enough to catch them at a time when they had spent decades having a lot of fun with the legacy, but now they really just wanted to tell the true story as best they could. … Bob in particular has access to a lot of material, some of which people are familiar with and some of which people haven’t seen before. A lot of that material’s in the movie.”
Thank You Very Much
Kaufman denied he was a comedian (he claimed to be a “song and dance man”), and many have suggested he was a performance artist. This notion is reinforced by some of the rarest film the documentary uncovered: a faked, onstage confrontation between Kaufman and Laurie Anderson. “I think they just saw in each other some sort of connection or kindred spirits,” says Braverman. “I don’t think that term ‘performance artist’ was really in his mind at the time, but he was coming from a discipline that was more about creating an experience for people and getting them to react to what he was doing, more than it was about, ‘How do I be funny?’”
Anderson and Kaufman’s bit presaged Kaufman’s obsession with professional wrestling, which would eventually land him in a ring in Memphis with Jerry Lawler. “There’s some spiritual connection between Andy and Memphis,” says Braverman, pointing out that Kaufman wowed with a dead-on Elvis impression on the first episode of Saturday Night Live. “As far as the wrestling connection goes, he was really ahead of his time, in a way, as far as understanding how we like our entertainment in this country. It’s good-versus-evil, extreme showmanship at all costs.”
I Am
“The quality of the Hometowner Features is growing every year, so the selection process gets harder,” says Bale. “The films this year are very strong, but also so diverse, with documentaries and comedies and horror.”
This year’s Indie Memphis presents eight feature-length films made in Memphis. Princeton James’ psychological thriller, Queen Rising (Oct. 26th, 9 p.m.), and George Tillman’s documentary about Club Paradise, The Birth of Soul Music (Oct. 28th, 10:30 a.m.), are screening out of competition, while six films will compete in the juried Hometowner category: Lee Hirsch’s vérité documentary about Crosstown High, The First Class (Oct. 27th, 7:30 p.m.); Jaron Lockridge’s voodoo horror, The Reaper Man (Oct. 25th, 9 p.m.); Alicia Ester’s historical essay, Spirit of Memphis (Oct. 28th, 3 p.m.); Joann Self Selvidge and Sarah Fleming’s sweeping issue doc, Juvenile: 5 Stories (Oct. 27th, 6 p.m.); Sissy Denkova’s Bulgarian immigrant comedy, Scent of Linden (Oct. 29th, 12 p.m.); and Jessica Chaney’s testimonial mental health documentary, I Am (Oct. 25th, 8:30 p.m.).
I Am
Chaney says I Am began when she was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder just before the 2020 pandemic. Her therapy regimen caused her to “seek community for people who are going through the same thing, and understanding that you’re not alone in your feelings and what you’re experiencing. I think the worst thing for anything that you’re going through — whether it be physical, medical, mental, whatever — is to isolate yourself.”
Chaney enlisted Amanda Willoughby, her co-worker at Cloud901, as producer. Their proposal for a short film won a competitive $15,000 Indie Grant at Indie Memphis 2021. But as they shot, it became clear they had a feature length film. “We were surprised by how good every interview went,” says Chaney. “We got so much more than we anticipated, sat with every woman much longer than we anticipated.”
“Jessica was still gung-ho on this being a short, and I was like, ‘Jessica, I’m the editor. It’s all going to fall on me. We don’t have to pay anybody. We got so much stuff. Let me do this!’” says Willoughby. “It took some arm pulling, but she was like, ‘Okay, I trust you.’ And I’ve lived with that hard drive. It goes everywhere with me because I have constantly put so much work into it.”
Willoughby says collaborations with Crystal DeBerry, life coach Jacqueline Oselen, and composer Ashley K. Davis made the film stronger and reinforced one of its most important messages. “I’ll just say I learned that there are a lot more people that want to help you than you think.”
“We’re presenting these stories from these women, and it’s not all gloom and doom,” says Chaney. “There’s hope. Every last woman gives hope.”
Donna and Ally
Street-level, DIY comedies, made with little more than a camera and determination, have been a staple of Indie Memphis since the very beginning. It’s the perfect festival for the world premiere of Donna and Ally (Oct. 27th, 6 p.m.). The film follows the titular pair of best friends as they try to make their way through the Oakland, California, underworld as sex workers. Donna’s got a legendary bad temper, which is attractive to a certain kind of client. The problem is, Donna’s mean streak is the result of premenstrual dysphoria disorder, which writer/director Cousin Shy describes as “PMS on steroids,” so she’s only good as a dom for a couple of weeks a month.
Shy says the film is inspired by real life. “I spent some time growing up in the [foster care] system, and a lot of those kids were bigger than life, just really fun. They’re geniuses in their own way. I found one of the leads, Ally—her name is Qing Qi online—and she just has this bigger-than-life presence.”
Donna and Ally
Shy is a Bay Area native who has both worked for Apple and as a first responder. “I worked on an ambulance, and that actually was some inspiration for Donna and Ally,” she says.
When we first meet the pair, they run away from a Catholic foster care home to avoid being locked up on a 5150. “Regardless of where they are in life, and what they go through in their trials, they love each other, and they’re on this journey. You really don’t even see how that’s affecting them in the movie because I think it’s just their life, and they’re laser-focused on becoming somebodies and having that happy ending. So, it’s a comedy.”
Donna and Ally’s obsession with social media stardom leads them to ridiculous circumstances. “A lot of kids, especially kids from the underclass, are just like, ‘I feel like I’m somebody, but I was born a nobody, and I want to make it.’ What are the options to make it that are not the traditional routes? For some kids from the underclass, it doesn’t feel like that’s their route, going to university, going through the systems that they felt have failed them before. And so what are the alternatives? It’s social media. You see kids who are getting famous and being seen on social media. And so that was a huge part of the movie — just getting those viewers on Instagram and building an audience that can see you. You have a thousand views and you feel like you’re Beyoncé! … We wanted to take the characters very seriously, just as serious as they took themselves. We wanted it to be really raw. It’s very normal to them. There’s no shame in anything they do.”
The 26th annual Indie Memphis Film Festival runs October 24th through 29th, with films screening at Crosstown Theater, Playhouse on the Square, Circuit Playhouse, and Malco Studio on the Square. The complete schedule, passes, and tickets to individual movies are available at indiememphis.org. For continuing coverage of the festival, go to memphisflyer.com.
The new album by Blvck Hippie is called If You Feel Alone At Parties. Josh Shaw has refined his sparkling indie rock sound to perfection on these 11 songs. He makes longing and alienation sound beautiful.
For the title track, director Lawrence Shaw went literal, putting his brother Josh in a rocking house party where he knows no one. Then he meets a cute girl (Vivian Cheslack) who wants to get to know him better. It’s so loud in here. Wanna go somewhere more chill? Will Josh close the deal? Only one way to find out:
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Memphis’ own Daykisser’s latest music video is about the “joys” of the road. “Big town ticket in a Cali bar/Big town ticket don’t travel far,” sings songwriter and bandleader Jesse Wilcox. He has expanded Daykisser’s sound with horns and a scorching violin solo.
The video, directed by Jason Thibodeaux, gives you a taste of Daykisser live. Let’s rock!
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
