The 14th Indie Memphis Film Festival starts tonight, with advance tickets for the opening-night screening of the Memphis high school football doc Undefeated already sold out.
Our cover story on this year’s festival is on the street and now online. Yesterday, we supplemented that with a look at the competition features in this year’s festival. Today we look at documentaries. We covered several docs in the paper this week — the Paradise Lost series, Undefeated, This is What Love in Action Looks Like, and These Amazing Shadows — but there are plenty more on tap:
Dragonslayer (Saturday, 7 p.m., Studio on the Square): Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for docs at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, filmmaker Tristan Patterson’s portrait of the tattered, aimless life of professional skateboarder Josh “Skreech” Sandoval and the subterranean world he inhabits is an attractive, intimate film that evokes such disparate art-flick influences as Terrence Malick (gorgeous outdoor cinematography, poetic/naturalistic tone) and Jean-Luc Godard (Dragonslyer is presented as a set of discrete sections, counted down from 10 to 0). Skateboard footage in abandoned swimming pools is, as always, invigorating. The punk-rock soundtrack includes such Gonerfest vets as Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Golden Triangle, and Thee Oh Sees. — Chris Herrington
Trailer:
