I’m not convinced the special wasn’t ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine. — Nathan Rabin The worst two hours of televisions ever. — David Hofsted
The reviews are in — and have been in since 1978 — for the Star Wars Holiday Special. It’s not good. “It’s absolutely insane,” says Chad Barton, co-owner of Black Lodge. “It is just a weird nightmare fuel.” No one in the cast seems to want to be there, Carrie Fisher admitted she was high on coke, the plot is bizarre, Bea Arthur randomly appears, the list goes on.
And yet the Black Lodge is dedicating the entire evening tonight to the special. Naturally. And it’ll be in the vein of a Rocky Horror Picture Show viewing, complete with singing, shouting, and throwing things. Again, naturally.
“I’m a huge Star Wars fan,” Barton says. “And I watched this a really long time ago and was super horrified by it, but also really intrigued by it because it’s very strange. And a lot of people don’t know about it. … It’s kind of a fun way for Star Wars fans to come together and enjoy something in a very kind of silly way. And I always thought that it was weird that there’s a lot of other things of a similar ilk that get kind of a sort of reverence and this doesn’t get that. Even George Lucas said that if he could, he would destroy every copy of this that ever existed. And we think, No, you shouldn’t destroy a copy of this because it happened and it’s insane that it actually happened. Yeah, we want to celebrate it.”
This will be the third time the Lodge screens the film. The first go-around drew about 100 people, and last year “did about the same or a little better.” “It’s a nice off-kilter holiday experience that you can have,” Barton says. “We have our own callbacks and prop bags.”
At one point in the film, the wookies take over the screen, except there are no subtitles. “You have no idea what they’re saying,” Barton says. “And so we went in and added subtitles for the wookies and kind of created a story for them, and it changes every year. So it’s not the same experience every time you come back from year to year.”
For the event, the Lodge will have Star Wars-themed dishes and cocktails. “It’s kind of a surprise. But we generally try to like work within the constraints of whatever the Star Wars universe has,” Barton says of the menu. “And then a couple of cocktails to go along with it. As we say, you’re going to need the cocktails to get through it because it’s pretty bad. You need to be drunk while you’re watching.”
The screening, which kicks off at 7 p.m., is free to attend, but donations to Lodge are welcome. Prop bags will be for sale for $5.
JennaOnFire Productions will host the first annual Trans-Fest on Saturday, November 18. The event will be held at Black Lodge, located at 405 North Cleveland Street in Memphis, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
According to Jenna Lee Dunn, founder and CEO of JennaOnFire Productions, this will be the “biggest trans resource and vendor market in the Mid-South.” The free event is open to all ages, and will offer “family friendly” drag performances from Brenda Newport, Bu$ted, Lady Pluto, and Will Ryder.
Photo Credit:Jenna Lee Dunn
Sponsors for the event also include Mid-South Pride, The Haven Memphis, CHOICES Center For Reproductive Health, Focus Mid-South magazine, Love Doesn’t Hurt, and more.
The event will offer “over 40” free resources for the transgender community including name change support, feminine and barber style haircuts, and free gel manicures to name a few.
“There’s going to be so much,” said Dunn. “A Fitting Place will be there doing bra fittings if we have any trans women that are trying to find out what size they are. Maybe someone doesn’t know the proper way to measure themselves for a bra. Maybe they’re not comfortable with it.”
Dunn said that having resources like this lets the trans community know that there are people who are open and accepting and want to help them. In return, they build rapport and trust with these different businesses and organizations.
Vendors will have items available to purchase, and Dunn also mentioned that organizations such as My Sistah’s House have donated full-sized items to include in gift bags.
Empowerment is a key theme for this event, said Dunn, however so is education. She looks back on the time when she first began to transition and remembers having “no clue on what she was doing,” with makeup tips and bra fitting. With being out for three years, Dunn said she is considered a “trans elder,” and is ready to help younger generations of trans people.
“I’ve learned a few things, so the younger trans people come to me for advice and information about things,” said Dunn. “To be able to provide that is amazing.”
Dunn is also the founder of the newly formed Mid-South Trans Nation, which she likens to being the “little sister” of Mid-South Pride. The organization was founded to “create a team of transgender individuals who are able to uplift and affirm members of the trans community everyday.”
“We envision a future where transgender individuals in the Southern region are safe and supported, able to thrive in our everyday existence and are empowered to support ourselves,” said the organization.
Dunn said that the goal is to celebrate Pride Fest in June, and Trans Fest in November of each year, as the month is held as Transgender Awareness Month.
While Pride Fest celebrates all members of the LGBTQ community, Dunn felt it was necessary for Memphis’ transgender community to have an outlet with resources tailored specifically to their needs.
“It’s very important,” Dunn said. “People need that outlet to go somewhere safe where they can express themselves and be their true selves and enjoy themselves around like-minded people, and their friends and families that are in our community.”
The transgender community in Memphis is “pretty small,” said Dunn, and this event serves as a way to bring them together.
Editor’s note: This story contains discussions of suicide and death, which may be sensitive for some readers.
Tis the season to be spooky. Halloween is just around the corner, which means our Flyer writers are busting out the Ouija boards and lighting the seance candles. Memphis is the home of blues and barbecue, but also the “boos,” with plenty of supernatural citizenry contributing to the city’s frightening side. Our writers risked life and limb to brave the paranormal horrors of Bluff City to bring our readers some of Memphis’ scariest legends.
Pink Lizzie & Clara
In February of 1971, 13-year-old Clara Robertson was practicing her piano lessons in one of the upper rooms in the Greek-revival school building of the Brinkley Female College. She was a bit shy, sometimes nervous, but intelligent. That day, as she lifted her gaze above the keys she played, an emaciated girl appeared before her. She wore a tattered strawberry-stained pink dress, rusty pink slippers, and mildewed stockings. She seemed to be covered in a layer of slimy mold, and Clara could see right through her.
Later in life, Clara Robertson was haunted by the ghost of her husband’s first wife. (Photo: Abigail Morici)
Immediately, Clara screamed and ran to her fellow classmates, only to be met with disbelief and teasing. Days later, when the transparent girl reappeared, dripping with water splashing at her feet, she did so in front of Clara and a few other students. Needless to say, they were terrified and ran away, but Clara stayed behind long enough for the apparition to reveal herself to be Lizzie Davie, the girl who used to live on the school property that once belonged to her family before the current owners had obtained it (supposedly) illegally. Lizzie told Clara of a jar, buried under a tree stump in the schoolyard, which held treasures like gold coins, jewelry, and, most importantly, the papers that would show all the wrongs committed against Lizzie’s family. Unless this jar was found, Lizzie promised she would “never do good to or for anyone.”
Soon, news of the specter (and the buried treasure) spread throughout Memphis and the country. Some thought the whole thing was a hoax; others dove into spiritualism, with mediums holding nightly seances around town, some of which Clara even attended to communicate with Lizzie. Bartenders began selling “ghost cocktails” (recipe unknown); stores closed early; parents withdrew their frightened daughters from the Brinkley Female College, which closed later that year due to the sensational story; men and women were afraid to go out alone at night.
Meanwhile, Clara’s father J.R. Robertson, a lawyer, hired men to start digging for that jar, which they soon found. Upon Lizzie’s instructions, the moldy jar could not be opened for 60 days after its discovery, so, until its opening, Robertson hid the jar, at least 12 inches tall and wide, in the safest place possible: the outhouse (seriously). He planned a public opening, with an admission fee of $1 — only that never happened. He was robbed at gunpoint by four men and forced to surrender the jar, which has since never been recovered.
After her encounters with Pink Lizzie, those close to Clara say she became a changed girl. She continued to practice spiritualism afterward, both privately and onstage, and she even allegedly received letters about her story with Pink Lizzie from President Grant and Queen Victoria. At 18, Clara married a much older widower, whose first wife’s ghost “would return at night and kick her out of bed.” She died of consumption at 25.
— Abigail Morici
The McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College just might be haunted by a former student, whose hopes to join a sorority were dashed. (Photo: Courtesy Rhodes College)
Of Gothic and Ghosts
There are plenty of ways for students to spend their time on campus at Rhodes College. Pursuing a fulfilling liberal arts degree, participating in collegiate athletics, rushing Greek life, or … ghost hunting? Campus lore contains a trove of diverse tales ranging from the comedic (escaped zoo monkeys running riot) to the macabre. But since we’re in spooky season, we’ll keep the focus on some of the college’s scarier legends.
For parents sending their kids off to university for the first time, perhaps the only thing more frightening than their child revealing they’re going to pursue a theater major might just be an actual ghost haunting the walls of Rhodes’ McCoy Theatre. Legend has it that back in the ’70s, undergraduate student “Annie” was so devastated that she wasn’t accepted into the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, that she marched into the sorority house and hanged herself. Years later, after Zeta Tau Alpha disbanded and the structure was converted into the McCoy Theatre, tales grew of the spectral Annie, who in death haunted the halls of the building she was desperate to be a part of while alive. It became tradition for students to summon Annie to every performance, a seat set aside in the audience for her, lest her vengeful spirit break chairs or other props.
Was Annie real? Probably not. But with Rhodes having shuttered its theater degree in 2021, the specter should have plenty of companionship from the ghosts of theater majors past. Over on the other side of campus is a spectral tale that may be informed by a true tragic story. An actual student in the ’70s, William Thomas Bayley, sadly took his own life in his dorm room at Bellingrath Hall. That tale is perhaps the foundation for the legend of the Bellingrath Ghost, a haunting tale that reached my ears within just a couple of days of setting foot on campus at the start of my freshman year (which was all the way back in 2011, a truly scary thought).
Every year, students report signs of paranormal activity in Bellingrath Hall: spectral hazes showing up in photographs, ghostly moans echoing throughout the night, and all manner of strange noises and occurrences. According to a 2018 article by Rylan Lorance in the campus newspaper The Sou’wester, reports of the Bellingrath ghost and related phenomena trace back to the ’80s, including the Bellingrath fire of 1987. Fire aside (no proof it was the ghost), the campus ghosts seem to be harmless companions. And for aspiring ghost hunters, dig a little deeper on campus, and there may be even more ghosts and ghouls lurking among the Gothic walls. Still no sign of that B.S. in parapsychology, however.
— Samuel X. Cicci
Sightings of the enormous, yet elusive, Arkansas Wild Man stretch all the way back to the 1830s. (Photo: Michael | Adobe Stock)
The ArkansasWild Man
Nobody thinks Memphis is Bigfoot country. The last time anyone suspected a Bigfoot of anything around here, an investigation by wildlife officials only yielded a new Memphis cryptid, the once-famed Midtown Coyote.
Bigfoot sightings are more scarce in Memphis than those of alive-and-well Elvis Presley. There have been reports, though, and some of them are lame. One woman told the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization that in the 1980s she got cozy with a family of Bigfoots that lived in a nearby cave, noting they loved apples and “sweets.” C’mon.
Some are more credible, though. An eye witness told the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization that in 1985 they and some friends were driving toward Shelby Forest one night when they saw “it” cross the road in front of their headlights.
“It was very big black and looked like it was covered with fur,” the eyewitness said. “It ran with a slight forward tilt and with very little arm bend.”
But dig around the pre-internet wayback machine and you’ll find that a “wild man” once roamed right across the river. It brought terror and, maybe (that’s a big maybe), secured Memphis a special spot in Bigfoot history.
Wild Man stories emerged around St. Francis, Greene, and Poinsett Counties in the 1830s. But a Baltimore Sun story in 1846 gave some details.
“His track measures 22 inches, his toes are as long as a common man’s fingers,” reads the story, “and in height and make, he is double the usual size.”
By 1851, The Patriot and State Gazette newspaper of New Hampshire said an expedition was forming to find this “wild man.” It said a posse led by well-respected men of the community reportedly left Memphis on horseback that year in what might have been the first organized Bigfoot hunt in American history. Didn’t see that coming, right?
The Arkansas Wild Man was “of gigantic size and covered with hair,” the story said, and it had been seen by hunters and farmers. Once the Wild Man had been seen chasing a herd of cattle, and it ran away from two men who saw it, leaping some 12 feet to 14 feet at a time.
Four years later, The Pittsfield Sun reported “a wild man, seven feet high, is stated to be roaming through the great Mississippi bottom in Arkansas. Numerous travelers and hunters have asserted that they have seen him, but none have been able to get near enough to give particulars concerning the strange being.” That same year, the Wisconsin Patriot said the Wild Man was seen breaking the ice of a frozen lake. He was “covered with hair of a brownish cast” and “well muscled.” Later, another group of hunters tracked the creature, lost it in the snow-covered Ouachita Mountains but not before the creature ripped one man from his saddle, scratched his eyeball nearly from its socket, and viciously bit parts of his shoulder away.
Is all of this true? Well, these stories were printed in newspapers. So, they must be true, right?
Real or not, add the Arkansas Wild Man stories to your campfire quiver and fuel Memphis nightmares in a whole new way.
— Toby Sells
Justine’s HauntedWine Cellar
Janet Stuart Smith remembers the time she saw the ghost in the wine cellar at the legendary Justine’s restaurant.
It was back in the ’80s, says Smith, whose parents, the late Justine and Dayton Smith, owned the now-closed restaurant, which was housed in the circa 1860 Italianate house at 919 Coward Place.
“I had to go down to the wine cellar, which was not being used at the time, to reset the air conditioner,” Smith says. “It was creepy down there. But I thought someone was behind me. I thought it was one of the waiters trying to scare me. Kid me.”
A painting of the old Justine’s facade by Janet Stuart Smith (Photo: Janet Stuart Smith)
It wasn’t one of the servers. “It was a tall, dark figure. I could kind of see through her. And her feet were not touching the ground.”
The figure looked like “mist,” Smith says. She’d heard the story of the ghost, whom they called “Miss Mary,” all her life from servers and others who worked at the restaurant, but that was the first and only time she saw it.
Servers played poker in the wine cellar until someone saw the ghost. They still had to go downstairs on occasion, but they took someone with them.
The ghost wasn’t scary, she says. She thought it was cool. It was “just another dimension.”
About a year later, Smith saw a guest, who was attending a party upstairs, sitting in a chair with a puzzled expression on her face. Smith asked, “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
The woman answered, “Is there a ghost story to this house?”
When Smith said yes, the woman pointed to the ladies’ room, where she said she saw a ghost going back and forth. Smith, who thought Miss Mary stayed downstairs, had heard the ghost was a woman “from the Civil War days who lost her child in childbirth and was looking for her.”
But Smith later heard some chilling news after the incident with the woman at the party. “I found out years later from my dad or someone that the upstairs ladies room was the original nursery in the house.”
Smith, who devoted two pages to the ghost in her book, Justine’s: Memories & Recipes, said goodbye to Miss Mary when she left the house for the last time after the restaurant closed in 1995. “I hate leaving the ghost. I wish I could have brought her to my house with me and all the Justine’s memorabilia.”
The old house, which has been renovated, still stands. “I’ll bet she’s still there.”
— Michael Donahue
The MyndersHall Ghost
Mynders Hall, originally a women’s dormitory on the University of Memphis campus, eventually becoming co-ed in 2014, is closed for renovations, but one resident has never left. Indeed, the fact that she died 111 years ago never stopped her from moving in — after all, it’s her building.
When the West Tennessee State Normal School opened on September 10, 1912, Seymour A. Mynders, the college’s first president, was still grieving the death of his 21-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. She’d only been married four months before perishing, and papers of record neither recorded her spouse’s name nor her cause of death, only that this building, among the first three on campus, was christened in her honor. And its very shape, resembling a giant E, seems to embody her.
So too did the large portrait of her that hung in the lobby for decades, and students who felt her ghost’s presence would greet the framed picture every day to stay in Elizabeth’s good graces. Meanwhile, her spirit seemed mostly concerned that occupants of her building remained studious. As reported in The Daily Helmsman, former associate dean of residence life Daniel Armitage recalled one resident who “had a test the next day and couldn’t sleep. She noticed an outline of a person in her chair, so she turned on the light and no one was there. She looked at her desk, and there was the book she was supposed to study, opened to the chapter she was being tested on. She claimed she put the book up before bed.”
Intrigued by such terrifying tales, I ventured to Mynders Hall myself, hoping to lure Elizabeth out. All I had to go on was a ritual recommended by a spirit-savvy friend: carrying a satchel full of textbooks (weighing at least 23 pounds), one must approach the hall at dusk and, walking in circles, recite the following chant: “My notes are in my three-ring binder/My cup’s fresh from the coffee grinder/May my teacher be much kinder/Find her, find her, Lizzie Mynders!”
What happened next still has me trembling. As the sun sank, a hand beckoned me from a window above, and just inside the back entrance I spied a little table and chair. “Join me in my study party,” said a laughing, girlish voice. “Tee-hee!” Just then the door blew open, and Elizabeth’s echoing words commanded, “And now we cram for the exam. This is one all-nighter that will last … an eternity!”
— Alex Greene
Louise Page at the 2021 Black Lodge Halloween Masquerade Ball (Photo: Chris McCoy)
Black Lodge Halloween Masquerade Ball
Memphis’ biggest and weirdest Halloween party began humbly enough. Black Lodge Video opened the last week of October 2000, says owner Matt Martin. “But nobody came in for the first couple of days because nobody knew we existed.”
The first customer for the video store on Cooper was musician Eldorado Del Rey, who wandered in on Halloween. “He was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’” says Martin.
That Halloween, a couple more people found Black Lodge and rented movies, so Martin and co-founder Bryan Hogue decided to celebrate. “We had a party that night to celebrate that somebody finally figured out who we were,” he recalls. “One year later, when Halloween came around, and we had actually survived the year — quite the opposite of what we had thought, which was that no one would ever come — we’d gotten really popular. We threw another party to celebrate our one year, but this time a whole bunch of people showed up. That started the ball rolling, no pun intended.”
During the ’00s, the Black Lodge Halloween Masquerade Ball was invitation-only. The festivities got bigger and crazier. Many of the Black Lodge regulars were horror, sci-fi, and psychotronic movie fans who also happened to be really into costuming. “Everybody brings out their A game on the cosplay,” says Martin.
Hogue, who died in November 2020, had the idea to bring bands and DJs in to perform in the video store. “I think it was in 2011 when Hogue and Craig Brewer said we should open it up,” says Martin, who was apprehensive at first. “It’s one thing when we’re having our own party; it’s another thing when we invite the public.”
The party didn’t stop when Black Lodge vacated their original location and went looking for a new, bigger space. In 2014, Craig and Jodi Brewer merged their long-running Halloween house party with the Masquerade Ball, which was held at Earnestine & Hazel’s. The theme was Heaven and Hell. “That’s what took it to the stratosphere,” says Martin. “People heard about it and it just blew up. I remember we stepped out the front door and the line to get in stretched a good block or two down Main Street.”
When Black Lodge moved into a new location in Crosstown, the Ball was the first thing on the calendar. In 2020, what would have been a gala anniversary celebration was moved online. “I remember at the time we said, ‘I don’t want to not do the Ball, but we can’t have people here,’” recalls Martin. “So we streamed it online, and you could party in your own house. It was one of the moments that really hammered it in for me, how this was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I was proud that we kept the tradition alive, and you better believe in 2021 we brought it back!”
This year’s Black Lodge Halloween Masquerade Ball will be on Saturday, October 28th. There will be fire dancers, hoopers, sideshow performers, and “surprises.” Music entertainment includes Little Baby Tendencies, Joybomb, Optic Sink, Turnstyles, The Sheiks, and Jack Oblivian. After midnight, DJs Selector Jack and Graveyard Gloria take over the dance floor. As Martin says, “Let the ceremony begin!”
“Young women are at risk of many dangers, horrors and trauma as they leave adolescence, two out of 100 girls will have a tragic ending,” reads the synopsis for Kansas Bowling’s latest film Cuddly Toys.
That statistic is completely made up, but that is to be expected from a film that harkens back to the genre of mondo. “It’s sort of like a forgotten genre that I’m trying to bring back,” Bowling says. Popular in the ’60s, mondo films are pseudo-documentaries, usually depicting sensational and exploitive topics, or shockumentaries. “A lot of the mondo movies back in the day, they would say it was all real, but sometimes it’ll be completely fictional. And then sometimes it’d be like a mixture; sometimes it’d be all real. But this is a mixture.”
With its title coming from a Harry Nilsson lyric — “You’re not the only cuddly toy/that was ever enjoyed/by any boy” — Cuddly Toys takes a nuanced and dark approach as it depicts true and fictional stories about growing up as a girl in America, with 100 actresses participating. “It’s somewhat of a horror movie, somewhat of a comedy.”
The fast-paced film, Bowling says, takes inspiration from her life, from girls she grew up with, and from the actresses themselves. “There’s just a bunch of smaller stories put together to make up a bigger story, being reconnected through the on-screen narrator,” she says.
Now 27, Bowling wrote the film when she was 19. “It feels funny putting out this, like, teenage movie now that I’m older,” she says. “I wasn’t a teenager too long ago, but, yeah, it’s a little more angsty than I am now, I guess.”
Bowling directed her first feature, B.C. Butcher, at 17, and shot the film, starring Kato Kaelin, in her dad’s backyard with money raised from bussing tables. After its release by Troma Entertainment, Bowling went on to direct over 30 music videos and act in films such as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Cuddly Toys will be her second feature.
“I just love movies,” Bowling says. “I’ve always been really passionate about them, but I guess I just feel like there’s a lot of stories that haven’t been told or haven’t been told in interesting ways.”
And Cuddly Toys promises to be “interesting,” for sure. “I don’t want to give too much away,” Bowling says, “but based on people’s reactions to it — sort of not knowing what to do with it — I feel like it means it’s not like anything they’ve seen before.”
The reactions have been myriad, with some people walking out at times due to some intense and graphic content, but Bowling has taken joy in both the good and bad reviews, noting her pride that the film’s left an impression either way.
“I didn’t make it for a certain demographic,” Bowling says, “and that’s actually what was a little difficult about getting it out there. It’s not for a certain person, but all sorts of people from different walks of life have been connecting with it. So that’s been really cool to see.”
Cuddly Toys’ premiere tour will make its way to Memphis this Sunday, August 13th, 7 p.m., and Bowling will be in attendance for a Q&A in conjunction with the screening at the Black Lodge.
For more information on the screening, visit here. Check out the trailer below.
Michael Donahue chows down on caviar at Tiger and Peacock. (Photo: Samuel X. Cicci)
Breakfast might be the most important meal of the day, but there’s just something special about the midnight snack. It could be a scarfed-down handful of Goldfish or a drunkenly crafted peanut butter sandwich, but sometimes that late-night munchie hits just right. Of course, there’s no need to restrict yourself to chips or microwavable meals. Memphis restaurants are here to pick up the slack with some inspired menus. It’s not just bacon and eggs or greasy burgers (although we love those, too). Last year’s late-night dining adventure included visits to old favorites like Alex’s Tavern and RP Tracks, and relative newcomer Pantà. This time around, we found that Memphis’ nocturnal kitchens continue to whip out a wide variety of after-dark cuisine, from tater tot nachos to caviar, with a little bit of traditional Irish cooking in between. This year, our Flyer food writers had themselves another late night to check out three restaurants that cater to the hungry insomniacs and night owls among us.
Matt Martin, Zach Miller, and Chad Allen Barton in the Black Lodge kitchen. (Photo: Michael Donahue)
EAT at Black Lodge
There’s a lot of things you can do at Black Lodge. You can watch or rent movies, of course. You can play a wide assortment of board games. You can participate in a medieval combat tournament or hop on to an arcade machine. Or you can just hang out with your friends.
But something else that you can do at Black Lodge is EAT. And there are plenty of fun snacks to be had from the menu the longtime video rental store launched last year. And with a midnight closing during the week and a 3 a.m. cutoff on Friday and Saturday, it might be a Midtowner’s best bet for a late food run.
Zach Miller, kitchen manager and chef at Black Lodge, began working at EAT a year ago. As for creating dishes, he says, “I was going off what was created by our guest chef and co-owner James Blair. He’s like our special guest chef. He comes in for dinner and movies and for special things. Or catering, as well, for parties as such.”
Blair and Chad Allen Barton, a Black Lodge owner, came up with the basic menu, Miller says. “And I kind of went off of that and I created my own things.”
Miller has a philosophy about what kind of dishes he creates for Black Lodge. “I don’t want to create something that looks complex on the plate. Something that is complex, for sure, but it looks simple. I don’t want people paying attention to their plate. I want them paying attention to the screen.”
Blair came up with the name EAT for the restaurant, Black Lodge owner Matt Martin previously told the Flyer. He described it as “one part kind of a throwback name” to those “little diners that say things like Eats or Joe’s Eats on Times Square, mostly in older movies.”
The name also was inspired by John Carpenter’s 1988 movie, They Live. “In that movie, subliminal messages are hidden behind everything.” Roddy Piper, who plays the main character, uses special glasses to see through everything, Martin says. “When he looks at a menu he sees the word ‘food.’”
When we looked at the Black Lodge menu, we saw a variety of tasty treats just waiting to be ordered. Breakfast is served all day, including the delectable chicken and waffles. The breakfast sandwiches, in a fun twist, use waffles instead of bread or biscuits to make for some sweet snacks. The waffle grilled cheese, for example, combines melted Brie with chopped nuts, tamarind sauce, and a drizzle of honey. But the more savory option tosses bacon, ham, or tofu with cheesy scrambled eggs and house sauce.
Tot-chos at Black Lodge accompanied by a Ron Swanson cocktail (Photo: Samuel X. Cicci)
The most exciting item, perhaps the crown jewel of Black Lodge’s menu, is the tot-cho bowl. Think nachos, but with … tater tots? The salty, crispy tots provided the perfect bedrock for helpings of nacho-ey goodness, with slices of bacon and jalapeños decorating our bowl, along with a healthy portion of avocado and sour cream. Our forks flew wildly through the bowl, and we found that we’d demolished the dish before the Lodge’s featured movie, Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo, even made it through the intro.
Black Lodge is located at 405 N. Cleveland.
Let’s Get Layed caviar and chips at Tiger and Peacock (Photo: Samuel X. Cicci)
Tiger and Peacock
Ride the elevator to the top of The Memphian hotel, and prepare to set foot in a bar that our colleague Bruce VanWygarden once described as looking “as if Alice in Wonderland fell down the rabbit hole, met Jerry Garcia at the bottom, and they decided to form an interior design team.” There’s a full assortment of funky decorations at Tiger and Peacock, from Debra the zebra standing behind the bar to oodles of anthropomorphic portraiture and bright, snazzy colors. It’s the perfect place to throw back a cocktail.
But people do eat, as well as drink, at Tiger and Peacock. Manager Harvey Grillo describes it as “a relaxing and upscale lounge. Almost like a speakeasy.”
“The tables are smaller,” he continues. “It doesn’t really warrant a full dinner atmosphere. It’s light bite snacking. The plates aren’t full entrees and things like that.”
It’s not a restaurant like the hotel’s Complicated Pilgrim downstairs. “It takes a little bit of trying to get full upstairs since they are small bites,” says fellow Tiger and Peacock manager Cat Turowski.
And, she adds, “Because the table space is pretty small, usually they’ll get a plate or two. And they’ll get another plate or two. And then get another plate or two.”
But, Turowski says, “Primarily everybody comes up there to enjoy the atmosphere, enjoy the decor, and have a good time.”
Not all Tiger and Peacock dishes are small, though, Grillo says. “There are dishes that push more toward the dinner option.”
The sake marinated short rib is one of them, he says. “It’s my personal favorite and it’s everyone else’s personal favorite,” Turowski adds. “The sake glaze gives it a little bit of a sweet taste and the sriracha aioli gives it a little bit of zing. And it’s very tender and moist. It kind of checks all the boxes.”
Scott Donnelly, executive chef of Complicated Pilgrim at The Memphian, also makes the cuisine for Tiger and Peacock. Asked his inspiration for the Tiger and Peacock dishes, Donnelly says he didn’t want the “usual rigmarole of sliders” and other typical items on the menu. He wanted “something different and somewhat quirky. Like the tiger and peacock.”
The blueberry grilled cheese is a good example. “When I got there, they had a patty melt, which I wasn’t too fond of.” He wanted an “elevated version” of a grilled cheese sandwich. “I’m like a grilled cheese junkie.” So, he added the blueberry ginger jam, which they make in house, to green apples and Brie cheese. That jam really “sets it off.”
For a fancier midnight feast, look no further than Let’s Get Layed, Tiger and Peacock’s classy solution to the late-night munchies. The dish matches premium caviar with a bag of good ol’ salty Lay’s potato chips. That might seem like a weird pairing, but the odd couple has long made for a formidable duo in caviar circles, with the salty, almost buttery crunchiness of the chips balancing out caviar’s brinier tendencies. For a couple of sweet hours, it felt as if we occupied a higher tax bracket. While caviar might not be our go-to snack every night, Tiger and Peacock embraces a creative, refined approach to late-night dining that offers something unique to Memphis.
The kitchen is open until midnight at Tiger and Peacock. “I’ve seen folks order food at 11:45 on weekends,” Grillo says. But, he adds, Tiger and Peacock closes at midnight in consideration of the hotel guests beneath them. “We allow folks to wrap up what they’re doing while we start the closing process.”
They have a grace period of about 30 minutes while he starts making his rounds, Grillo says. “Thanking everybody who’s been there. And if they are hotel guests, they’re welcome to take drinks and things back up to their room.”
Non-guests can take their food and drinks to the lobby. “Food is a little bit more messy to transport down the elevator, but I’m here for it. I’m able to help.”
Usually, he says, “They end up taking a cocktail or a bottle of wine downstairs. Especially old friends who haven’t seen each other for a while.” They also can relocate to “late late late bars near us like Zebra Lounge.”
Tiger and Peacock is located at 21 Cooper St.
Fish and chips at Bog & Barley (Photo: Bog & Barley)
Bog & Barley
If you need a bit more Ireland in your snacks, you’re in luck. D.J. Naylor, co-owner of Celtic Crossing with his wife Jamie, cut the ribbon on his East Memphis venture Bog & Barley several months ago. And the new building is spectacular, an upscale Irish pub that has soaring wooden ceilings, plenty of Irish art and knickknacks, and a 24-foot-long bar on the ground floor. Everything in the space was sourced from Ireland, with Naylor looking to his roots when creating his new Irish pub.
“It’s an Irish restaurant, but we wanted it to be totally different from Celtic Crossing,” says Naylor. “It’s more upscale, we’ve focused on providing a high-quality experience, but it’s also a really approachable spot to either grab a drink or celebrate a special occasion.”
Open until 11 p.m. during the week and midnight on Friday and Saturday, Bog & Barley provides an Irish alternative to late-night diners. Reny Alfonso created the menu and looks to mix traditional Irish staples with his own personal flair. “You’ve got the typical dishes that people might think of: shepherd’s pie, bangers and mash, fish and chips,” says Alfonso. “So I left those alone. So we’ve got those Irish ingredients, but we’ve got a lot of global influences too, harkening back to a kind of bistro mentality. I use a lot of French techniques here.” Alfonso’s style can be seen in many of the restaurant’s entrees, from jumbo lump crab cakes to beer cured salmon, and his creations merit multiple revisits to Bog & Barley.
But when in Ireland, they say, do as the Irish do, so we plumped for the bangers and mash, which uses sausages from Newman Farm in Missouri. “I only get pork from Newman Farm,” adds Alfonso. “The quality is amazing.” And he’s right. The sausages pack in a soft freshness, juices sizzling out and dripping into the velvety mashed potatoes they sit atop. A blanket of caramelized onion gravy adds a nice finishing touch to the whole thing, the perfect cherry on top for a meal that could go easily with a couple of beers.
Auld Bog stout at Bog & Barley (Photo: Bog & Barley)
Or one beer, in particular: Soul & Spirits Brewery created a signature beer, the Auld Bog, as the restaurant’s house brew. “I might think of it as a lighter version of Guinness,” says Naylor. And a special print behind the bar can create foam images in the beer’s head, akin to latte art. Mine was served with the Bog & Barley logo, but Naylor said that it can do custom images as well. But sorry, readers, no Michael Donahue beer art just yet. Maybe during our next late-night adventure.
Bog & Barley is located at 6150 Poplar Ave., Suite 124.
Let out your nerd rage. (Photo: Courtesy Memphis Armored Fight Club | Facebook)
Where, oh where, is your knight in shining armor? Are they riding on a white horse, ready to slay a dragon? Climbing up your long rope of hair hanging from your tower window? Sitting at a round table to plan out a quest to find the Holy Grail? Or are they in Memphis? Knights are, after all, running amok around here, thanks to the Memphis Armored Fight Club.
Rusty Wagner is one such knight, having joined the club in 2018 after seeing a duel at a Renaissance fair in Millington. “Like most little boys, I wanted to be a knight,” he says. “I’m an older guy now, but I get a lot of enjoyment out of it. It’s all kinds of fun.” The group fights in the style of 14th- and 15th-century European combat with real steel weapons and real-deal armor. For Wagner, his armor weighs 65 pounds and is based on the 14th-century English man-of-war suit. “It’s plain-Jane,” he says, but even “plain-Jane” armor can cost a pretty penny — about $1,800. After all, it’s custom-made and shipped all the way from Ukraine.
And, sure, there’s a bit of danger using all that heavy material and sharp metal, but that’s what the armor is for. “The first time you strap on your armor, you’re scared but also excited,” Wagner says. “The first time you get hit and don’t die, it’s thrilling. It’s like that wasn’t all that bad.”
The group duels with swords and shields, long swords and bucklers, and pole arms. The rules are you can hit but you can’t stab — stabbing, well, that’s a bad, potentially lethal, idea and doesn’t quite fit in with the “friendly competition” of their tournaments. Still, there’s catharsis in the fighting. “You get frustration out,” Wagner says. “We call it nerd rage.”
If you don’t believe him, for $5, you can try it yourself between matches at the club’s next tournament at the Black Lodge this Saturday. Of course, you’ll strap on some soft armor, not the stuff that weighs 65 pounds, and, for 90 seconds in the ring, you can fight your friends, family members, lovers, or even members of the club if you so dare. All ages can participate. “You don’t think 90 seconds is long till you’re in the ring,” Wagner says. “Even if you’re in a soft kit, it’ll take the gas out of you.”
In between duels, the Lodge will also screen Excalibur and will offer a special menu of roasted chicken or rabbit with roasted potatoes and seasonal veggies, along with mead as a drink special.
And if you fall in love with armored fighting the way Wagner has, the club is always looking for new members. “It’s exciting to see the fighting itself, and it’s even more exciting when you do it yourself,” he says. Keep up with the group on Facebook or Instagram.
… And we’re back for 2023! Now that you’re over your New Year’s Eve hangover, we’ve got plenty of great stuff on Memphis’ big screens to distract you from the work you must perform now that the holidays are over.
If your post-holiday blues are leading you to a dark place, we recommend M3GAN. Nepo baby Allison Williams stars as a roboticist named Gemma who unexpectedly has to raise her orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw). Her big labor saving idea to create a robotic best friend for Cady who will protect her from all harm, both physical and emotional. What could possibly go wrong?
If Terminator Babies doesn’t scratch your itch for total reality escape, now is the time to catch Avatar: The Way of Water in 3D IMAX. James Cameron’s long-gestating sequel is actually pretty good, and you’ve got to see it in a theater to get the full effect.
Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt lead an all star cast in Damien Chazelle’s decadent tribute to Old Hollywood, Babylon. Did you know they did cocaine in the silent era? Because they absolutely did.
British actress Naomi Ackie tackles a hell of a difficult role in the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody. How do you play someone with a very distinctive look and a once-in-a-generation voice?
Black Lodge is spending the new year plumbing its collection for classics. On Sunday, that means David Cronenberg’s 1996 masterpiece Crash. Adopted from the J.G. Ballard novel about people who sexually fetishize automobile accidents, this slow-burn erotic thriller boasts one of Holly Hunter’s greatest (and strangest) performances.
January Tuesdays at Black Lodge are dedicated to Alfred Hitchcock, and the next one features what may be my personal favorite Hitch: 1951’s Strangers on a Train. Robert Walker was fresh out of being hospitalized for mental illness at the Menninger Clinic when he was cast as the film’s villain, and died under mysterious circumstances shortly after the premiere. Watch as the best “murderous, yet charming psychopath” in film history reels in his mark.
Thursday, Crosstown Theater screens a very different kind of classic. Werner Herzog is best known today for doing compelling, personal documentaries and guest shots on The Mandalorian. But before he was famous for his world-weary voice, he directed a string of intense films in the 1970s, many starring his frenemy Klaus Kinski. In Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Kinski stars as a Spanish conquistador who leads his band of soldiers and camp followers on a suicide mission into the Amazon jungle. In this trailer, watch for the scene where Kinski intimidates a horse. I’m betting that was an improv.
OUTMemphis and Memphis Trans Love will host the first Inaugural Mid-South Trans Resource Fair on November 19th at Black Lodge, located at 405 North Cleveland Street.
The fair will be from 12 p.m.- 5 p.m.
According to OUTMemphis, this event will feature more than 30 businesses and vendors that “offer information about their trans-friendly and affirming resources.” There will also be services such as barber cuts, hair styling, nail services, and bra fittings.
Some of the vendors include ACLU-TN, The Haven, CHOICES, and My Sista’s House.
Participants may also receive free COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters, Monkeypox vaccinations, and flu shots from the Shelby County Health Department while at the event.
OUTMemphis also said that participants will be able to receive assistance with “preparation of legal documents for name and gender marker changes,” from licensed lawyers.
There will also be a Rainbow Rumble lip-sync competition and Rainbow Karaoke afterparty that starts at 9 p.m.
(from top to bottom) Scenes from the pioneering 1922 horror film Häxan, Howard Bell’s Jookin, and Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb's Butterfly in the Sky.
These days, it seems that film discourse is dominated by discussions about the future. But while there are real issues facing the unique combination of art and commerce we call cinema, there’s more to movies than just the multiplex — and that’s what Indie Memphis has specialized in for the last 25 years.
“We are kind of in our own lane,” says Executive Director Kimel Fryer. “Indie Memphis is like no other film festival, because Memphis is like no other city.”
Indie Memphis was founded in 1998 by a group of University of Memphis film students led by Kelly Chandler. Known then as the Memphis Independent Film Festival, it attracted about 40 people to a Midtown coffee shop, where they watched student movies projected on a sheet hung on the wall. Nowadays, the annual festival boasts an attendance of more than 11,000, and the organization hosts programming and events year-round, such as the monthly Shoot & Splice programs, where filmmakers provide deep dives into their craft. The Indie Grants program was created in 2014 to help fund Memphis-made short films. The Black Creators Forum began in 2017 to help address the historic racial inequalities in filmmaking. During the pandemic, Eventive, a Memphis-based cinema services company that began as Indie Memphis’ online ticketing system, pioneered the virtual programming which is now an established feature of film festivals worldwide.
“It took 25 years for Indie Memphis to become an organization that reflects the city,” says Artistic Director Miriam Bale. “But each step along the way has added to what makes it special now.”
Memphis Grizzlies superstar Z-Bo in Michael Blevins’ 50 for Da City.Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová in Daisies.Tahar Rahim is a jilted lover in Don Juan.
A New Leader
Kimel Fryer took over as Indie Memphis’ new executive director only a few weeks ago. But she is no stranger to either Memphis or the world of independent film. She’s a West Tennessee native whose mother has taught at Oak Elementary since the mid-1990s. “My mom was always tough on me, and I’m grateful for it because I ended up kind of inheriting that from her,” she says. “In my mind, I’m supposed to reach for the stars. I’m supposed to overachieve.”
Fryer holds graduate degrees in law and business from the University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She has worked for companies as diverse as Lincoln Pacific and Pfizer, and left FedEx to take over the reins of Indie Memphis when Knox Shelton resigned after only a year on the job. The mother of two saw it as an opportunity to merge her professional life with her passion for film. “When I was working for Chrysler, I realized that I had this amazing job that I worked my butt off for,” she says. “It was a great company with great benefits. But I was depressed. If I wanna be completely honest, it was one of the saddest periods of my life.”
Growing up, Fryer had tried her hand at writing, and she had been involved with theater and band programs in high school and college. In Detroit, she found a new outlet for her creativity when she volunteered as casting director for filmmaker Robert Mychal Patrick Butler’s Life Ain’t Like the Movies. “The independent film world is very visible in Detroit,” she says.
When she landed Coming 2 America star Paul Bates for a role in the film, Butler promoted her to producer. “I said, ‘What is a producer?’ He said, ‘You’re kinda already doing it.’”
Fryer wrote and directed her own short film, “Something’s Off,” which will screen at Indie Memphis 2022. She says she got her acceptance email just a few weeks before she found out she was going to be the new executive director. “I’ve found this career where I could kind of wrap all my skills into one job,” she says. “I could actually be my full self all the time, which is really my dream.
“I’m very eager to learn and eager to meet other people, understand how they do things. But I’m also cognizant of the fact that I am coming back to Memphis, and we’ve always been a different city that has marched to the beat of our own drum. We’ve got to continue that as we continue to grow and strive for greatness in the film community. I’m really excited about what’s next. I believe in Indie Memphis. I believe in the staff. I believe we are headed towards a great film festival.”
The Picture Taker
From the 1950s to his death in 2007, it seemed that photographer Ernest Withers was everywhere. “We keep calling him a Zelig-like figure or like Forrest Gump,” says Phil Bertelsen, director of Indie Memphis 2022’s opening night film The Picture Taker. “He was at every flash point in Civil Rights history, and then some.”
Ernest Withers, courtesy of the Withers Family Trust.
Withers was a tireless documenter of Black life in the South. His work even appeared in publications like Jet and the Chicago Defender. “Some of my favorite photos of his are street portraits — the photos he took of everyday people just going about their daily business,” says Bertelsen.
“I think what made him almost like a father figure in Memphis was the fact that he recorded his community’s lives literally from birth to death,” says producer Lise Yasui. “He left behind an estimated 1.8 million photos. They are of every major event in every family’s life — as we say, it’s celebrations as well as sorrows. He locked that into their histories and made sure that they had these records of the lives they lived. Those photographs are really beautiful. They have an intimacy that can only come from someone inside the community.”
Three years after Withers’ 2007 death, Commercial Appeal reporter Marc Perrusquia revealed that the trusted photographer had been a paid informant for the FBI. The news came as a shock to many in the community, who saw it as a betrayal of the Civil Rights activists who had trusted Withers. “When you go behind the headlines and the surface of it all, you recognize that there’s a lot of nuance and complexity to that choice that he made at that time,” says the director. “What we attempted to do with the film is to try to understand that time, that choice, and the man who was at the center of it all.
“I think it could be said, without question, that Ernest was a patriot who believed in the hope and promise of this country,” continues Bertelsen. “Don’t forget he was a fourth-generation American war veteran.”
Withers was far from the only one talking to the FBI — their reports refer to him as source #338. “I had the privilege and the workload of reading as many of the FBI files as we could get our hands on,” says Yasui. “They tell a story that’s pretty intense and really detailed in terms of names, places, affiliations, and friendships — everything down to personal gossip. The other thing that you have to understand is they are FBI records written by FBI agents. So there’s not a single document in the 7,000+ pages that I’ve read that is a direct quote from Ernest himself. It’s always through the lens of his FBI handler. That’s not to say that what he wrote was not accurate, but it’s filtered through their agenda, which was to root out radicals who were allegedly inside the Civil Rights movement. …We heard testimony that he basically kept people from harm’s way because he knew what he knew. But at the same time, he damaged the reputations of people by informing on them. It was a double-edged sword that he was wielding.”
Ironically, it’s people like Coby Smith, a member of the Memphis-based Black Power group The Invaders, prime targets of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, who defend Withers in The Picture Taker. “He was a man of great reputation and appreciation,” says Bertelsen. “In fact, we were hard-pressed to find anyone who had anything negative to say about him, even after it was shown that he informed on them.”
For Bertelsen and Yasui, this is the end of a six-year journey. “We are so grateful to the many people of Memphis who helped us get this story, especially the family who really took a leap of faith by trusting us with his images,” says Bertelsen. “They’ve had to face some very painful revelations about their patriarch, and they’re still facing them. I think it shows a certain amount of grace and trust and understanding. There are a lot of ways you can interpret this story, and they haven’t shied away from the truth. They told us they learned things about their dad that they didn’t know before, through this film. That’s very gratifying to us.”
The Poor & Hungry
In 2021, Craig Brewer directed Coming 2 America. It was his second collaboration with comedy superstar Eddie Murphy, and the biggest hit in the history of Amazon Studios.
In 2000, the biggest job Brewer had ever held was a clerk at Barnes & Noble bookstore. That was the year his first feature film, The Poor & Hungry, premiered at Indie Memphis. “I still feel that it was the biggest premiere that I’ve ever been to, and the one with the highest stakes,” he says. “Winning Best Feature for 2000 is still the greatest award I can ever remember winning in my life. … The festival back then was a beacon. It was the North Star. We were all making something so we could showcase it at Indie Memphis. It’s something I hope is still happening with the younger filmmakers today. I had another short that year called ‘Cleanup In Booth B.’ It was a big, productive time for me. But it was also the first time ever to see my work being shown in front of people at a movie theater.”
Craig Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry, which premiered at Indie Memphis Festival in 2000, will return to the festival.
The Poor & Hungry is the story of Eli (Eric Tate), a Memphis car thief who accidentally falls in love with one of his victims, a cellist named Amanda (Lake Latimer). The characters’ lives revolve around the P&H Cafe, a legendary Midtown dive bar which was run by the flamboyant Wanda Wilson, who plays herself. To call the black-and-white feature, shot with a handheld digital camcorder, “gritty” is a massive understatement. But Brewer was able to wring some striking, noir-like images from his cheap equipment, and the film features a series of great performances, most notably Lindsey Roberts’ stunning turn as Harper, a lesbian street hustler.
“I think what I got right on it is something that I tried to carry over to Hustle & Flow, which was, how do you create characters that, if somebody were to just describe them to you, you would say, ‘I don’t think I would like them’? But then, when you start watching them in the story, you find that you not only love them, but you want them to succeed, and you feel for them when they’re in pain.”
Made for $20,000, which Brewer inherited when his father Walter died suddenly of a heart attack, The Poor & Hungry would go on to win Best Feature at the Hollywood Film Festival, defeating films which had cost millions to produce. It got his foot in the door in Hollywood and earned him the opportunity to direct his second feature film Hustle & Flow, which was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning one for Three 6 Mafia’s song “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp.”
The Poor & Hungry will return to the festival where it premiered as part of Indie Memphis’ 25th anniversary celebration. “When I look at it now, I view it as an artifact of a time in Memphis. There are so many places that aren’t there anymore. The P&H Cafe that it’s named after is no more, and Wanda has left this planet in bodily form but remains in spirit. I’m so glad that I captured all that. It’s good to see a Memphis that may not be there anymore. But most importantly, I hope people come see it because it’s the movie that I point people to when they say that they want to make a movie but they think it’s impossible. Well, I made this with just a small camcorder, a microphone, four clamp lights, and a lot of effort.”
Hometown Heroes
It’s a bumper crop year for the Hometowner categories, which showcase films made here in the Bluff City. In addition to anniversary celebrations of Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry and this columnist’s punk rock documentary Antenna, nine features from Memphis filmmakers are screening during the festival.
Jookin is Howard Bell IV’s story of an aspiring dancer caught up in Memphis street life. The ’Vous by Jack Porter Lofton and Jeff Dailey is a documentary about the world-famous Rendezvous restaurant. Ready! Fire! Aim! is Melissa Sweazy’s portrait of Memphis entrepreneur Kemmons Wilson, founder of Holiday Inn. Show Business Is My Life — But I Can’t Prove It by G.B. Shannon is a documentary about the 50-year career of comedian Gary Mule Deer. Michael Blevins’ 50 for Da City recounts Z-Bo’s legendary run as a Memphis Grizzly. Cxffeeblack to Africa by Andrew Puccio traces Bartholomew Jones’ pilgrimage to Ethiopia to discover the roots of the java trade. United Front: The People’s Convention 1991Memphis is Chuck O’Bannon’s historical documentary about the movement that produced Memphis’ first Black mayor. Daphene R. McFerren’s Facing Down Storms: Memphis and the Making of Ida B. Wells sheds light on the Black journalist’s early years in the Bluff City. The Recycle King is Julian Harper’s character sketch of fashion designer Paul Thomas.
Bartholomew Jones in Andrew Puccio’s documentary Cxffeeblack to AfricaJack Oblivian in the Memphis punk rock documentary Antenna
On opening night is the Hometowner Narrative Shorts Competition. In recent years, this has been the toughest category in the entire festival, where Memphis filmmakers stretch their talents to the limits for 10 minutes at a time.
Janay Kelley is one of eight filmmakers whose works were chosen to screen in the narrative shorts competition. A junior at Rhodes College, she’s a product of the Indie Memphis CrewUp mentorship program, and two-time Grand Prize winner at the Indie Memphis Youth Festival. “This is my first film festival as an adult,” she says.
Kelley’s film is “The River,” an experimental marriage of imagery and verse. “My grandmother told me once that the river that you got baptized in could be the same river that drowns you in the morning. I like that dichotomy of healing and of destroying, of accepting new people into your life and saying, ‘Will you help me or will you harm me?’”
Kelley provides her own narration for the film, which was based on a prose poem she wrote while still in high school. “I take a lot of inspiration from my Southern heritage, especially from the women in my family,” she says.
The visuals reference several Black artists of the 20th century, especially the painting Funeral Procession by Ellis Wilson, which was famously featured on The Cosby Show. Kelley treats the many women, young and old, who appear in the film with a portraitist’s touch.
“Before I started in films, I was really into photography, and you can see a lot of that still in my work,” she says. “I come from a very poor background. There is a specific picture of my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt, and they got it taken at the fair. Back in the day, they used to take people’s portraits there, so some families would get dressed up to go to the fair to get their portraits taken, because they couldn’t afford to get it done any way else. What you need to know about being poor and Black in the South is that a lot of us don’t live long. So some of the stories I’ve heard about my family members, I’ve heard after they have died, and I’ve had to kind of stare at their pictures. I think it comes out of a genuine love of the history of photography, and what it meant for people like me.”
Witchcraft Through the Ages
Indie Memphis’ October spot on the calendar means that it coincides with what Bale calls “the spooky season,” when many horror movie aficionados embark on a monthlong binge watch. For this year’s festival, Bale programed a pair of rarely seen horror classics that have significant anniversaries. The first is Ghostwatch, a British mockumentary which debuted 30 years ago.
In the tradition of Orson Welles’ infamous Halloween radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds,” Ghostwatch was presented as a Halloween special in which real-life BBC journalists Sarah Greene and Craig Charles would broadcast a live investigation of a supposedly haunted house. But their goofy Halloween jokes turn serious when the house’s real ghosts show up and start causing mayhem. When it was first broadcast on Halloween night in 1992, the BBC switchboard was jammed with more than 1 million calls from viewers concerned that their favorite newscasters were being slaughtered by ghosts on live television. “This is a staff favorite,” says Bale.
The second Halloween special is Häxan, which has its 100th anniversary this year. Indie Memphis commissioned a new score for the silent film from Alex Greene, who is also the music editor for the Memphis Flyer. For this performance, Greene’s jazz ensemble The Rolling Head Orchestra — Jim Spake, Tom Lonardo, Mark Franklin, Carl Caspersen, and Jim Duckworth — will be joined by theremin virtuoso Kate Taylor. “We’ve been wanting to work with Alex for a long time, and this was a great opportunity,” says Bale.
Indie Memphis honors the 100th anniversary of the pioneering 1922 horror film Häxan with a new live score from Alex Greene and the Rolling Head Orchestra.
Director Benjamin Christensen based Häxan on his study of the Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches”), a guide for clergymen conducting witch hunts, published in 1486. Upon its premiere in 1922, Häxan was the most expensive silent film made in Europe. Christensen’s meticulous recreations of witches’ Sabbath celebrations, complete with flying broomsticks and an appearance by a mischievous Satan (played by the director himself), still look incredible. Its frank depictions of the Inquisition provide the horror. “I was shocked by how much of it is framed by the torture of the witches,” says Greene. “It implies that a lot of this crazy behavior they described was just victims trying to make up anything to stop the thumbscrews.”
Released a decade before Dracula ushered in the modern horror era, Häxan is a unique cinema experience. “I think of it as kind of like Shakespeare’s time, when the English language was not as settled in spellings and meanings of words. It was a fluid language,” says Greene. “This film came at a time when the language of cinema was very fluid and kind of up for grabs, which is why you could have this weird hybrid of documentary/reenactment/essay.”
“It’s within the Halloween realm, but not necessarily a horror movie,” says Bale. “That’s part of what’s so interesting about it. There are some silent films that just feel so fresh, they could have been made yesterday. Häxan is one of those.”
The 25th Indie Memphis Film Festival runs from October 19th to the 22nd at the Orpheum Theatre’s Halloran Centre, Crosstown Theater, Black Lodge, Malco Studio on the Square, The Circuit Playhouse, Playhouse on the Square, and virtually on Eventive. Festival passes and individual film tickets can be purchased at indiememphis.org. The Memphis Flyer will feature continuing coverage of Indie Memphis 2022 on the web at memphisflyer.com.
Director Phil Bertelsen's documentary The Picture Taker reflects on the complicated legacy of Ernest Withers. (Photo courtesy Withers Family Trust)
The 25th edition of the Indie Memphis Film Festival will open at the Halloran Centre on October 19 with The Picture Taker, director Phil Bertelsen’s documentary about Memphis photographer Ernest Withers.
Withers was famous for his indelible images of Black life in Memphis and the 1968 Sanitation Workers’ Strike. After his death, his role as a paid informant for the FBI was revealed, leaving many to question his legacy in the Civil Rights movement. Bertelsen’s film wrestles with Withers’ complex life and legacy.
Bertelsen’s most recent project, the six-part series Who Killed Malcom X?, prompted a re-investigation of the Civil Rights leader’s 1965 assassination that exonerated two men who had been wrongly convicted of participating in the crime.
“We’re thrilled and honored to be chosen as the Indie Memphis opening night film!” says Bertelsen. “The Picture Taker couldn’t have been made without the many Memphians who sat before and behind our cameras — opening their homes and hearts and lending their stories and creativity to this production. We look forward to bringing this story back home to the city that was Ernest Withers’ muse. Thank you, Memphis!”
This year’s film festival will run from October 19-24, both in-person at various venues in the Bluff City and in the online virtual format that emerged during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The full lineup will be revealed at a preview party at Black Lodge on Tuesday, September 13th at 6:30 p.m. You can RSVP to the preview part and purchase passes to the festival at the Indie Memphis website.
