Tag: Daniel Farrell

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Indie Memphis 2020: One Night In Miami, and An Awards Ceremony Like No Other

Michael Butler, Jr. accepting his award Best Hometowner Narrative Short award for ‘Empty’ at the 2020 Indie Memphis Virtual Award Ceremony.

In normal times, the Indie Memphis awards ceremony is a raucous gathering, full of self-deprecating gags and boozy cheers. This year, things were different.

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the awards ceremony was virtual. The ceremony was broadcast from the auditorium at Playhouse on the Square, where it would usually occur, with about a hundred filmmakers calling in on Zoom. As befitting the times, it was a more somber affair, but it produced moments of unique magic.

Many more of the awards recipients were able to accept in person than in a normal year. Executive Order writers Lázaro Ramos & Lusa Silvestre accepted the Duncan Williams Screenwriting Award from their home in Brazil. I Blame Society director Gillian Hovart, at home in Los Angeles, introduced her cat, who co-starred in the film, when she accepted the Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award. And most remarkable of all, director Michael Butler, Jr. accepted his Best Hometowner Narrative Short award for “Empty” from Methodist Hospital, where he was on call, cheered on by his fellow nurses, who looked a little bewildered. It was a uniquely 2020 moment.

The Best Narrative Feature went to Emily Seligman’s coming-of-age comedy Shiva Baby, while Best Documentary Feature went to Cane Fire, director Anthony Banua-Simon’s story of colonial exploitation and labor struggle in Hawai’i. When Deni Cheng accepted her Best Narrative Short award for “Paradise,” the astonished first-time filmmaker revealed that she had not been accepted into any other festivals. Kyungwon Song won Best Documentary Short for “Jesa”.

The Hometowner Feature prize went to Lauren Ready for We Can’t Wait, her cinéma vérité portrait of Tami Sawyer’s 2019 mayoral campaign. Best Hometowner Documentary Short was awarded to “Road to Step” by Zaire Love, which documented a season of Black fraternity life at the University of Mississippi. Best Hometowner Music Video went to The Poet, Havi for “You’re My Jesus”.

The Indie Grant program, which awards production packages worth $13,000 to short film proposals from Memphis filmmakers, went to G.B Shannon for his documentary short “Here Be Dragons,” to Justin Malone for his narrative short “Beware of Goat.” The first ever proof-of-concept Indie Grant, intended to help a filmmaker produce a short film that could sell a feature film concept to potential investors, went to Daniel Farrell for “Beale Street Blues.”

The Festival Awards, selected by staff and board members, are enduring traditions at Indie Memphis. The Soul of Southern Film Award, which stretches back to the origin of the festival, went to Lawrence Matthews’ Memphis labor documentary “The Hub.” The Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking Award, which honors the festival’s DIY roots, went to “The Inheritance”  by Ephraim Asili. The Indie Award, which honors a Memphis-based crew member for outstanding service, went to Daniel Lynn, sound engineer at Music + Arts Studio. Lynn, who was mixing sound for the ceremony live stream, was one of the few people to actually accept their awards in person at Playhouse.

The most emotional moment of the night came courtesy of the Vision Awards. Kelly Chandler founded Indie Memphis in 1998 while she was a film student at the University of Memphis. Chandler no longer works in the film industry, and has lived abroad for decades. For years, journalists such as myself and Indie Memphis staff have tried to contact her to clear up details about the founding of the festival which have been lost to history. Finally, earlier this year, Indie Memphis staffer Joseph Carr, with the help of the U of M alumni office, tracked her to South Korea. Chandler gave a moving speech accepting the Vision Award in which she recounted the first night of the festival, which was held not in the Edge coffee shop as legend had it but instead in an empty Cooper-Young warehouse owned by the same people, and encouraging filmmakers to follow their dreams.

More winners from Indie Memphis 2020:

Best After Dark Short: “The Three Men You Meet at Night” by Beck Kitsis

Best Departures Feature: My Darling Supermarket by Tali Yankelevich

Best Departures Short : “The Return of Osiris” by Essa Grayeb

Best Sounds Feature: Born Balearic: Jon Sa Trinxa and the Spirit of Ibiza by Lily Renae

Best Animated Short: “Grab My Hand: A Letter to My Dad” by Camrus Johnson and Pedro
Piccinini

Best Music Video: “Colors” by Black Pumas, directed by Kristian Mercado

Best Poster Design: Pier Kids

Tonight, Indie Memphis 2020 concludes at the Malco Summer Drive-In with One Night in Miami. Regina King, who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for If Beale Street Could Talk and recently took home an Emmy for her work on HBO’s Watchmen, makes her feature film directorial debut with this adaptation of Kemp Powers play about the night Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) celebrated winning the Heavyweight Championship with his friends Malcom X (Kingsely Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom, Jr.).

Indie Memphis 2020: One Night In Miami, and An Awards Ceremony Like No Other

Then the festival closes with a little Halloween spirit. House is a legendary 1977 horror film from Japan’s fabled Toho studios. Directed by experimental filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi and featuring a cast of all-amateur actors and some truly eye-popping special effects, it has had huge influence on the horror comedy genre.

Indie Memphis 2020: One Night In Miami, and An Awards Ceremony Like No Other (2)

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2019: The Year in Film

The year 2019 will go down in history as a watershed. Avengers: Endgame made $357 million on its opening weekend, which was not only the biggest take for any film in history, but also the most profitable three days in the history of the American theater industry. It was the year that the industry consolidation entered its endgame, with Disney buying 20th Century Fox and cornering more than 40 percent of the market. Beyond the extruded superhero film-type product, it turned out to be a fantastic year for smaller films with something to say. Here’s my list of the best of a year for the history books.

Worst Picture: Echo in the Canyon Confession: I decided life is too short to watch The Angry Birds Movie 2, so Echo in the Canyon is probably not the worst film released in 2019 — just the worst one I saw. Laurel Canyon was brimming over with creativity in the 1960s and 1970s, with everyone from Frank Zappa to the Eagles living in close, creative quarters. How did this happen? What does it say about the creative process? Jakob Dylan’s excruciatingly dull vanity documentary answers none of those questions. The best/worst moment is when Dylan The Lesser argues with Brian Wilson about the key of a song Wilson wrote.

‘Soul Man’

Best Memphis Film(s): Hometowner Shorts I’ve been competing in and covering the Indie Memphis Hometowner Shorts competition for the better part of two decades, and this year was the strongest field ever. Kyle Taubken’s “Soul Man” won the jury prize in a stacked field that included career-best work by directors Morgan Jon Fox, Kevin Brooks, Abby Myers, Christian Walker, Alexandra Ashley, Joshua Cannon, Daniel Farrell, Nathan Ross Murphy, and Jamey Hatley. The future of Memphis filmmaking is bright.

Apollo 11

Best Documentary: Apollo 11 There was no better use of an IMAX screen this year than Todd Douglas Miller’s direct cinema take on the first moon landing. Pieced together from NASA’s peerless archival collection and contemporary news broadcasts, Apollo 11 is a unique, visceral adventure.

Amazing Grace LLC

Amazing Grace

Best Music: Amazing Grace The year’s other direct cinema triumph is this long-awaited reconstruction of Aretha Franklin’s finest hour. The recording of her 1972 gospel album was filmed (badly) by director Sydney Pollack, but the reconstruction by producer Alan Elliott made a virtue of the technical flaws to highlight one of the greatest performances in the history of American music.

King Ghidorah, Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Best Performance by a Nonhuman: King Ghidorah, Godzilla: King of the Monsters Godzilla: King of the Monsters was a tasty treat for megafauna fetishists. Godzilla, the Cary Grant of kaiju, looked dashing, but he was upstaged by his three-headed arch enemy. King Ghidorah, aka Monster Zero, whose pronoun preference is presumably “they,” is magnificently menacing, but versatile enough do a little comedy schtick while pulverizing Boston.

Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore

Slickest Picture: Dolemite Is My Name Eddie Murphy’s comeback picture is also Memphis director Craig Brewer’s best film since The Poor & Hungry. Murphy pours himself into the role of Rudy Ray Moore, the comedian who transformed himself into a blaxploitation hero. The excellent script by Ed Wood scribes Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski hums along to music by Memphian Scott Bomar. Don’t miss the cameo by Bobby Rush!

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

MVP: Brad Pitt Every performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is great, but Brad Pitt pulls the movie together as aging stuntman Cliff Booth. It was a performance made even more remarkable by the fact that he single-handedly saved Ad Astra from being a drudge. In 2019, Pitt proved he’s a character actor stuck in a movie star’s body.

Beanie Felstien as Molly and Kaitlyn Dever as Amy in Booksmart

Miss Congeniality: Booksmart I unabashedly loved every minute of Olivia Wilde’s teenage comedy tour de force. Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein are a comedy team of your dreams, and Billie Lourd’s Spicoli impression deserves a Best Supporting Actress nomination. Booksmart is a cult classic in the making.

Chris Evans in Knives Out.

Best Screenplay: Knives Out In a bizarre twist worthy of Rian Johnson’s sidewinder of a screenplay, Knives Out may end up being remembered for memes of Chris Evans looking snuggly in a cable knit sweater. The writer/director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi dives into Agatha Christie mysteries and takes an all-star cast with him. They don’t make ’em like Knives Out anymore, but they should.

Lupita Nyong’o in Us

Best Performance: Lupita Nyong’o, Us If Jordan Peele is our new Hitchcock, Get Out is his Rear Window, an intensely focused and controlled genre piece. Us is his Vertigo, a more complex work where the artist is discovering along with the audience. Lupita Nyong’o’s dueling performances as both the PTSD-plagued soccer mom Adelaide and her sinister doppleganger Red is one for the ages.

Parasite

Best Picture: Parasite Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or winner absolutely refuses to go the way you think it’s going to go. There was no better expression of the paranoid schizophrenic mood of 2019 than this black comedy from Korea about a family of grifters who infiltrate a wealthy family, only to find they’re not the only ones with secrets. It was a stiff competition, but Parasite emerges as the best of the year.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis Day 1: Hometowner Shorts Will Rock Your World

C.W. Robertson, Rheannan Watson, and Syderek Wilson in ‘Always Open: The Eureka Hotel’.

My advice to people who are first-time film festival goers is always the same: Go to a short-film program. The movies you will see at a film festival are different from what you normally see in a theater or on your favorite streaming service. That’s the point. For the audience, film festivals are communal events dedicated to discovery. But not every film is for everyone. That is also the point. For filmmakers, film festivals are about finding your audience. It’s a two-way street. The big advantage of a shorts program is that, if you see something you don’t like, it will be over soon, and you’ll get to see something different that you might like better.

That probably won’t be the case with Indie Memphis’ opening night at Crosstown Theater. After the opener, Harriet, is the first of two blocs of the Hometowner Narrative Shorts competition, which has the strongest field in years. The screenplay for the first film “Always Open: The Eureka Hotel” secured writer/director Jamey Hatley the first ever Indie Memphis Black Filmmaker Fellowship for Screenwriting. The Eureka Hotel has five stars on Trip Advisor, but it’s invisible from the outside — unless you have a reservation. The proprietor, Mrs. Landlady (Rosalyn R. Ross) seems to exist out of time, always there to help folks in distress, such as a young woman in trouble (Rheannan Watson) who is being forced to head north by her father (Syderek Watson) and brother (C.W. Robertson).

Darian Conly, aka A Weirdo From Memphis, and Ron Gephart in ‘Life After Death’

You think your worries are over once you’ve passed on? Sorry, no. Noah Glenn’s “Life After Death” slayed at this year’s Memphis Film Prize. Written by Glenn and Julia McCloy, shot by Andrew Trent Fleming, the film stars Sean Harrison Jones as a man attending a support group for the legally deceased. The comedy also features rapper A Weirdo From Memphis in his acting debut.

‘Now The Sun Asks To Rise’

“Now The Sun Asks To Rise” is the latest beautiful and tragic short from writer/director Joshua Cannon. John Sneed and Joy Murphy star as a parents overcome by grief for their daughter. Their sadness touches everything, even the musician father’s love of music. Beautifully shot by Nate Packer and Sam Leathers and deftly edited by Laura Jean Hocking, this one is a real heartstring tugger.

Shi Smith in ‘Tagged’

“Tagged” by director Daniel Ferrell was the winner of one of last year’s Indie Grants for narrative shorts. Shi Smith stars as a brash graffiti artist who never saw a blank wall she didn’t want to decorate. On the run from the law and the local gangs patrolling their turf, she just won’t quit until the art is finished. The film features some ace photography from Ryan Earl Parker.

Kharmyn Aanesah in ‘The Bee’

I haven’t seen everything screening at Indie Memphis 2019, but I would be shocked if the best performance by a child actor came from someone other than Kharmyn Aanesah in “The Bee.” Director Alexandria Ashley’s finely tuned film features Aanesah as a young woman named McKenzie who is obsessed with preparing for her school’s upcoming spelling bee. But when a jealous classmate makes a cutting remark, she finds herself suddenly self-conscious about her appearance. This incisive film, which tackles head-on the brains vs. beauty dilemma that society imposes on young woman, is supported by an equally great performance by Chontel Willis as McKinzie’s long-suffering mother.

Nathan Ross Murphy in ‘The Indignation of Michael Busby’

You can see actor Nathan Ross Murphy in the Hometowner feature Cold Feet. But he’s never been better than in the film he wrote and directed for this year’s festival, “The Indignation of Michael Busby.” He plays the title role, a Walter Mitty-type salaryman who has a secret crush on his co-worker Rose (Rosalyn R. Ross, of course) is dismissed by co-worker Nick (Jacob Wingfeld), and bullied by his boss Tom (Allen C. Gardner from Cold Feet, returning the favor). He escapes into fantasy, but soon reality itself breaks down, and a shift in perspective tells a very different story. Well shot by Eddie Hanratty, it’s a strong closer to the night’s program.

Come back to Memphis Flyer.com for continuing coverage of Indie Memphis 2019.