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.
The Indie Memphis showing of The Taste of Things will be followed by an actual food tasting.
Moviegoers often wish they could be eating what the characters are eating in certain scenes in a film. Think of the famous dinner scene in Tom Jones. Or everything edible in Julie & Julia, the movie about chef Julia Child. And then, of course, there’s that spaghetti in Walt Disney’s animated classic, Lady and the Tramp.
Well, Dan Kopera is making that a reality. He will serve some of the cuisine featured in The Taste of Things following the 11:30 a.m. movie showing, which will be Saturday, October 28th at Playhouse on the Square. Those who bought tickets to the 2023 movie, directed by Tran Anh Hung ,will then walk to the old Pantà restaurant at 2146 Monroe Avenue for Kopera’s take on some of the dishes in the film.
Chef Dan Kopera (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Describing the movie, Kopera, 49, a chef at The Second Line, says, “It’s a romantic relationship between the chef and his cook, and it all revolves around food. There’s so much food in the movie. It’s primarily French food. It does take place in France in the 19th century.
“They sent me a screening line. I enjoyed it. It’s not a movie I would have sought out for myself. It’s not my style. But it was very good.”
Then, he says, “I copied a few things from the movie that were interesting to me.
“I spent a couple of hours the next day just brainstorming and doing some research. Which then I took to chef Kelly English [owner of The Second Line] and consulted with him to get his thoughts on it. He added his opinions and that’s how we came up with these four items.”
Some dishes in the film were unfamiliar to Kopera. But, he says, “A couple of things from the movie I could do. Baked Alaska was one. It’s the only dessert featured in the movie.”
Making Baked Alaska is “much easier to make in modern days than it was in the 19th century when it was invented.”
Back then, making the dessert “was kind of an all-day-long process.
“For one, we have refrigeration. And they had to use ice chests to make the ice cream. And, also we have modern equipment. The blow torch to cook the outside of the meringue. Rather than what they did, which was light brandy on fire and roll it over it to cook the outside. Meringue protects the ice cream from melting.”
He’s also doing chicken vol-au-vent. “They did a very large version of this. It’s a puff pastry filled with various things. I’m doing a chicken dish with it. It’s one of those things you can fill with anything. Almost a cream puff kind of thing. I’m going to be doing little mini vol-au-vents for everyone to try.”
Kopera will make croque monsieur dip with crostini. “The original dish is a sandwich. A grilled ham and cheese. I’m taking it to another level. I’m French toasting it.”
And, finally, he will be serving ratatouille skewers. “It’s eggplant, zucchini, tomato, peppers — taking the basic ingredients of ratatouille, which is usually baked in a sort of casserole — and I’m making that into hand-held bite-sized skewers.”
Like popcorn, everything Kopera is serving will be finger food. “These are little tastes, so people can get the taste of the movie and the taste of France.”
For more information on The Taste of Things showing and tasting, go here.
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.
Bukka White and Jimmy Crosthwait onstage at the the Overton Park Shell in The Blues Society. (Photo: Randall Lyon | courtesy of The Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane)
I felt like it was like the zombie film that wouldn’t die.” So says Augusta Palmer, filmmaker and associate professor of communication arts at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, about her latest movie, The Blues Society, enjoying its world premiere at the Indie Memphis Film Festival this coming Sunday. But the producer/director isn’t talking about any scary on-screen content; her “zombie” comment refers to the film’s half-genesis nearly 10 years ago, and the way it insisted on being made despite Palmer’s other commitments.
She had compelling personal reasons to see it through: Her father was the late musician and writer Robert Palmer, who helped found the Memphis Country Blues Society in the mid-’60s. Her mother Mary Branton was also deeply involved in the blues festivals that the society staged at the Overton Park Shell from 1966-1969. A decade ago, Augusta Palmer saw footage from the final year of those concerts — shot by Adelphi Records owner Gene Rosenthal — and it resonated deeply with her.
“Gene played me a segment of my mom speaking at the festival when she was pregnant with me in 1969. So I was pretty much hooked, but it seemed really difficult to figure out the rights and everything, so I just sort of let it go. A few years later I thought, ‘Well, no. I am interested in this, but I want to tell the whole story, from ’66 to ’69.’”
The festivals and their backstory were rich subject matter indeed, marking a turning point in the history of Memphis and the blues, eminently worth telling in full. When Fat Possum Records bought Rosenthal’s 1969 footage and tasked directors Joe and Lisa LaMattina to edit it down to a feature-length film, Memphis ’69, there was still much left to explore. While that film drops the viewer directly into the experience of a single weekend, Palmer wanted to situate the entire four-year run of festivals within the context of the blues devotees who initiated them, a coterie of artists, musicians, and beatniks (or proto-hippies) who comprised the Memphis Country Blues Society and its supporters. “I was very interested in the whole trajectory of it,” she says.
And so the film roared back to life, lurching in fits and starts as Palmer assembled footage and interviews from sprawling and diverse sources. It helped that some of those involved were film buffs and loved shooting casual, oddball footage of themselves and their friends. Today, their LSD-fueled hijinks live on in the glorious black and white scenes that Palmer uses to set the stage for the festivals-in-the-making, though she found a little of that went a long way.
“The footage of crazy artists in Memphis was shot by an experimental filmmaker named Carl Orr who was part of John McIntire’s Beatnik Manor scene,” Palmer says. “There’s actually a ton more of that stuff. But when I was able to get some of that, at first I felt like I’d sprayed my film with patchouli and I couldn’t breathe! So I dialed it back a little bit. But that stuff really captured the spirit of the time so beautifully.”
So too does the archival footage of great Memphis blues artists that Palmer uses to establish the importance of the blues to Memphis, even as it was ignored by the city’s racist establishment. That historical context underscores why it was down to the beatnik misfits to celebrate the innovations of the Black men and women in their midst, rendered invisible by the mainstream. And, as the engrossing festival performance scenes of Furry Lewis, Bukka White, and others reveal, their exquisite artistry very much deserved celebration.
Yet Palmer also complicates the beatniks’ utopian motivations with some well-considered comments from scholars and writers like Zandria Robinson and Jamey Hatley, who insist on a more critical perspective. Robinson notes that, in presenting poor, often rural Black artists, the white festival organizers had an attitude of “let’s be friends in spite of power dynamics!” Palmer leans into that critique unflinchingly, perhaps best expressed by Furry Lewis’ white protégé, the late Zeke Johnson. “Some of it was paternalistic,” Johnson reflects, “and we didn’t even realize it at the time.”
The Blues Society screens at Playhouse on the Square on Sunday, October 29th, 3 p.m. An after-party will be held at the 1884 Lounge at 5 p.m. that day, featuring The Wilkins Sisters and Sharde Thomas and the Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band. Visit indiememphis.org for more information.
Percy Norris and
“Big” Robert Stewart in The ’Vous
The 25th Indie Memphis Film Festival concluded last Monday with a film that made a case for the importance of the 1970 Blaxploitation wave, and a film that proved its point. Is That Black Enough For You? is the first movie by Elvis Mitchell, a former New York Times film critic and cinema scholar turned documentary director. Mitchell traced the history of Black representation in film from the era of silent “race” pictures and D.W. Griffith’s pro-KKK, proto-blockbuster Birth of a Nation through the foreshortened careers of Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge to the wave of low-budget, Black-led gangster, adventure, and fantasy films which started in the late 1960s and crested with The Wiz. Films like Superfly and Coffy, Mitchell argues in his voluminous voice-over narration, presented the kinds of rousing heroes that attracted film-goers while the New Hollywood movement presented visions of angst-filled antiheroes.
Blaxploitation films also introduced a new kind of music to films and the concept of the soundtrack album, which was often released before the movie itself in order to drum up interest. The prime example was Shaft, which featured an Academy Award-winning soundtrack by Isaac Hayes. Mitchell introduced the classic with Willie Hall, the Memphis drummer who recorded the immortal hi-hat rhythm that kicks off Hayes’ theme song. Mitchell revealed in Is That Black Enough For You? that Hayes had been inspired by Sergio Leone’s score for Once Upon a Time in the West, and the score he penned for Shaft still holds up, providing much of the detective film’s throbbing propulsion.
The winners of the competitive portion of the 2022 film festival were announced at a hilariously irreverent awards ceremony Saturday evening at Playhouse on the Square. After a two-year hiatus, Savannah Bearden returned to produce the awards, which were “hosted” by Birdy, the tiny red metal mockingbird which has served as the film festival’s mascot for years. But amidst the nonstop jokes and spoof videos, there were genuinely touching moments, such as when Craig Brewer surprised art director and cameraperson Sallie Sabbatini with the Indie Award, which is given to outstanding Memphis film artisans, and when former Executive Director Ryan Watt was ambushed with the Vision Award.
The Best Narrative Feature award went to Our Father, the Devil, an African immigrant story directed by Ellie Foumbi. Kit Zauhar’s Actual People won the Duncan Williams Best Screenplay Award. The Documentary Feature award went to Reed Harkness for Sam Now, a portrait of the director’s brother that has been in production for the entire 25 years that Indie Memphis has been in existence.
The Best Hometowner Feature award, which honors films made in Memphis, went to Jack Lofton’s The ’Vous, a moving portrait of the people who make The Rendezvous a world-famous icon of Memphis barbecue. (“We voted with our stomachs,” said jury member Larry Karaszewski.) The Best Hometowner Narrative Short went to “Nordo” by Kyle Taubken, about a wife anxiously waiting for her husband to return from Afghanistan. Lauren Ready earned her second Indie Memphis Hometowner Documentary award for her short film “What We’ll Never Know.”
In the Departures category, which includes experimental, genre, and out-of-the-box creations, This House by Miryam Charles won Best Feature. (This House also won the poster design contest.) “Maya at 24” by legendary Memphis doc director Lynne Sachs won the Shorts competition, and “Civic” by Dwayne LeBlanc took home the first trophy in a new Mid-Length subcategory.
Sounds, the festival’s long-running music film series, awarded Best Feature to Kumina Queen by Nyasha Laing. The music video awards were won by the stop-motion animated “Vacant Spaces” by Joe Baughman; “Don’t Come Home” by Emily Rooker triumphed in the crowded Hometowner category.
Best Narrative Short went to “Sugar Glass Bottle” by Neo Sora, and Best Documentary Short went to “The Body Is a House of Familiar Rooms” by Eloise Sherrid and Lauryn Welch.
Some of the Special Awards date back to the origin of the festival in 1998, such as the Soul of Southern Film Award, which was taken by Ira McKinley and Bhawin Suchak’s documentary Outta The Muck. The Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking Award went to Me Little Me by Elizabeth Ayiku. The Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award went to Eric Younger’s Very Rare.
The IndieGrants program, which awards $15,000 in cash and donations to create short films, picked Anna Cai’s “Bluff City Chinese” and A.D. Smith’s “R.E.G.G.I.N.” out of 46 proposals submitted by Memphis filmmakers.
Clay Tatum (left) and Whitmer Thomas star as man and ghost in The Civil Dead.
There’s a lot of overlap between horror and comedy. Both genres rely on timing and tricks designed to disorient you. The Civil Dead finds some new areas of overlap.
Gulf Shores, Alabama, natives Clay Tatum and Whitmer Thomas met when they were 11 years old. “We grew up making a lot of stuff together, and our goal moving out to L.A. was to make a feature,” says Tatum.
The pair found some success in Los Angeles’ famously bustling comedy scene, and later produced the FX animated series Stone Quackers. The Civil Dead came about during the early days of the pandemic, when producer Mike Marasco offered them a modest amount of funding — and access to his extensive camera collection. “I was like, if I still wanna make a movie, it’s got to be limited,” he says. “I have to think of ideas that I can shoot with just me and Whit, and for some reason the idea of him being a ghost worked really well for the idea of shooting something during a pandemic where resources are even more limited. If I’m the only person that’s able to see this ghost, I’m not gonna want to be around other people.”
Tatum stars as Clay, a struggling photographer failing to make it in Hollywood. “He’s a little bit like what I am at my worst parts, being an L.A. asshole who’s chronically lazy and is too embarrassed to admit to his wife that he’s broke,” says Tatum. “Our goal in this movie was to make me somewhat unlikable, because there’s a trend that we notice in movies where sometimes there’s a movie where the lead character is neither good or bad, and just randomly, bad things happen to him. We wanted to avoid that and have this character be actively bad and actively be the reason bad things are happening to them.”
When he sees his old friend Whit on a photoshoot, he soon realizes that the guy he ghosted a few years ago is now literally a ghost. Whit and Clay’s relationship becomes more and more fraught, as the stresses of being seen and not seen pile up. Horror comedy comes in many forms, but this might be the first ever horror cringe comedy — think Larry David meets Ghost Story. “The one thing I knew that we had going for us is like a certain chemistry that comes out of just knowing each other since we were 11,” says Tatum.
The Civil Dead is a finely paced comedy that doesn’t overstay its welcome, with an ending that is shocking when it happens, then makes more sense the more you think about it. It makes comedy out of the horror of awkward social interactions, and asks how low you would go if you knew you would get away with it.
The Civil Dead plays Thursday, Oct. 20, 8:30 p.m., Studio on the Square as part of the Indie Memphis Film Festival.
(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.
Cooper-Young
Festival (Photo: Courtesy Cooper-Young Festival)
As you flip your wall calendars to the fresh, crisp September page, after Memphis’ humid, boiling August, you can exhale: It’s almost fall. And that means it’s time for more fairs and festivals, so crack open your planners, pull up your calendar app, tape a sticky note to your head, do whatever you gotta do to make sure you have these fairs and festivals tapped into your autumn plans.
SEPTEMBER
Southern Heritage Classic Cultural Celebration
Can I tell you what a yellow card is or what a running back does? No, but I can tell you that the Southern Heritage Classic, a premier sports and entertainment event, will be a good time. And if you don’t believe me, just take a look at the agenda: The O’Jays are putting on a concert, Landers Center is hosting a Classic Funk Fest, the Classic Parade will roll through Park Avenue, and so much more, including, of course, the Southern Heritage Classic football game featuring Jackson State vs. Tennessee State at the Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.
Various locations, September 8-10
Germantown Festival (Photo: Courtesy Germantown Festival)
Germantown Festival
Some might say weenies aren’t cool by definition, but at this festival, the weenies will prove you otherwise as they gear up for the annual Running of the Weenies at 11 a.m. on Saturday, September 10th. So don’t be a weenie! Go show your support at this festival of arts that, in addition to the famed race, offers children’s activities, rides and games, entertainment, a car exhibit, community displays, and more.
Germantown Civic Club Complex, September 10-11
Goat Days Festival
Bah-bah-bah, Bah-Barbara Ann, you got me rockin’ and a-rollin’, rockin’ and a-reelin’ from too long without goats. But take my hand and bring me to the Goats Days Festival and I’m yours. Starting at 7 a.m. with the much-beloved pancake breakfast, the day features goat yoga, live music all day, local vendors, food galore, a car show, an antique tractor show, a barbecue contest, an all-day kids zone, and so much more.
Millington Sports Complex, September 10
Memphis Rox Yoga Festival
This festival is yogalicious, definition makes yogis go crazy. (It’s hot, hot.) With more than 15 yoga classes, from acro yoga to handstand workshops, this festival also boasts a kids’ zone, live music, and lectures, including topics ranging from nutrition to personalizing yoga through astrology.
Memphis Botanic Garden, September 10
Collierville Balloon Festival (Photo: Courtesy Collierville Balloon Festival)
Collierville Balloon Festival
Enjoy the Wizard of Oz’s preferred mode of transportation at this festival all about the whimsical hot air balloon. Each morning will begin with a breathtaking release of the balloons into the sky, which the family can witness for free before the festival’s activities commence in the afternoon. The day will include a kids’ zone, food trucks, vendors, carnival rides and games, and of course some hot air ballooning. Once the sun goes down, the balloons will light up the sky with an evening balloon glow.
Maynard Way, Collierville, September 17-18
Cooper-Young Festival
Whether you’re young or young at heart, when you’re in Cooper-Young, you’re in for some fun with this festival all about celebrating the arts, people, culture, and heritage of Memphis. Bailey Bigger will headline a lineup of great local, original music, and a slew of artisans from Memphis and across the U.S. will be selling handmade, unique, and quirky art.
Cooper-Young, September 17
Mint Cream Market: Fall Fest
Shop from vintage collectors, craft goods, and unique art at this fest with live entertainment and food trucks.
Arrow Creative, September 17
Orion Free Concert Series
If you press your ear to a shell, you’ll hear the ocean for free. If you press your ear to the Shell, you might be too close to the stage, but you might also hear some country blues or powerpop, depending on the weekend, also for free.
Overton Park Shell, Country Blues Festival, September 17
Memphis Powerpop Festival, September 24
Gonerfest 19
Going, going, gone off to Gonerfest 19 for four days of rocking music, courtesy of Goner Records. The caliber of these artists is too hard to describe in a mere few sentences, which is why I urge you to read our cover story next week because it’s going to be all about Gonerfest.
Railgarten, September 22-25
Mid-South Fair (Photo: Courtesy Mid-South Fair)
Mid-South Fair
If you fancy yourself an old soul, perhaps reincarnated from bygone times, you’ll feel at home at this festival which has been a must-do event since 1856. Fair-goers can enjoy more than 50 rides, a wide array of ground acts, and of course favorite fair fare — funnel cakes, turkey legs, candied apples — you name it, they’ve perfected it.
Lots of things are celebrating their 50th this year. I mean, 50 years ago, The Godfather premiered its first installment in theaters, Watergate began to unfold, Jennifer Garner was born, and right here in Memphis, the Pink Palace Crafts Fair took place for the first time. And now, 150 artists in various mediums are coming from around the country to celebrate the fair’s big 5-0. Attendees can marvel at craft demonstrations, enjoy live music, and entertain the kiddos at the petting zoo and with a ride on the choo-choo train, some rock climbing, and pony rides.
Audubon Park, September 23-25
Mighty Roots Music Festival
We root for music, the mighty, mighty roots music. No longer a rookie, this music fest is back for year two, taking place at the same spot the famous blues singer-songwriter Muddy Waters began his love of blues music.
Stovall, MS, September 23-24
Aquatseli Bluegrass Festival
“Aquatseli” is Cherokee for “our,” so make this bluegrass extravaganza yours and check out the instrument workshops, open jams, square dancing, clogging, vendors, and more.
Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park, September 24
Latin Fest
Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month at Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre Group’s Latin Fest, where friends and families can listen to and dance to live Latin music, taste Latin food and drinks, enjoy activities for kids, and shop from vendors.
Overton Square, September 24
Memphis Comic Expo
The Mid-South’s largest comic-creator con has answered the Bat-Signal and is back in Memphis to celebrate your favorite creators, with over 100 artists and writers, a cosplay contest, more than 50 vendors, panels, and more. It’s going to be a marvel.
Agricenter International, September 24-25
Wiseacre Oktoberfest
Zicke zacke, zicke zacke, hoi hoi hoi! Oktoberfest is back, boy oh boy. So dust off your steins and snap on your lederhosen for a day with food trucks, Mighty Souls Brass Band, the Grizzline, and more.
Wiseacre Brewing Company, September 24
Soulful Food Truck Festival
Saddle up your picnic blankets and lawn chairs for this journey to the center of your stomach and your soul as you enjoy food from food trucks and vendors, shop from local artisans, and take in music by Carmen Hicks, Angie P. Holmes, and Courtney Little, plus DJs Zoom and Swagg.
Tiger Lane, September 25
Bartlett Festival
With the Judge Freeman Marr Panther Pride 5K to kick things off, this festival boasts local music, arts and crafts, a car show, children’s activities, a barbecue cooking contest, concessions, and so much more.
W.J. Freeman Park, September 30-October 1
Mempho Music Festival
Mempho Music Festival (Photo: Courtesy Mempho Music Festival/Joshua Timmermans)
You know it, I know, the music at Mempho always hits the right note. I mean, how could it not with The Black Keys, Portugal. The Man, Bobby Rush, Amy LaVere, Elizabeth King, and so many more on the lineup?
Radians Amphitheater, Memphis Botanic Garden, September 30-October 2
OCTOBER
Wine on the River Memphis
You don’t have to be Carmen Sandiego and glide around the globe and flimflam every nation just to get a taste of the world. Instead, take your taste buds on a global journey as you sample wine from national and international vineyards along with bites of food from each cultural region.
Riverside Drive, October 1
King Biscuit Blues Festival (Photo: Courtesy King Biscuit Blues Festival)
King Biscuit Blues Festival
Hear ye, hear ye, King Biscuit Blues Festival is back for its annual three-day event, complete with the Flour Power 5K, the Tour da Delta bicycle race, and a Kansas City-sanctioned barbecue contest, all in historic Downtown Helena. Oh, and of course, there’ll be blues music — lots of blues music — on five stages.
Helena, AR, October 5-8
Soul of the City
Rock around the clock as Elmwood Cemetery’s residents take you through Memphis music history. You’ll meet Sister Thea Bowman, Grammy Award-winners, rock-and-roll stars, blues crooners, and more.
Bacon? Good. Bourbon? Good. Memphis Bacon & Bourbon Festival? Good. That’s all you need to know.
Metal Museum, October 7
Big River Fit Fest
Let’s get physical in an HR-approved way. For the love of all things good and pure, this fitness fest is designed to expose (again in an HR-approved way) and educate the Mid-South community of all ages and skill levels on fitness, wellness, and health.
Mud Island Park, October 8
Edge Motorfest
If Cars taught me anything, it’s that life is a highway, and I wanna ride it all night long, and if you’re goin’ my way, well, we’re driving to the Edge, for a day to check out over 150 cool cars, food trucks, vendor booths, and more. Ka-chow, am I right?
Edge Motor Museum, October 8
Shell Daze Fall Music Festival
The music doesn’t stop when it comes to the folks at Mempho. Hardly a week after the big shebang, they are putting on a two-day mini fest, with a lineup featuring Moon Taxi, Tab Benoit, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Daniel Donato, Star & Micey, and Garrison Starr.
Overton Park Shell, October 8-9
Southern Soul Music Festival
Jam to your favorite soulful hits and songs by Tucka, Calvin Richardson, Sir Charles Jones, Ronnie Bell, Theodis Ealey, Karen Wolfe, and FatDaddy.
The Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, October 8
Deep Blues Festival
Of all the shades of blue, deep blues are my favorite, and you can bet the Deep Blues Festival will be just the right shade of fun as it celebrates traditional and alternative blues with musicians from all over the world.
Clarksdale, MS, October 13-16
Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival
Are you a streetcar? ’Cause you look like your name should be Desire. Oh, is your name Tennessee? ’Cause you’re the only 10 I see. I promise I’m not a player, just a play-lover, and if you are too, meet me at the Tennessee Williams Festival, where we can enjoy screenings, lectures, and performances.
Clarksdale, MS, October 13-15
Fall Fest at the Nest
Soar like an eagle right over to Fall Fest at the Nest and enjoy food, fun, family, music and free admission. Shop vendors, enjoy a car show, chili cook-off, cornhole tournament, rides, food trucks, music fest, $10,000 cash raffle, and more.
St. Benedict at Auburndale, October 14-15
Memphis Brewfest
Fifty-something bottles of beer on the wall, 50-something bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, and you’ll still have 50-something breweries and cideries to sample from. That’s right, at the Memphis Brewfest, you can get unlimited samples from more than 50 breweries and cideries from around the world.
Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, October 15
Memphis Food & Wine Festival
It’s wine o’clock somewhere. Sorry. I know what you’re thinking — that’s so cheesy, borderline offensive. If you’re of a certain age, you might even invoke the word cheugy. But I bet you’ll quit your whining when you get to wining and dining at this festival which not only benefits the FedExFamilyHouse but also showcases local chefs alongside acclaimed national chefs and top global vineyards.
Memphis Botanic Garden, October 15
Shop Black Fest
Support more than 50 local Black-owned businesses of all types at this festival of fun vibes, music, and food.
Downtown Memphis, October 15
Soulsville USA Festival
Treat your soul to a day of music, food, educational activities, games for kids, and free admission to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, all to honor the city’s rich spiritual heritage and its roots in soul music.
Soulsville USA District at College and McLemore, October 15
Indie Memphis Film Festival
Why Netflix and chill when you could be less run-of-the-mill at an independent film festival? The Indie Memphis Film Festival will screen a range of features, documentaries, and short films from all over the world. Plus, festival-goers can enjoy live music, parties, free panels, meet-and-greets with special guests, and the Black Creators Forum. For more information, be sure to check out our Flyer cover story on October 19th.
Various locations, October 19-24
Cooper-Young Beerfest
I don’t know if you’ve heard but Taylor Swift is releasing a new album on October 21st, which is worth raising a beer mug to and downing a couple more after. And there’s no better place than the Cooper-Young Beerfest the next day.
Midtown Autowerks, October 22
RiverArtsFest
The Mid-South runneth over with art, and the Mississippi River floweth with inspiration — two phenomena that merge only once a year to create RiverArtsFest, where more than 180 artists from around the country can show off and sell their fine arts. As an added bonus, the festival features artist demonstrations, hands-on art activities for all ages, and local music.
Downtown Memphis, October 22-23
World Championship Hot Wing Fest
Wing wing wing! Sorry the old chicken can’t come to the phone right now. Why? ’Cause she’s dead. But that’s okay. She died a winner — a winner, winner chicken dinner — well, depending on how things shake up at the World Championship Hot Wing Fest. So don’t let the old chicken’s death be in vain and head on over to sample the competing wings, all while supporting The Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis. As always, the contest will kick off with the Memphis Second Line Jazz Band leading a flock of chickens in a parade through Tiger Lane and across the main stage to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, October 22
Dia de Los Muertos Parade and Festival (Photo: Courtesy Dia de Los Muertos Parade and Festival)
Dia de Los Muertos Parade and Festival
Dia de Los Muertos is deadicated to celebrating and honoring ancestors who lived before us. On this day, enjoy a parade beginning in Overton Square with floats and performers making their way to the plaza at the Brooks Museum, where you can enjoy art-making activities, face painting, music, costumed performers, dance performances, and more.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, October 29
Hambone Festival
Presented by artist and musician Stan Street, this music festival features a stellar lineup, a jam night, street parties, and Cruisin’ the Crossroads Car & Truck Show.
Hambone Art Gallery & the Shack Up Inn, Clarksdale, MS, October 29-November 1
NOVEMBER
Fieldaze Memphis
Unlike other fields during autumn harvests, Fieldaze doesn’t have any crop circles (or fields for that matter), but it will have UFOs — Unadulterated Fun Outside — with fitness classes, music, food, entertainment, a half marathon, a bike race, a kayak race, and more.
Call me a 6- to 12-month-old baby ’cause I’m gonna be crawling down Beale for this artcrawl that welcomes artists of all mediums and styles from Memphis, Nashville, and surrounding areas.
Beale Street, Downtown Memphis, November 5
Memphis Japan Festival
Celebrate the history, culture, and people of Japan at this festival featuring food, entertainment, games, crafts, vendors, exhibitors, and more.
Draft your friends and family to the only sporting event that matters — holiday shopping. There are no fantasy leagues, only the real deal, and if you can get it done before Thanksgiving, the glory is legendary. So get a head start and do it all in one stop at the Memphis Crafts & Drafts Festival where local vendors will show off their goods, and local craft beers will make the experience all the more enjoyable.
Crosstown Concourse, November 12-13
DECEMBER
Holiday Spirits: A Christmas Cocktail Festival
This holly, jolly cocktail festival is sure to get you in the Christmas spirit, with its festive … er … spirits, plus the big man in red himself.
Little Willie Farmer plays at the Juke Joint Festival. (Photo: Courtesy Juke Joint Festival)
For the past two years or so, our calendars have been a bit bare. But things are looking up as Memphis is going full-throttle with events once again. With food, fashion, art, music, and more, it’s time to celebrate the return of the fair and festival season!
APRIL
Bluff City Blues Crawfish Festival
Where crawfish are red and the music is blues, this festival is perfect for a rendezvous. Benefiting A Betor Way, the festival will have arts and crafts vendors, food, and music by Memphissippi Sounds, Mick Kolassa and the Endless Blues Band, the Eric Hughes Band, and more.
Carolina Watershed, April 16, tinyurl.com/bluffcityblues
Farm to Tap Festival
As part of an initiative to have more Tennessee brewers use more local farm products, the festival will showcase more than 20 guild member breweries, with tickets including unlimited samples, tasting cups, and great times with farmers, food trucks, vendors, and more.
Wiseacre Brewing, April 16, farmtotap.org
Shelby Forest Spring Fest
Shelby Forest Spring Fest is going to be a hoot — at least that’s what the owl there tells me. With live music, shopping, kids zone, food trucks, and wildlife exhibits and lectures throughout the day, you won’t want to miss out.
Shelby Farms, April 16, shelbyforestspringfest.com
Africa in April
Saluting the Republic of Malawi for its 35th festival, the family-friendly Africa in April event will be filled with live performances, food and merchandise vendors, and the International Diversity Parade.
Robert R. Church Park, April 20-24, africainapril.org
Double Decker Festival Oxford
In 1994, Oxford, Mississippi, made the bold decision to import a double-decker bus from England. A momentous occasion for the history books if you ask the Double Decker Festival, which speaks to the momentous-ness, with 100+ art and 20+ local food vendors, an impressive slew of musical performances, art demonstrations, and a Best Dressed Pet Contest.
Oxford Courthouse Square, April 22-23, doubledeckerfestival.com
Sashay! Memphis Fashion Week walks the runway. (Photo: Courtesy Sierra Hotel Images)
Memphis Fashion Week
Walk, walk, fashion, baby. You’re gonna want to work Memphis Fashion Week into your schedule. The live runway show will feature emerging designers and a special headlining designer guest, Amanda Uprichard.
Arrow Creative, April 22, memphisfashionweek.org
Juke Joint Festival
The Juke Joint Festival celebrates the Delta’s past and living history. Kicking off at 10 a.m., the day will include blues music, racing pigs, arts and crafts, food, and a dozen free outdoor stages of blues and roots music.
Clarksdale, MS, April 23, jukejointfestival.com
Taste the Rarity: Invitational Beer Festival
The best and weirdest beers from breweries all over the country are coming to Memphis to celebrate the seventh Taste the Rarity with unlimited drinking, plus live music, food trucks, and other nonsense.
Wiseacre Brewing, April 23, tastetherarity.com
Rajun Cajun Crawfish Festival has crawfish galore. (Photo: Courtesy Porter-Leath)
Rajun Cajun Crawfish Festival
Too few occasions present themselves when you can bob for crawfish, race crawfish, and eat crawfish, but you’ll have the chance at Porter-Leath’s festival.
Downtown Memphis, April 24, porterleath.org/rajun-cajun-home
Art in the Loop (Photo: Courtesy Greg Belz)
Art in the Loop
Some of the region’s most talented artists will set up shop at this festival celebrating the arts, where you can also enjoy live music and food trucks.
Ridgeway Loop Road, April 29-May 1, artintheloop.org
Storyfest
Forty Memphians, ranging in ages from 9 to 93, will share their stories through live performances at the Halloran Centre. Engagement activities and community reflections will follow at the free fest.
Halloran Centre, April 29-30, orpheum-memphis.com/event/storyfest
May Day Festival and Memphis Children’s Theatre Festival
Theatre Memphis celebrates a century of entertaining with live entertainment, an array of artists’ and artisans’ booths, food trucks, and more. On the same day, Theatre Memphis will host the Children’s Theatre Festival as a pay-what-you-can event.
Theatre Memphis, April 30, theatrememphis.org
MAY
Beale Street Music Festival
Megan Thee Stallion, Weezer, Van Morrison, Lil Wayne, and many more (60+ artists) are coming for the city’s legendary springtime music festival.
Fairgrounds in Liberty Park, April 29-May 1, memphisinmay.org/BSMF
Memphis in May International Festival
For the month of May, this annual festival brings the world to Memphis and Memphis to the world, and this year, it is saluting Ghana through cultural events and performances, museum and gallery exhibits, films, luncheons, and a gala.
Various locations, May 1-31, memphisinmay.org
Bookstock: Memphis Area Authors’ Festival
You’re gonna want to book it to Memphis Public Libraries for this festival of author talks, activities for teens and children, and 60 local authors’ exhibits.
Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, May 7, memphislibrary.org/bookstock
World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest
When May rolls in, Memphis knows that’s the cue to start getting our tummies ready for what USAToday calls the “Most Prestigious Barbecue Contest.” For four days, the best of the best barbecue buffs will compete in such categories as Ribs, Shoulder, and Whole Hog, as well as Hot Wings, Sauce, and “Anything But Pork.”
Fairgrounds in Liberty Park, May 11-14, memphisinmay.org/WCBCCtickets
Bluff City Fair
This fair isn’t bluffing when it comes to fun and excitement. You’ll be entertained with a majestic thrill show, rides galore, fair food, and an all-day petting zoo.
Liberty Bowl Stadium, May 20-30, bluffcityfair.com
DreamFest Weekend
A dream is a wish your heart makes, but this festival is doing more than just wishing for its dream of unity, collaboration, and community. For this three-day event, an impressive array of artists will come together to promote Memphis music and artist collaboration.
Overton Park Shell, May 20-22, dreamfestweekend.com
Memphis Greek Festival
Cue the groans from children as parents inevitably evoke the phrase “It’s all Greek to me” at this family-friendly festival with scrumptious Greek food, tours of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, live music, artisan booths, and activities for kids.
Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, May 20-21, memphisgreekfestival.com
Beale Street Artcrawl Festival
Before the barcrawlers creep onto the street we call Beale, artcrawlers can go amuck at this pop-up market of art and merchandise.
Beale Street, May 21, bealestreetartcrawlfestival.com
Memphis Mushroom Festival
All fungi, fungals, and funpals are invited to this five-day, four-night camping festival that celebrates the foods and fungi grown in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. With speakers, workshops, forays through the forest, yoga, dancing, cooking classes, and tastings — let’s just say this festival covers a lot of ground.
Shelby Forest Park, May 26-30, memphismushroomfest.com
JUNE
Memphis Italian Festival
Is it sauce or gravy? Well, the folks at this fest have taken a side, seeing that the festival boasts a Spaghetti Gravy Contest. In addition to their food-related competitions, the event will have live music, along with art vendors and, of course, tons of great food.
Marquette Park, June 2-4, memphisitalianfestival.org
Memphis Pride Fest Weekend
Spanning four days, the celebration includes a Drag N Drive, dance party, parade, and full festival with two stages, more than 150 vendors, food trucks, and so much more.
Various locations, June 2-5, midsouthpride.org/pridefest
Memphis Margarita Festival
Sometimes all life gives you is limes, and all you can do is make margaritas. Thankfully, the city’s best margarita-makers are ready to inspire you at this festival where you can sample margaritas from your favorite restaurants alongside awesome entertainment.
Overton Square, June 4, memphismargaritafestival.com
Craft Food & Wine Festival
Showcasing scrumptious, locally-produced breads, cheeses, fruit preserves, cured meats, and more, this event will raise funds for Church Health.
The Columns, June 5, craftfoodandwinefest.com
MidSouth Nostalgia Festival
Veteran actors from your favorite classic movies and TV shows — from the likes of Leave It To Beaver and Laramie — are appearing in person to talk about their careers and give out autographs at this fest.
Whispering Woods Hotel and Conference Center, Olive Branch, MS, June 9-11, midsouthnostalgiafestival.com
Memphis Vegan Festival
If you’re living on the veg, you’ll want to check out this day full of vegan food, live entertainment, and a marketplace featuring local businesses, plant-based health and beauty products, and clothing.
Pipkin Building,, June 18, facebook.com/901veganfestival
Tri-State Black Pride Weekend
Tri-State Black Pride presents workshops, lectures, a drag show, stand-up comedy, and a Sunday Funday of live music.
Various locations, June 16-19, tristateblackpride.com
Bluff City Balloon Jamboree
Scheduled for Father’s Day weekend, the Bluff City Balloon Jamboree will delight its attendees with hot air balloon rides, a balloon glow event, carnival attractions, arts and crafts, and live music.
Shelby Farms Park, June 17-19, bluffcityballoonjamboree.com
With Juneteenth being declared a federal holiday in the U.S. last year, the 29th Annual Memphis Juneteenth Festival promises to celebrate African-American culture, food, entertainment, and the overall significance of the holiday. Along with food, music, and entertainment, festival-goers can look forward to the annual Juneteenth Career and Health Fair Expo, the Memphis Juneteenth Lifetime Achievement Awards, the Juneteenth Ultimate Dance Showdown, Food Truck Sunday, and Praise Fest at Juneteenth.
Health Sciences Park, June 18-19, juneteenthfreedommemphis.com
Mid-South Air Show
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s … yeah, it’s a plane. While Superman might not be in the sky for the Mid-South Airshow, the U.S. Navy Blue Angels are just as impressive, featuring military demonstrations, aerobatic performances, static display aircraft, and local emergency response helicopters.
Millington-Memphis Airport, June 18-19, midsouthairshow.com
Memphis Crafts & Drafts
Shopping is exercise. Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. So if you don’t want summertime happiness to be smothered by rising temperatures, you’ll want to head over to this market of local makers and artists. It’s called the transitive property, right?
Crosstown Concourse Plaza and Atrium, June 25, memphiscraftsanddrafts.com
July
Summer Cocktail Festival
Shake it up a bit this July with this epic dance party with summer-inspired cocktails, fresh local food, photobooth ops, and fun activities.
Overton Square, July 29, memphisfestivals.com/summercocktailfestival
AUGUST
Memphis Chicken & Beer Fest
If, like the Zac Brown Band, you appreciate your chicken fried, a cold beer on a Saturday night, a pair of jeans that fit just right, and the radio up, you’ll appreciate the Memphis Chicken & Beer Fest where you can get all that — except the jeans. With live music, interactive games, a bungee run, and more, tickets include more than 90 beverage samples, and a portion will benefit the Dorothy Day House.
Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, August 6, memphischickenandbeer.com
Elvis Week 2022
This August marks the 45th anniversary of Elvis’ death and the 44th anniversary of the first Elvis Week. What began as a small group of fans gathering at Graceland’s gates has turned into the multi-day phenomenon we know today. Highlights from the week include personal tours of Graceland led by Priscilla Presley and Jerry Schilling, the Candlelight Vigil, the Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest, and nightly parties.
Graceland, August 9-17, graceland.com/elvis-week
SEPTEMBER
Delta Fair & Music Festival
Carnival rides, live music, attractions, livestock shows, oh boy, there’s so much going on every day at the Delta Fair.
Agricenter International, September 2-11, deltafest.com
Germantown Festival
This festival is one of the few places in town where you’re guaranteed to see a weenie and say, “Aww, look how cute.” In addition to its Running of the Weenies race, this festival of arts has children’s activities, rides and games, entertainment, a car exhibit, community displays, and more.
Germantown Civic Club Complex, September 10-11, germantownfest.com
Cooper-Young Festival
There’s no need to stay cooped up in your house when you can join in on the fun at the Cooper-Young Festival, where art, music, and crafts come together to celebrate Memphis’ culture and heritage.
Cooper-Young, September 17, cooperyoungfestival.com
Gonerfest 19
Music enthusiasts won’t be able to resist Goner Records’ siren call, and yes, somehow, this siren call reaches all the way to Australia. Be on the lookout for the lineup.
Railgarten, September 22-25, goner-records.com/pages/gonerfest
Mid-South Fair
At this must-do event since 1856, fair-goers can enjoy more than 50 rides, an array of ground acts, and of course favorite fair fare — funnel cakes, turkey legs, candied apples; you name it, they’ve perfected it.
Landers Center, September 22-October 2, landerscenter.com/mid-south-fair
Mighty Roots Music
Whatta fest, whatta fest, whatta mighty good fest. Mhhm, this event is back for year two, taking place at the same spot the famous blues singer-songwriter Muddy Waters began his love of blues music. The lineup will be announced April 11th, so keep an eye out.
Stovall, MS, September 23-24, mightrootsmusicfestival.com
Latin Fest
We may not be talking about Bruno once September rolls around, but we should be talking about Latinx representation year-round. Though this fest takes place for just a day, it captures that spirit of appreciation with live Latin music, Latin food and drinks, crafts, and fun for everyone.
Overton Square, Saturday, September 24, overtonsquare.com
Pink Palace Crafts Fair
The Pink Palace Crafts Fair is back to celebrate its Big 5-O with 150 artists from around the country, ready for you to explore their works.
Museum of Science & History, September 24-26, moshmemphis.com
Mempho Music Festival
Mempho never disappoints, and you know it. Three days of music’s biggest names playing amid the natural beauty of Memphis Botanic Garden. The lineup will be released next week and tickets are already selling fast.
Radians Amphitheater at Memphis Botanic Garden, September 30-October 2, memphofest.com
OCTOBER
King Biscuit Blues Festival
Founded in 1986, this fest celebrates blues music with the highest regard across five stages; plus you’ll see a variety of buskers. Of course the three-day event wouldn’t be complete without the Flour Power 5K, the Tour da Delta bicycle race, and a Kansas City-sanctioned barbecue contest, all in historic Downtown Helena.
Helena, AR, October 5-8, kingbiscuitfestival.com
Memphis Bacon & Bourbon Festival
You might ask, what’s shakin’ over at this festival? Well, bacon, that’s what’s shaking — bacon and bacon-inspired dishes to sample. Oh, and bourbon, lots of bourbon.
Metal Museum, October 7, memphisbaconandbourbon.com
Edge Motorfest
Start your engines and gear up for this day of more than 150 cars, food trucks, vendor booths, and more in the Edge District. Trust us when we say, this’ll be more than a pit stop in your weekend activities.
Edge Motor Museum, October 8, edgemotormuseum.com
Soulsville USA Festival
We all know Memphis wouldn’t be Memphis without its roots in soul music, and this festival aims to remind us of that fact. In addition to educational and interactive activities, the festival will include live music, food trucks, vendors, games for kids, and free admission to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.
Soulsville USA District, October 14-16, soulsvilleusafestival.com
Memphis Food & Wine Festival
Benefiting FedExFamilyHouse, the Memphis Food & Wine Festival, which showcases local chefs alongside acclaimed national chefs and top global vineyards, will leave your tummy so full and happy that you’ll miss the festival dearly until its return.
Memphis Botanic Garden, October 15, memphisfoodwinefestival.org
Indie Memphis Film Festival
If you’re a bit more introverted, a lot of the events on this list will probably leave you needing a day to recover from the social exhaustion. And while it’s worth it in exchange for all the fun you’ll have, what if I told you there was a festival where you can have fun while being your introverted self? Yep, at this one, you get to be a semi-couch potato and watch indie film after indie film to your heart’s content while in the company of your fellow movie-lovers. Plus, enjoy behind-the-scenes panels and discussions.
Midtown, October 19-24, indiememphis.org
World Championship Hot Wing Fest
A championship that is everything we wish it to be — dare I say, it’s the wind beneath our wings, there to bestow the glory upon the best chicken wings, content to let the winners shine and the festival-goers sample the fare, all the while supporting The Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis.
Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, October 22, worldwingfest.com
RiverArtsFest
The largest juried artist market and urban festival in the Mid-South, the RiverArtsFest brings more than 180 artists from around the country to show off and sell their fine arts. As an added bonus, the festival features artist demonstrations, hands-on art activities for all ages, and local music.
Downtown Memphis, October 22-23, riverartsmemphis.org
Dia de Los Muertos Parade and Festival celebrates the Day of the Dead. (Photo: Angel Ortez)
Dia de Los Muertos Parade and Festival
If you think Dia de Los Muertos is Mexico’s version of Halloween, you’re dead wrong. The Brooks Museum and Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre will show you what the day is all about: honoring ancestors and celebrating the cycle of life and death. A parade begins in Overton Square with floats and performers making their way to the plaza at the Brooks Museum, where you can enjoy art-making activities, face painting, music, costumed performers, and more.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, October 29, brooksmuseum.com
Reel Rock: Black Ice won both the jury and audience award for Hometowner Feature at Indie Memphis 2021.
The Indie Memphis Film Festival announced the winners of its festival awards for 2021 in an online ceremony broadcast from Black Lodge last night. The 24th annual festival wrapped on Monday, October 25th, with screenings of Spencer and the films chosen for the Hometowner Narrative Shorts Competition.
Four films pulled off the rare feat of winning both the jury and audience awards. Queen of Glory by director Nana Mensah unified the Narrative Feature category. Larry Flynt for President was chosen as Best Documentary Feature by both audience and jury. Reel Rock: Black Ice took home both of the Hometowner Feature awards, while “The Devil Will Run” by Noah Glenn did the same in the Hometowner Narrative Shorts.
Memphis filmmaker Jordan Danelz shared two Audience Awards for his work with other directors: one for Hometowner Music Video “Buzzsaw Kick” by Idi X Teco, which Danelz co-directed with Sharrika Evans; and the other for the documentary short “Firebird Rising,” which he co-directed with David Roseberry.
The Hometowner Music Video Jury Award went to Don Lifted’s “Brain Fluid”, directed by Nubia Yasin and Joshua Canon. Director Aaron Baggett’s “Nuestra” won the Hometowner Documentary Short jury award. Former University of Memphis film professor Angelo Madsen Minax won the Departures Audience Award for his experimental documentary North by Current.
Two film proposals, both documentaries, were awarded IndieGrants worth $15,000 in cash and in-kind filmmaking services: “I Am” by Jessica Chaney and “Soil and Clay” by Emmanuel Amido.
While the audience awards are determined by popular ballot, and the jury prizes are awarded by panels of filmmakers and industry experts, the festival prizes are voted on by the staff and board of Indie Memphis. The Vision Award, honoring the service of longtime indie film supporters, went to Mark Jones, the filmmaker and philanthropist who originated the IndieGrant program. Jones used the occasion of his acceptance speech to announce a new grant program for LGBTQ+ filmmakers, which will begin next year. The Indie Award, which goes to crew members who have gone above and beyond the call of duty, went to cinematographer Jason Thibodeaux. The Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award went to Andrew Infante for Ferny & Luca. The Ron Tibbett Excellence In Filmmaking Award went to Yasmine Mathurin for One of Ours.
