Day 3 of Indie Memphis 2021 begins noon on Friday with the first film of the narrative competition, I Want To Talk About Duras by French filmmaker Claire Simon, screening at Circuit Playhouse. The film is based on the relationship between French novelist and filmmaker Marguerite Duras and Yann Andréa, who was thirty years her junior. The dialog is largely based on transcripts of interviews Andréa (Swann Arlaud) did with a journalist (Emmanuelle Devos) after Duras’ death.
Melvin Van Peebles, the polymath who paved the way for contemporary Black cinema, passed away in September at age 89. Indie Memphis is paying tribute to the writer/director/actor with two of his films. The first screens at 3 p.m. at Playhouse on the Square. Don’t Play Us Cheap is an adaptation of Van Peebles’ Broadway musical (I told you he was a polymath—he was also an astronomer) about a pair of demons who try to infiltrate a Harlem house party.
7 p.m. at Playhouse on the Square is a Halloween-y treat: Juju Stories is a horror anthology from the Nigerian collective Surreal16. Its three stories, each by different directors, are all based on African folklore and urban legends involving supernatural occurrences.
At the drive-in, the horror theme continues with the Hometowner After Dark Shorts, a collection of horror, sci-fi, and genre films by Memphis directors. With “Office 86” by fight choreographer turned director Jyo Carolino and “Shaolin Blues” by Ryan McCrory, you know there’s going to be kung fu happening in this bloc.
The second film at the drive-in (yes, I love typing that) is Alien on Stage. Director Lucy Harvey says her career as a filmmaker began rather serendipitously. “I moved to London when I was 23 and fell in with a group of friends — a group of jazz musicians, actually, which is pretty cool for me. One of them got a new girlfriend who lived in Dorset, and he came back one day with a photograph of this poster that he’d taken while he was shopping in a supermarket.”
The poster was for a local theater production of Alien — yes, that Alien, the 1979 space horror that put Ridley Scott on the map — done in the pantomime tradition. “Every small town across [England] has a pantomime, and it has a very particular formula, and you’re taken there from a very young age.”
Normally, pantos, as they’re called, stick to time-tested formulas, like the story of Robin Hood, performed by amateur actors from the community — in this case, a group of bus drivers armed with homemade props and questionable acting skills. Harvey says she and her friends were so intrigued that no-budget amateurs would attempt to do something so ambitious that they made the two-hour trek to the Dorset community center where the panto group was putting on the show to a sparse crowd. “It was a mixture of absolutely terrible, but somehow brilliant and genius. And you watch it going, ‘How is this so good? What is the magic ingredient here?’ You have to sort of take it all in and realize that there’s a level of excellence going on amongst all of the amateur ingenuity of it. It’s just brave and tenacious, and it lacks a self-consciousness that would have prevented other people from doing it. And it ended up being so funny as well.”
The Londoners were so enamored with the play that they managed to get it booked in Leicester Square Theatre in the West End theater district. Harvey enlisted Danielle Kummer, who had some practical filmmaking experience, to document the group’s preparations to take their show on the road, and their triumphant, sold-out debut on one of London’s most prestigious stages. The filmmakers are thoroughly charmed by the cast and crew, all ordinary people who are a bit baffled by all the attention. “I think that’s why it’s so beautiful, because it’s such an unexpected combination of things that you couldn’t contrive. It’s just a rare, rare collection of people.”
Alien on Stage has been a huge hit on the festival circuit, playing in 18 countries. Like her friends from Dorset, Harvey says she has been taken aback by the reaction to her work. “We’ve had a lot of really amazing reviews where people feel quite touched by the film, and there’s been one cynical review. Just one. And I always wonder about that person.”
For scheduling, tickets, and more information about Indie Memphis 2021, visit the Indie Memphis website.
Cinematographer Malik Martin faces the elements in "Black Ice."(Photo by Champ Miller)
Day 2 of Indie Memphis 2021 is a documentary delight. It begins at Playhouse on the Square at 6 p.m. with the Hometowner Feature A Ballet Season, directed by University of Memphis film professors David Goodman and Steven J. Ross. It’s a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the 2018-2019 Ballet Memphis season, which saw founder and longtime CEO Dorothy Gunther Pugh’s retirement. You can read more about A Ballet Season in this article that I wrote earlier this year.
A Ballet Season is paired with the short music documentary “Tin Sandwich Blues: A Musician’s Journey,” which was directed by Erik Jambor, who headed up Indie Memphis from 2008-2014 before moving on to a position at the BendFilm Festival in Bend, Oregon.
North By Current
Across the street at Circuit Playhouse is another film by a name familiar with Memphis film followers. North By Current is an experimental documentary by Angelo Madsen Minax, a former University of Memphis film teacher whose Kairos Dirt & The Errant Vacuum won Best Hometowner Feature at Indie Memphis 2017.
In North By Current, Minax, now a professor at the University of Vermont, returns to his hometown of Grayling, Michigan (population 1,600). “The whole film is about time travel, really,” says Minax.
North By Current is a kind of character study, only instead of focusing on meaningful incidents in one person’s life, the character being studied is Minax’s entire family. During the five or so years Minax has been working on the doc, the family faced death, divorce, poverty, addiction, and abuse. “When I talk about my role in the film, I talk about myself as a character,” says Minax. “We only have an hour and half, so you have to really reduce human beings to characters, and create those. Obviously, I create characters with a lot of density and nuance and texture, but it’s still an active reduction.”
Even though Minax is in full control of the film, he doesn’t necessarily present himself as a reliable narrator, as he sometimes presents his own memories, then allows his family to contradict them, and criticize his behavior in the process. “There’s no objective truth, right?” says Minax. “Our ethics are also subjective. I try really hard in the film to not reduce certain behaviors to be representative of an ethical or moral stance. Part of what I wanted to do was have this constant questioning of what is truth, but also what is ethical or what is unethical. I complicate the idea of morality as not simply good and bad.”
Apropos for a film he calls “emotionally raw,” the work features music by another former Memphian, Julien Baker. North By Current is a work of radical honesty. “I think the hardest part was just constantly recalibrating what it was going to be, and what it could do in the world. Every time I would shoot, the situation would change, I would change, the story would change, or something would happen and I would have to recalculate what I had intended to do. A lot of that is just ’cause there’s so much upheaval and drama unfolding in my family … Constantly being flexible and calibrating and being really open to chance and whatever the footage gave me, and not trying to make the footage look or feel a certain way, but really working with what I have, that was a huge challenge with the film. The scariest thing ever was showing it to my family. I’m like, ‘Please don’t hate me!’”
Showing at 9:30 p.m. at Playhouse is Larry Flynt for President by director Nadia Szold, which features never-before-seen footage shot during the controversial Hustler magazine publisher’s quixotic campaign for office after a gunman’s bullet left him paralyzed and wheelchair-bound.
At Circuit is Black Ice, another Hometowner documentary that is part of a long-running series of climbing documentaries called Reel Rock produced by Sender films. Directors Zachary Barr and Peter Mortimer contacted Malik Martin to shoot the film when they decided to spotlight Memphis Rox, the Soulsville climbing gym founded by filmmaker Tom Shadyac. “I got put on Black Ice because at the time I was the photographer for Memphis Rox,” says Martin.
The freelance photojournalist became interested in climbing after doing an interview for the Tri-State Defender with Memphis Rox’s Chris Dean, who is also a producer on the film. “I’m from South Memphis. My grandmother’s house is like three minutes’ walk from the gym. So when I came in, I was perplexed. ‘What is this? It’s in my neighborhood. Oh my God, my neighborhood’s gone!’ But through interviewing Chris and finding out more about it, I was like, ‘Okay, that’s cool.’ I started climbing because, as a freelance photo journalist, I kind of had more free time than I wanted.”
Martin tagged along as a group of Black youth from the neighborhood embarked on an ice climbing expedition in Bozeman, Montana, with mentors Dr. Fred Campbell, Monoah Ainuu, and Conrad Anker, who Martin describes as “the Michael Jordan of climbing.” The young Memphians, some of whom had never left the city before, were forced to work together to overcome obstacles such as subfreezing temperatures, altitude sickness, and stinky camp toilets as Anker led them to a hundred-foot-tall frozen waterfall. “A lot of climbing films kind of follow the same narrative of: I tried this, I failed, I trained for many years, then I conquered it. Our film is completely outside of that. There’s not an end goal. Getting to the top is cool, but it’s the things that you went through in your personal life. How did you keep going past that to even get to the base of the mountain, to even begin to climb?”
Bryce Christian Thompson stars as Shah in "The Devil Will Run."
For a person who’s never been a film critic in any real capacity (okay, I thoroughly bashed a couple films while on my college newspaper staff a lifetime ago), I was both eager and anxious to take on the task of covering a snippet of what’s on offer in the Indie Memphis Film Festival.
The selection of eight short films in the Hometowner Narrative Shorts Competition — clocking in around an hour and half total —will close out the festival on Monday, October 25th, at Crosstown Theater. They run the gamut from weird and whimsical to thought-provoking and heart-tugging.
Kayla Myers, Indie Memphis Film Festival programmer, says, “One of the first things that struck Brighid [Wheeler] and I in programming is that almost all of the filmmakers in this bloc are filmmakers whose work we’ve seen before, but it showcases an incredible amount of growth and daring choices.
“I think people will be excited to see this work, especially with them being able to screen in person, since so many of our local filmmakers have only really been screening virtually. The pandemic has been such a trying time for all of us, but there are some bright spots in the fact that this work was created, a lot of it, during the pandemic, and we get to showcase it.”
Here’s a rundown of what to expect.
Director Laura Jean Hocking received the first-ever Indie Memphis Women’s Short Film grant for “Hot Singles.” The film opens with Daisy (Shannon Walton) seeking shelter from an apocalyptic event in a flower shop basement. Alone and unable to get cell service, she begins to unravel as days pass. A glimmer of hope arrives as she sees a flickering bar of signal strength — but there’s just one person she’s able to get through to, and unfortunately it’s not her father.
Jean Jackson directs “The Nest,” a Beats by Dre Black Creators short film, and a five-minute glimpse into the cyclical and mundane life of Byrdie (played at various ages by Chelsea Dargba, Autumn Whetstone, and Sallay Fofanah), who’s trapped in a repetitive loop of daily routines, alone in her room — until one day she chooses to venture outside, ready to embrace all that lies beyond the door.
2019’s Best Hometowner Narrative Short winner Kyle Taubken is back with “In a Bad Way.” The film introduces us to Mike (Keith Johnson) after he’s lost big at the casino. The money was meant for his kids’ Christmas presents, and he has a chance to make it right. Will the gambling addict save Christmas?
In “Beale Street Blues,” director Daniel R. Ferrell explores a world of crooked cops on the streets of Memphis. As an FBI investigation is underway, officer Arthur Breedan (Keith Johnson) enlists his cousin Floyd (Edward Fields) to assist in his ongoing scheme of robbing drug dealers. Though Floyd is hesitant, Breedan pushes, and things go a little too far — potentially bringing the rogue cop one step closer to justice. “Beale Street Blues” was funded by the 2020 Indie Grant for Proof of Concept, which means Ferrell intends to expand it into a feature film.
Joshua Woodcock directs “Main Street,” starring JS Tate, who is homeless and living along Main Street after losing his wife. His lonesome days are spent reading through her old journal pages, collecting change from passersby, and having solo lunches in the park. Until he meets an unexpected friend who, for a time, brings much-needed companionship.
“Chocolate Galaxy” is a futuristic musical journey.
Noah Glenn’s “The Devil Will Run” is a standout among this hometowner selection. Bryce Christian Thompson stars as 7-year-old Shah, who is convinced a hole in his backyard is a portal to hell, and whose brother teases him for it. After a precious and pivotal backyard scene with his best friend Nella (Posie Steinmetz), Shah confronts his fears. “The Devil Will Run” was a 2019 Indie Grant recipient and was co-written by Glenn and IMAKEMADBEATS.
“Chocolate Galaxy” (directed by Blake Heimbach, Ryan Peel, and David Parks) is — and I’m pulling this directly from the Indie Memphis site — “an Afrofuturistic Space Opera.” That’s an apt description for the Black Mirror-esque musical journey that takes Fuzzy Slippers (David Parks) to Sector 9 for a night out, where he meets — and falls for — The Goddess (Taylor Williams). Set design, costumes, and interspersed animation transport the viewer — moonrocks or not.
In “Watch,” directed by Mars Lee McKay, Sarah (Adrienne Lamb) finds an old tube TV on the street while she’s taking out the trash. It mysteriously powers on, and through shifting scenes and static, has a message for her.
The Indie Memphis Hometowner Narrative Shorts Competition films are available for online viewing Oct. 20th-25th and will screen at Crosstown Theater Oct. 25th beginning at 9 p.m., $10.
Don’t call it a comeback! The 24th edition of the Indie Memphis Film Festival is returning to theaters October 20th-25th. Like all organizations trying to plan large events in 2021, the specter of Covid hung over the planning process. “I’ve gotten out of the business trying to predict the pandemic,” says Knox Shelton, who took over as Indie Memphis executive director earlier this year. “When we were having initial conversations at the beginning of summer, we were really optimistic about what the world would look like in the fall. And then, of course, toward the end of summer, we started to see our numbers creep back up. So, to use the most boring word used over the past year and a half, we had to pivot and keep trying to figure out how we were going to bring the community together for the festival in the safest and healthiest way possible.”
Last year’s festival took place mostly online, with virtual screenings hosted by the Memphis-based cinema services company Eventive, supplemented by socially distanced, in-person programs at the Malco Summer Drive-In and Shelby Farms. The virtual event succeeded beyond expectations, expanding the reach of the regional festival to international audiences. That success means that online offerings will continue to be a part of Indie Memphis. This year, you can buy a virtual pass and view dozens of feature-length and short narrative films and documentaries without setting foot in a theater.
With Covid case numbers on the decline after the cresting of the Delta wave, the decision to go ahead with a scaled-down, in-person festival, while requiring masks and proof of vaccination for attendees, looks sound. Screenings will take place at the Crosstown Theater, Playhouse on the Square, The Circuit Playhouse, and the Malco Summer Drive-In.
For Shelton and festival staff, online and in-person means running two film festivals at the same time. “It’s been challenging,” Shelton says. “I think putting on a festival of this size with the team we have is always going to be challenging, but it’s also the team that’s made it go really well. I think the wealth of experience we have with [artistic director] Miriam Bale, [director of artist development and youth film] Joseph Carr, and [director of marketing] Macon Wilson has been incredible and made my transition very smooth and easy.”
Art House Revival Before Shelton was hired as Indie Memphis executive director, he was the head of the nonprofit Literacy Mid-South — and a big fan of the kind of independently produced, art house films that are the festival’s reason for being. “As somebody who’s just enjoyed Indie Memphis over the past few years, finally getting a little behind-the-scenes look at Miriam and her work has been just really fun for me,” he says. “I just have so much respect for what Miriam has brought to the organization over the years.”
A Ballet Season
Bale is responsible for putting together a sprawling program of narrative features, documentaries, and shorts from all over the world, most of which would not otherwise appear in theaters. Wednesday night’s opening feature is Red Rocket by six-time Independent Spirit award winner Sean Baker. The director’s debut feature, Tangerine, a film famously shot on an iPhone about Los Angeles transgender street life, opened Indie Memphis 2015. “We’re really thrilled that Sean Baker is coming for opening night,” says Bale. “He’s such a fan of art house cinema, festivals, and theatrical screenings in general. The film is so much fun, but it definitely has deeper elements.”
Simon Rex, an MTV VJ and former porn star who raps under the name Dirt Nasty, is the unlikely star of Red Rocket. “It’s about the worst person you’ve ever met, who’s also one of the most charming people you’ve ever met. Sean Baker is just brilliant at casting,” says Bale. The director found “theater and first-time actors and they all come together for this fresh energy.”
For the closing night film, Bale landed Spencer by Chilean director Pablo Larraín, whom she describes as one of her favorite filmmakers. Spencer deals with a critical few days in the life of Princess Diana as her marriage to Prince Charles was coming apart. Diana is played by Kristen Stewart, whose performance as the disenchanted princess is already garnering Oscar buzz.
Among the other buzzy showcase screenings at Indie Memphis is Drive My Car by Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, the film tells the story of Watari (Toko Miura), a young woman hired to chauffeur Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), an actor and playwright who is trying to mount a production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima while coming to terms with the death of his wife. “Drive My Car is just one of those films that you see, and it just lasts with you for so long,” Bale says. “It just sort of shifts something in you a little bit.”
Black Ice (Photo: Champ Miller)
Killer Memphis Movies There are five made-in-Memphis feature films in the Hometowner competition this year: the documentaries, Reel Rock 15: Black Ice by Zachary Barr and Peter Mortimer, A Ballet Season by David Goodman and Steven J. Ross, and The Lucky 11 by George Tillman; and the narrative features, Life Ain’t Like the Movies by Robert Mychal Patrick Butler and Killer by A.D. Smith.
The horror-tinged Killer is a good fit for a festival that happens the week before Halloween. Smith says the movie was a product of the pandemic. “It’s a combination of being stuck in the house for days and wanting to do something creative.”
Life Ain’t Like The Movies
When Killer opens, Brandon (Larshay Watson), a med student, has invited his friend Sam (Aric Delashmit) to stay at his house during the pandemic lockdown, which they think will last about two weeks. But unbeknownst to Brandon, Sam has spread the word to their circle of college chums and stocked up for a party fortnight. Brandon becomes the reluctant host to 10 diverse friends, played by Memphis actors Madison Alexander, Shannon Walton, Terrence Brock, Divine Dent, Jeneka Jenae, Charisse Bland, and Blain Jewell.
Killer
At first, it’s fun, as the friends treat it like an unexpected spring break. But as the pandemic wears on, tensions rise. The party game they play, where one of the players is secretly a killer and the others have to guess which one is picking them off, becomes real when they are all drugged and wake up tied to chairs in a circle. Smith wrings tension out of the claustrophobic situation, as the party dwindles and bodies pile up. But there’s also an undercurrent of black humor, such as the moment one player who has been falsely accused uses their last words to say, “I told you it wasn’t me!”
Killer has the trappings of a slasher movie, but at its heart, it’s an old-fashioned, country house mystery like Murder on the Orient Express. “Some of my first memories are drinking coffee as a 5-year-old with my grandmother and watching Perry Mason,” says Smith. “I love whodunits like Scream. As a mystery buff, I’ve always wanted to make a mystery, but I never knew how I was going to be able to do that. I don’t have the budget to make a big production, so when the pandemic hit and we were forced to stay inside, it just took my mind to a different place. … I was a writer before I ever picked up a camera. I’ve been writing for at least 15 years, learning how to structure a story and create characters. Even though we were in one location, I wanted everything to be fresh, every time we went to a different room, every time we changed perspective.”
After writing the story in lockdown and leading his cast in extensive rehearsals over Zoom, Killer was shot in five days last fall. Smith credits assistant director Sarah Fleming with making sure the shoot was productive. “She taught me so much,” he says. “I don’t think I could have done it in five days without her. I knew what I wanted, but she knows so much more technical jargon than I did. She was able to very simply go back and forth with my DP. Sometimes when the cast was getting a little off track, she wouldn’t have any problem getting people back on. She was like, ‘I want to make sure you can just do your thing, and make sure everything looks good.’”
Bunker
Bunker Mentality “I have been interested in the Cold War and covert architecture for many years,” says director Jenny Perlin.
Perlin, who grew up in rural Ohio, recalls finding out that the farm where her family bought their Christmas trees was built on top of a secret nuclear facility. From 1948 to 1990, hundreds of such secret sites designed to withstand Soviet atomic bombs were constructed all over America. In the years that followed, many of the missile silos, munitions storage sites, and command bunkers were decommissioned. “I knew that some of these structures had been repurposed,” Perlin says. “I wanted to meet some of the people who were living inside them.”
Bunker is a series of portraits of men who have adopted this peculiar lifestyle. There’s a 40-something, three-time divorcé who sleeps on a bare mattress inside a bomb storage bunker; a 70-year-old counterculture fugitive who has made a castle out of a missile silo; and a real estate developer who is selling “survival condos” where the 1 percent can escape apocalypse with their wealth and privilege intact. “Everyone uses the term ‘threat scenario,’” says Perlin. Each one of the people in the film has a different threat scenario they are primarily concerned with in their lives, and it’s only through listening to them talk in the film that you kind of get a sense of which one they’re more partial to. So for some people it’s water, for other people it’s asteroids, and for other people it’s civil unrest.
“I think what’s fascinating to me is how bunker culture — safety, escape, prepper world, what-have-you — can be found in all parts of the political and social spectrum. Here in New York, you have a lot of young people moving upstate and starting off-grid solar and wind farms. So in many ways, when people come to these places, they’re looking for a story that will give some meaning to their lives.”
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair If you’ve heard the terms “creepypasta” — and are not “extremely online”— it was probably in connection with the Slender Man case. Two pre-teen girls from Wisconsin stabbed a classmate 19 times, claiming to be under the control of a malevolent supernatural entity they had read about online. Director Jane Schoenbrun says creepypasta (a portmanteau of “copy and paste”) is “a giant collective of amateur storytellers who essentially tell each other ghost stories, try to develop those ghost stories collaboratively, and try to convince each other that these ghost stories that they’re telling each other are true, that they’re really happening to them.”
In Schoenbrun’s debut feature, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, a teenager named Casey (Anna Cobb) stumbles across a story similar to Candyman or Bloody Mary. If you repeat the title phrase, you will be transformed in some unknown, but probably horrible, way. When Casey tries the World’s Fair challenge, her sheltered life begins to unravel in ways that may or may not be in her head. Driven by Cobb’s nuanced performance, the film is both trancelike and deeply creepy.
“One of my goals with World’s Fair was to take this visual language of the internet and learn how to represent it in film,” says Schoenbrun. “I feel like it’s an ever-evolving conversation. As we all culturally become hyper familiar with conventions of a screen, the question for me as an artist isn’t ‘just point a camera at the computer screen, and that’s the movie,’ but how do you make art using that language? … I also wanted to be truthful to the way the internet has always felt to me, which is this strange combination between maximalism and minimalism — being shown everything at once and seeing nothing interesting.”
Schoenbrun’s film debuted virtually at Sundance during the height of the pandemic, where the story of an isolated young girl reaching out through the internet took on unexpected resonance. “It’s a lonely film about sitting inside, and I think people were really ready for it in January. The reception at Sundance was overwhelming,” Schoenbrun says. “I like to think of it as a film about the horror of being seen and seeing yourself. That’s a very core part of who the character is, seeking an understanding of how she sees herself, how she wants to be seen, and how others are seeing her.”
Elder’s Corner
Afrobeat Goes On Siji Awoyinka only briefly lived in Nigeria. His expat parents returned to the country when he was 5 years old. When he grew up, he traveled the world, eventually landing in Brooklyn. One day, he was hanging out with a friend, a crate-digger with a massive collection of rare records from the African nation, when they found themselves wondering what had happened to the people who made the music. Little did he know that would launch him on an 11-year journey of discovery that culminated in his first film, Elder’s Corner. “I’m a musician first and foremost,” he says. “Music came before filmmaking, and I see filmmaking as an extension of my storytelling capabilities as a musician.”
Elder’s Corner invites the audience along as Awoyinka travels to Lagos to track down the musicians who thrived in Nigeria’s prosperous 1950s and ’60s, then suffered through the civil wars and oil-fueled dictatorships that followed. Along the way, he traces the evolution of African popular music from the jazzy, cosmopolitan high life to the drum-focused primitivism of juju to the funk-inflected, revolutionary grooves of Afrobeat.
“We have a very strong oral history,” says Awoyinka. “That’s how we pass down information, especially that generation. They didn’t keep copies of their own recordings, they didn’t keep pictures, they didn’t keep anything. A lot of these artists, these elders, hadn’t heard any of those records for decades. So that was the icebreaker. When we turned up for the interviews, I brought up my laptop with a hard drive full of old classics and played their song. Their eyes would just light up, like, ‘Wow, where did you get this from? Who gave you this? I haven’t heard this in 20 years!’ When they discovered I was also a musician, it completely won them over, and they relaxed and opened up and told me all kinds of stories.”
Awoyinka brought along recording engineer Bill Lee to resurrect an abandoned Decca Records studio, which produced many of the classic songs. Watching the joy in the eyes of the musicians who are back in the studio for the first time in decades is one of the many pleasures of Elder’s Corner. “There were moments where I wanted to just jump into the pit with them,” says Awoyinka. “But I couldn’t ’cause I was behind the camera!”
Tickets passes, and the full schedule for Indie Memphis 2021 are available on the Indie Memphis website.The Memphis Flyer will feature daily updates on what to see and do at the festival on our website.
Images from previous Indie Memphis festivals (courtesy Indie Memphis).
After a pandemic year-plus of uncertainty that saw major changes in the film festival world, Indie Memphis will return to Overton Square for its 2021 edition, which will take place October 20th to 25th. After last year’s COVID hiatus, the outdoor block party will return, which takes place in a giant tent on Cooper Street between Union and Madison, hosting in-person events and musical performances.
The annual festival, which dates back to 1998, will kick off with the fourth installment of the Black Creator’s Forum. The program, which is free with required pre-registration, will consist of two days of online seminars and programs October 16th and 17th, and an in-person gathering on October 22nd. The main festival will begin with a premiere event on Wednesday, October 20th. In addition to in-person screenings at Overton Square venues, Indie Memphis films will also be returning to the Malco Summer Drive-In, which was employed in 2020 as a social distancing measure and ended up being popular with members. Also returning will be virtual screenings of Indie Memphis offerings through the Memphis-based Eventive cinema services platform.
Festival passes are now available at the early bird price of $85, which includes ten in-person film tickets and access to special events, both IRL and virtual. The early bird pricing will expire on August 23, when pass prices will rise to $100. VIP passes will include virtual screen tickets and other perks. For those whose health status or travel situations preclude in person attendance, full virtual passes will be available for $25. In-person screenings will be sold at limited capacity to allow for social distancing, and masks will be required for all screenings.
The first round of films will be announced at the preview party, which will take place in September.
If the upcoming festival season was a road sign, it would read “Road Work Ahead.” After the year we’ve all endured, reconstruction of public events is underway. Some annual fairs and festivals are putting the brakes on events until 2022. Others are proceeding with caution by announcing a TBA festival date. Still, others that were to be inaugural 2020 events are pulling out of the parking lot in 2021.
This list of those that gave the green light should help with planning. Buckle up, you’re now in the fairs and festivals carpool lane. Full speed ahead!
If you like that new car smell, you won’t want to miss a couple of breakout festivals this year. The Mighty Roots Music Festival in unincorporated Stovall, Mississippi, near Clarksdale, is one of them. Though the festival is just sprouting, the roots are deep, according to festival producer Howard Stovall.
And not just the roots of the Delta region’s music, but the roots in the soil, too. That’s one of the unique features of this festival: It’s agri-centric. In fact, the festival is taking place at a long-defunct cotton gin.
“We’ve spent a year and a half converting an old cotton gin on 18 acres of land for this festival,” says Stovall. “There hasn’t been power in that gin for 40 years.”
Stovall has invited 150 young farmers from the Delta Council’s Future Delta group. They’ll meet near the main stage before the first act performs and stay for the entertainment.
It’s also the only festival that has a reading list. Check out the website, mightyrootsmusicfestival.com, and you’ll find not only a suggested reading list highlighting the music, art, and culture of the Delta, but also the history of the Stovall Cotton Gin, the Stovall Store, and former tenant Muddy Waters.
Waters lived on the property for nearly 30 years. The house, in which he lived with his grandmother, is where his music was first recorded in 1941 by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. Long after Waters moved, the house was restored and resides at the Delta Blues Museum to this day.
The festival is not just blues music; it’s roots music: reggae, bluegrass, country, and Americana, as well blues. In fact, when Stovall calls his production partner the “ambassador of music in Mississippi,” he’s not kidding. Co-producer Steve Azar was appointed by Governor Phil Bryant as Music and Culture Ambassador of Mississippi in 2017. Azar is a country-music singer and songwriter with a dozen albums under his belt. He also founded the Mighty Mississippi Music Festival in his hometown of Greenville in 2013.
According to Stovall, Azar’s festival had all the right components except for the location. It was just too far from Clarksdale, and way too far from Memphis. Once that fact sunk in, Stovall and Azar worked together to produce a similar concept for Mighty Roots. This time they think they’ve hit the right note with timing and location. It’s sure to be a hit. Check them out.
$30-$65. Friday-Saturday, October 1-2. Stovall Gin Company, mightyrootsmusicfestival.com.
Another breakout fest that should be on your radar: the Carnival of Creativity.
Organizer and founder Yvonne Bobo refers to it as an “innovative art experience.” She promises “big and crazy” events from some of the most creative minds in Memphis. In addition, the carnival is a community builder. Off the Walls Arts has partnered with some familiar South Memphis neighbors — Girls Inc., Vance Youth Development Center, and Streets Ministries.
The artist incubator and exhibition space already hosts workshops from STEAM projects with Dunbar Elementary and Girls Inc. to continuing education and creativity classes for all ages. The carnival is just another way for the collaborating artists to showcase their talents. One of the most interesting features will be a parade of puppets — Second Line-style. Lucky 7 Brass Band will perform. There will be dancing, art exhibits, and classes. The carnival is a free, family-friendly event.
Saturday, October 2, noon-5 p.m. Off the Walls Arts, offthewallsarts.org
While some festivals are just getting started, others are well into their journey. It’s time to set the cruise control and let those drive themselves.
Gonerfest is a fun festival if you like music on the edgy side. The music lineup describes every dude in the ’80s at the Antenna Club — Spits, Nots, Cool Jerks. Fans of punk, garage rock, the bizarre, and unconventional should find their way to this music festival that is old enough to join the armed forces but not old enough to drink.
30 bands in four days, streaming or in-person. $30, $100 for four-day festival pass. Thursday-Sunday, September 23-September 26. Railgarten, goner-records.com
River Arts Fest (Photo: Mike Baber)
Did you know that River Arts Fest began under another name in 1984? At its inception, River Arts Fest was called Arts in the Park and held in Overton Park. I happened to be a vendor in one of the last years the festival operated under the old name. I even won an award for the best decorated booth. I also got a slap on the wrist from code enforcement because part of my winning decorations were hay bales. Something about how someone could drop a cigarette and catch the whole park on fire. Arts in the Park made its way to South Main with a new name in 2006.
A street celebration of the visual, performing, and culinary arts with attractions and activities for all ages. Saturday-Sunday, October 23-24. Riverside Drive along the bluffs, riverartsmemphis.org
The Pink Palace Crafts Fair is the largest fundraising event for the Museum of Science & History and one of the largest volunteer-run events in Memphis. Funds from the fair support museum exhibits, planetarium shows, Mallory-Neely tours, and the Lichterman Nature Center. The crafts fair started nearly 50 years ago in 1973. It’s grown from about 30 craftsmen to more than 200.
Shop for arts and crafts including woodwork, leatherwork, pottery, jewelry, paintings, sculpture, woven goods, and more. $10, $20 for weekend pass. Friday-Sunday, September 24-26, 10 a.m. Audubon Park, memphismuseums.org
Mid-South Fair (Photo: Courtesy of Obsidian Public Relations)
A lot of fairs and festivals in Memphis have staying power, though most haven’t exceeded the 50-year mark. Two come to mind: the Memphis Greek Festival, in its 62nd year; and the longest-running celebration by a mile — the Mid-South Fair.
In its 165th year, it might not surprise you that the Mid-South Fair was created for business networking purposes. Long before the internet or even phones, farmers and merchants struggled to find ways to communicate and meet one another. The first fair in 1856 was held so that the best in agricultural produce and the latest in machinery and inventions could be showcased to the public.
Shortly after the success of the first fair, fun and games were added for more appeal. The event weathered the Civil War, the yellow fever epidemic, the Depression, and two world wars. At the Centennial Fair celebration in 1956, Elvis made a surprise appearance. A time capsule was buried, to be opened in 2056.
Featuring a petting zoo, fair food, rides, attractions, contests, and more. $10. September 23-October 3. Landers Center, midsouthfair.com
Though it’s been a rough road this past year for festivals, it’s in our rearview mirror. Let’s take the rest of the year to celebrate the things that matter most — art, culture, music, heritage, history, and each other.
AUGUST
Memphis Film Prize
A film festival and contest featuring 10 short films made by filmmakers in and around Memphis. Audience votes for the winner of the $5K cash prize. Friday-Saturday, August 6-7. $30.
Malco Studio on the Square, memphisfilmprize.com
Elvis Week 2021
A lineup of events to celebrate the music, movies, and legacy of the King of Rock-and-Roll. August 11-17.
Graceland, graceland.com
Memphis Summer Cocktail Festival
Enjoy summer-inspired cocktails from more than 30 of your favorite spirits, local food, an epic dance party, and more. $39. Friday, August 13, 6-9 p.m.
Overton Square, memphisfestivals.com
Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival
A celebration of blues and gospel music in the Delta. Headliner James “Super Chikan” Johnson opens the festival. VIP tickets include food and beverages. Free. Friday-Sunday, August 13-15.
Clarksdale, Mississippi, sunflowerfest.org
Live at the Garden (Photo: Mike Baber)
Live at the Garden
• Brad Paisley, Friday, August 13, 7:30 p.m.
• REO Speedwagon, Friday, August 27, 8 p.m.
• Sheryl Crow, Friday, September 17, 8 p.m.
• Earth, Wind & Fire, Thursday, October 21, 7:30 p.m.
Summer music series featuring country, rock, pop, and soul-funk superstars. $55-$131.
Memphis Botanic Garden, radiansamp.com
Memphis Chicken & Beer Festival
Chicken, beer, yard games, live entertainment, and more. Benefiting Dorothy Day House. $40. Saturday, August 14, 6-10 p.m.
Liberty Bowl Stadium, memphischickenandbeer.com
Beale Street Artcrawl Festival
Family-friendly event featuring artists on Beale Street. Free. Saturday, August 21, 1-7 p.m.
Beale Street, dearmusicnonprofit.org
Memphis Fashion Week
Take a tour of Arrow Creative’s new Midtown space, join a class for fashionistas, meet designers and local makers, and watch a runway show. $50-$150. Wednesday-Saturday, August 25-28.
Sample wings from more than 70 competition teams vying for the hot wing world championship title. Benefiting Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis. $15. Saturday, August 28, 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
Liberty Bowl Stadium, worldwingfest.com
SEPTEMBER
901 Day: Exposure
City-wide celebration featuring live entertainment, giveaways, local bites, and several organizations representing the Memphis landscape of social, civic, recreational, and entertainment offerings. Wednesday, September 1, 5-6:30 p.m.
FedExForum, newmemphis.org
Delta Fair & Music Festival
Features carnival rides, fair food, live music, attractions, vendors, livestock shows, cooking contests, and more. $10. Friday, September 3-12.
Agricenter International, deltafest.com
River City Jazz & Music Festival
Features Damien Escobar, Karyn White, Con Funk Shun, Kenny Lattimore, and Julian Vaughn. $60. Sunday, September 5, 6:30 p.m.
Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, thecannoncenter.com
Memphis Chevy Show (Photo: Mike Baber)
Memphis Chevy Show
The largest car show in the Mid-South region and a thrilling Pro Show featuring Larry Dixon’s Top Fuel Experience, fire-breathing Jet Funny Cars, and Open Outlaw Racing. $20. Friday-Saturday, September 10-11, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
Memphis International Raceway, racemir.com
Memphis Rox Yoga Festival
Features a variety of local and regional studios and vendors, lectures, workshops, film screenings, yoga classes, live music, food trucks, and kids activities. $35-$55. Saturday, September 11, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Featuring bacon-inspired dishes from Memphis restaurants, plus an array of distilled spirits. $39. Friday, September 24, 6-9 p.m.
Metal Museum, memphisbaconandbourbon.com
Latin Fest
Kicks off Hispanic Heritage Month with a family-oriented festival featuring live Latin music, Latin food and drinks, crafts for kids, and vendors. Free. Saturday, September 25, noon-6 p.m.
Overton Square, cazateatro.org
Soulful Food Truck Festival
Featuring more than 100 vendors, 35 food trucks, game zone, and music by J. Buck, Keia Johnson, Courtney Little, DJ Zoom, and DJ Alpha Whiskey. $5. Sunday, September 26, noon-6 p.m.
Tiger Lane, cdcoevents.com
OCTOBER
Mempho Music Festival
Three days of performances, Pronto Pups, art pop-ups, and tunes. $80, $185 for three-day pass. Friday-Sunday, October 1-3.
Memphis Botanic Garden, memphofest.com
King Biscuit Blues Festival
Featuring blues legends and up-and-coming acts to preserve and promote the music of the Delta. $45, $85 for three-day pass. Thursday-Saturday, October 6-9.
Featuring the 2021 Beerfest mug, unlimited samples of beer, and local food trucks. Saturday, October 9, 1-5 p.m.
Midtown Autowerks Inc., cybeerfest.org
Harvest Festival (Photo: Courtesy of Agricenter)
Harvest Festival
Pumpkin-painting, kid’s activities, arts and crafts, hayrides, and educational stations. Saturday, October 9, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Agricenter International, agricenter.org
The Tambourine Bash
Featuring 30+ musicians performing for the benefit of Music Export Memphis. Funds go directly to the artists. $25. Thursday, October 14, 7 p.m.
Levitt Shell, musicexportmemphis.org
Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival
Highlights stories of the people, music, and history along the Mississippi River through discussion, performances, and presentations. Thursday-Saturday, October 14-16.
Various locations and online from Clarksdale, Mississippi,deltawilliamsfestival.com
Brewfest and Brunchfest
Local food trucks, live music, games, vendors, and unlimited beer samples from 40+ breweries from around the world. $45. Saturday-Sunday, October 16-17.
Liberty Bowl Stadium, facebook.com/memphisbrewfest
Indie Memphis Film Festival
Brings a range of independent features, documentaries, and short films to Memphis from all corners of the world. Wednesday, October 20-25.
Playhouse on the Square, indiememphis.org
Mushroom Festival
Camping festival dedicated to mushrooms. Features classes and demonstrations, live music, tastings, wild food forays and dinners, identification tents, guided hikes, and more. Thursday-Sunday, October 21-24.
Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park, memphismushroomfest.com
Dia de los Muertos Parade and Festival
Enjoy a reverse parade where families are invited to honor ancestors and celebrate the cycle of life and death. Free. Saturday, October 23, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
Memphis Brooks Museum, cazateatro.org
Vegan BBQ Cook-off & Festival
This Halloween edition will feature a cooking contest, food samples, fitness information, and costume contest, plus candy for the kids. Free-$20. Saturday, October 30, 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
Tiger Lane, missfitnessdiva.com
Crafts & Drafts Holiday Market
Showcases independent local artists, makers, and crafters. Enjoy shopping, family activities, and local brews. Thursday, November 11, 10 a.m.
Crosstown Concourse, memphiscraftsanddrafts.com
Whiskey Warmer
Features 40 labels of whiskey, bourbon, and Scotch, plus local food trucks, a cigar lounge, and bluegrass music. Benefiting Volunteer Memphis. $39. Friday, November 12, 6-9 p.m.
Overton Square, whiskeywarmer.com
Craft Food & Wine Festival
Celebrate culinary magic, benefiting Church Health. $65. Sunday, November 21, 3 p.m.
The Columns, craftfoodandwinefest.com
DECEMBER
Memphis Israel Festival
Enjoy all things Israel, including food, culture, market goods, and activities. Sunday, December 5.
Agricenter International, memphisfoi.org
Holiday Spirits Cocktail Festival
Sip cocktails, listen to music, and wave to the big man in red himself. Each ticket includes 12 sample-sized yuletide cocktails. Food and full-sized drinks will be available for purchase. $39. Friday, December 10, 6-9 p.m.
Cynthia Ervino as Harriet Tubman in Harriet, the opening night film at Indie Memphis 2019
The Indie Memphis Film Festival has announced the lineup for the 22nd iteration of the home-grown cinephile celebration, which will run October 30-November 4, 2019. The opening night film will be Harriet, a biopic of abolitionist leader Harriet Tubman by director Kasi Lemmons.
(l to r) Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny, and Adam Driver star in Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die.
Director Jim Jarmusch, who put Memphis on the arthouse map in 1989 with Mystery Train, will return for a 30th anniversary screening of the seminal independent film. Since the festival runs through Halloween this year, Jarmusch will also screen his latest film, zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die.
Producer/director Sara Driver, Jarmusch’s longtime partner and sometimes co-creator, will be the subject of a retrospective, and present the “spooky inspirations” for her work, which critic Johnathan Rosenbaum called “a conflation of fantasy with surrealism, science fiction, comics, horror, sword-and-sorcery, and the supernatural that stretches all the way from art cinema to exploitation by way of Hollywood.”
William Marshall wants to have a drink on you in Blacula.
On Halloween itself, there will be a special screening of the cult classic Blacula starring William Marshall as a vampire loose in ’70s Los Angeles.
Memphis director Ira Sachs returns from France with his latest picture Frankie, starring Isabella Huppert as an ailing movie star who summons her family and friends for one last gathering.
Harriet, Mystery Train, and Frankie Lead Indie Memphis 2019 Lineup
The Hometowner category, which spotlights films made by Memphis artists, boasts a healthy six features this year, including Cold Feet, a bachelor party horror comedy by Indie Memphis stalwarts Brad Ellis and Allen C. Gardner, which just won the writing award at the New Orleans Horror Film Festival. Musician and artist Lawerence Matthews makes his feature film debut at the festival with vérité documentary The Hub. Cinematographer and producer Jordan Danelz presents his first feature documentary In the Absence, which deals with blight and gentrification in Memphis. Jookin’ is the subject of Louis Wallecan’s Lil Buck: Real Swan. Jim Hanon profiles Memphis saxophonist Kirk Whalum in Humanite: The Beloved Community. Director Jessica Chaney makes her premiere with the girl power drama This Can’t Be Life.
Penny Hardaway (right) stars with Shaquille O’Neil (center), Matt Nover (left), and Nick Nolte (bottom) in William Friedkin’s Blue Chips.
The celebrated director of The Exorcist, William Friedkin will have a mini-retrospective with two films. The first is Blue Chips, a 1995 film set in the world of college basketball starring Shaquille O’Neil, Nick Nolte, and University of Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway. The second is Sorcerer, a film Friedkin called his masterpiece, but which had the misfortune to be released in 1977 on the week Star Wars went wide.
Another sure-to-be-anticipated screening will be Varda by Agnes, an autobiographical film by the late, revered filmmaker Agnes Varda, made when she was 90 years old.
The great director says goodbye in Varda by Agnes.
The Narrative Feature competition will feature five films from as far abroad as the Dominican Republic, four of which are by women directors. The documentary competition will be between four features, including Best Before Death, director Paul Duane’s portrait of artist Bill Drummond, which was filmed partially in Memphis.
The Memphis Flyer will have full coverage of the festival in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, you can find more information, festival passes, and tickets to individual screenings on the Indie Memphis website.
This year will mark the twentieth anniversary of the Indie Memphis Film Festival. To commemorate this milestone, we need your help in preparing a list of the greatest films ever screened at Indie Memphis.
Go to this survey and tell us your favorite movies you’ve seen at Indie Memphis over the years. You can name up to five. You don’t have to put them in any order, just vote for your favorites. If you want to tell us what you liked about each film, we’ve provided a space for your thoughts in the survey. But that’s not mandatory. We just want to hear which Indie Memphis movies you have loved!
[NOTE: If you’re an Indie Memphis veteran, and you want to vote in the Indie Memphis Hometowner survey, which asks for 10 Hometowner movies and five out-of-town movies, go to this link.]
If you need your memory jogged, you can go to the Indie Memphis Program Archive and look at the lists of films going back to 2000. It’s also just fun to flip through those old programs and see at how the festival has grown and evolved over the years.
The deadline for completing the survey is October 10, 2017.We’ll tally how many votes each film gets, and the list of the top ten will be published on the Memphis Magazine and the Memphis Flyer websites.
So put on your thinking cap, and tell us your favorite Indie Memphis movies. We want to know what you think!
A: Click on the survey link, and tell us the names of your favorite movies you’ve seen at the Indie Memphis Film Festival from 1998 to 2016.
Q: How many movies can I vote for?
A: Up to five (5).
Q:Do I have to vote for five movies?
A: No. If you only want to vote for one movie, you can do that. If you can only think of three movies, that’s OK, too. We just want to hear from you.
Q:Is this for feature films only?
A: This is for ALL films shown at Indie Memphis from 1998 to 2006. Narrative features, documentary features, narrative shorts, documentary shorts, experimental shorts, animated shorts, and music videos all qualify. We are going to rank them all. I expect a lot of short films on the final list.
Q: Do I have to rank my movies in order from one to five?
A: If you want to, but we’re only counting the number of times each film is mentioned in the survey, so it’s not necessary.
Q:Can I vote for the same film five times?
A: No. One film, one vote.
Q:Can I vote for movies made in Memphis?
A: You can. This is for the general survey. There is another, more detailed survey for the Hometowner category.
Q: What will the final list look like?
A: There will be two lists. The first will be the top ten Indie Memphis movies of all time, and will include all films shown at Indie Memphis. That’s the list this survey will determine. The second list will be the top ten Indie Memphis Hometowner Movies. This will be limited to movies made in the Memphis area by Memphis filmmakers. Another, more detailed survey has been prepared for a select group of Memphis filmmakers, Indie Memphis members, and various people who have served on juries and as volunteers over the years, to determine that list. If you want to vote in that poll, follow this link.
The lists will appear on the Memphis Magazine and The Memphis Flyer websites.
Q:Can I vote for myself? Can I vote for a film that I was involved with in some way?
A: Yes, you can. But we ask that, if you’ve been involved in several Indie Memphis movies, you only vote for one of them. You have to pick a favorite, and then spread the love.
At a gala party last night at the High Cotton Brewing Company, Indie Memphis announced the lineup for their 17th annual film festival, which will be held October 30 to November 2. More than 40 feature length narrative and documentary films, as well as dozens of short subjects, will screen over the course of the four-day festival.
Friday night of the festival is Halloween, so it is appropriate that the work of one of America’s greatest horror directors, John Carpenter, will be honored with two gala screenings, beginning with his 1988 science fiction classic They Live, starring Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David.
Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (3)
At midnight, Carpenter’s Halloween will screen. A direct descendant of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Jamie Lee Curtis’ film debut defined the 80’s slasher genre and holds up better than ever today.
Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (2)
The festival will also celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of the best documentaries ever made, director Steve James’ Hoop Dreams.
Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (4)
Hometown filmmakers are well represented at the festival with three narrative features: Chad Barton’s comedy of filmmaking errors Lights, Camera Bullshit; Anwar Jamison’s workplace comedy 5 Steps To A Conversation; Marlon Wilson and Mechelle Wilson’s Christian drama Just A Measure Of Faith. The sole local documentary is Pharaohs Of Memphis, director Phoebe Driscoll’s history of jookin’.
Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (5)
Twelve films will compete for Best Narrative Feature, including the Brooklyn heist comedy Wild Canaries, Onur Tukel’s vampire comedy Summer Of Blood, the time travel drama Movement & Location, and the Texas-based crime drama Two Step.
Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (6)
The thirteen films up for Best Documentary Feature include the kenetic sport doc American Cheerleader; The Hip Hop Fellow, tracing producer 9th Wonder’s experience as a teacher at Harvard; Man Shot Dead, an intimate history of a family torn apart by an unsolved murder; and Well Now You’re Here, There’s No Way Back, about Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali’s fight to keep the heavy metal dream alive.
Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (7)
Other notable films include Sundance winner Whiplash, a music drama starring Miles Teller as a young jazz drummer and J.K Simmons as his demanding teacher, and The Imitation Game, an early Oscar contender starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the eccentric British codebreaker whose work in World War II led directly to the invention of the modern digital computer.
Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (8)
The festival, which will also include numerous panels, special events, and parties, will take place in venues around Overton Square, including Playhouse On The Square, Circuit Playhouse, the Hattiloo Theater, and Malco’s Studio On The Square. The Memphis Flyer will have an in-depth examination of the festival as the cover story for our October 30th issue. Go to indiememphis.com for details on how to buy passes for Memphis’ greatest film weekend.
In January 1989, Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape won the Audience Award for best feature at the Sundance Film Festival, kicking off the modern Indie film movement.
To audiences, “Indie” usually means quirky, low-budget, character-driven fare that is more like the auteurist films of the 1970s than contemporary Hollywood’s designed-by-committee product. But “Indie” originally referred to films financed outside the major studios by outfits like New Line Cinema, which produced Sam Raimi’s TheEvil Dead (1981) and the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (1984). By 1990, The Coen Brothers had crossed over into the mainstream with Miller’s Crossing, a film that brought together the meticulous plotting, brainy dialog, and stunning visual compositions that would garner them acclaim for the next 25 years.
As the 1990s dawned, a whole crop of directors stood up with a mission to make good movies on their own terms — and that meant raising money by any means necessary. Robert Rodriguez financed his $7,000 debut feature El Mariachi by selling his body for medical testing. It went on to win the 1993 Audience Award at Sundance, and his book Rebel Without A Crew inspired a generation of filmmakers.
Richard Linklater’s 1991 Slacker threw out the screenwriting rulebook that had dominated American film since George Lucas name-checked Joseph Campbell, focusing instead on dozens of strange characters floating around Austin. The structure has echoed through Indie film ever since, not only in Linklater’s Dazed And Confused (1993) but also the “hyperlink” movies of the early 2000s such as Soderbergh’s Traffic and even more conventionally scripted films such as Kevin Smith’s 1994 debut, Clerks.
Quentin Tarantino is arguably the most influential director of the last 25 years. His breakthrough hit, 1994’s Pulp Fiction, was the first film completely financed by producer Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax. But even then, the definitions of what was an “Indie” movie were fluid, as the formerly independent Miramax had become a subsidiary of Disney.
Indie fervor was spreading as local film scenes sprang up around the country. In Memphis, Mike McCarthy’s pioneering run of drive-in exploitation-inspired weirdness started in 1994 with Damselvis, Daughter of Helvis, followed the next year by the semi-autobiographical Teenage Tupelo. With 1997’s The Sore Losers, McCarthy integrated Memphis’ burgeoning underground music scene with his even-more-underground film aesthetic.
In 1995, the European Dogme 95 Collective, led by Lars von Trier, issued its “Vows of Chastity” and defined a new naturalist cinema: no props, no post-production sound, and no lighting. Scripts were minimal, demanding improvisation by the actors. Dogme #1 was Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1998.
Meanwhile, in America, weirdness was reaching its peak with Soderbergh’s surrealist romp Schizopolis. Today, the film enjoys a cult audience, but in 1997, it almost ended Soderbergh’s career and led to a turning point in Indie film. The same year, Tarantino directed Jackie Brown and then withdrew from filmmaking for six years. Soderbergh’s next feature veered away from experiment: 1998’s Out Of Sight was, like Jackie Brown, a tightly plotted adaptation of an Elmore Leonard crime novel. Before Tarantino returned to the director’s chair, Soderbergh would hit with Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich and make George Clooney and Brad Pitt the biggest stars in the world with a very un-Indie remake of the Rat Pack vehicle Ocean’s 11.
Technology rescued Indie film. In the late ’90s, personal computers were on their way to being ubiquitous, and digital video cameras had improved in picture quality as they simplified operation. The 1999 experimental horror The Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, showed what was possible with digital, simultaneously inventing the found footage genre and becoming the most profitable Indie movie in history, grossing $248 million worldwide on a shooting budget of $25,000.
The festival circuit continued to grow. The Indie Memphis Film Festival was founded in 1998, showcasing works such as the gonzo comedies of Memphis cable access TV legend John Pickle. In 2000, it found its biggest hit: Craig Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry, a gritty, digital story of the Memphis streets, won awards both here and at the Hollywood Film Festival.
In 2005, Memphis directors dominated the Sundance Film Festival, with Ira Sach’s impressionistic character piece Forty Shades Of Blue winning the Grand Jury Prize, and Brewer’s Hustle & Flow winning the Audience Award, which would ultimately lead to the unforgettable spectacle of Three Six Mafia beating out Dolly Parton for the Best Original Song Oscar.
Brewer rode the crest of a digital wave that breathed new life into Indie film. In Memphis, Morgan Jon Fox and Brandon Hutchinson co-founded the MeDiA Co-Op, gathering dozens of actors and would-be filmmakers together under the newly democratized Indie film banner. Originally a devotee of Dogme 95, Fox quickly grew beyond its limitations, and by the time of 2008’s OMG/HaHaHa, his stories of down-and-out kids in Memphis owed more to Italian neorealism like Rome, Open City than to von Trier.
Elsewhere, the digital revolution was producing American auteurs like Andrew Bujalski, whose 2002 Funny Ha Ha would be retroactively dubbed the first “mumblecore” movie. The awkward label was coined to describe the wave of realist, DIY digital films such as Joe Swanberg’s Kissing on the Mouth that hit SXSW in 2005. Memphis MeDiA Co-Op alum Kentucker Audley produced three features, beginning with 2007’s mumblecore Team Picture.
Not everyone was on board the digital train. Two of the best Indie films of the 21st century were shot on film: Shane Carruth’s $7,000 Sundance winner Primer (2004) and Rian Johnson’s high school noir Brick (2005). But as digital video evolved into HD, Indie films shot on actual film have become increasingly rare.
DVDs — the way most Indies made money — started to give way to digital distribution via the Internet. Web series, such as Memphis indie collective Corduroy Wednesday’s sci fi comedy The Conversion, began to spring up on YouTube.
With actress and director Greta Gerwig’s star-making turn in 2013’s Francis Ha, it seemed that the only aspect of the American DIY movement that would survive the transition from mumblecore to mainstream was a naturalistic acting style. Founding father Soderbergh announced his retirement in 2013 with a blistering condemnation of the Hollywood machine. Lena Dunham’s 2010 festival hit Tiny Furniture caught the eye of producer Judd Apatow, and the pair hatched HBO’s Girls, which wears its indie roots on its sleeve and has become a national phenomenon.
The Indie spirit is alive and well, even if it may bypass theaters in the future.
