Tag: Joann Self-Selvidge

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Oxford Film Festival 2024 Brings Indie Greatness to North Mississippi

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)

Four years ago, the Oxford Film Festival was the canary in the coal mine. It was the first film festival to cancel because of the rapidly-spreading Covid-19 outbreak that would, before the month was out, become a full fledged pandemic. 

The festival survived the uncertain plague years and is now back for 2024 with a huge lineup, beginning on Thursday, March 21st, with Adam the First at the University of Mississippi’s Gertrude Castellow Ford Center. Director Irving Franco filmed Adam the First in Mississippi, and he will be in attendance at the Oxford opening night festivities, which will also be the movie’s regional premiere. Oakes Fegley stars as Adam, a 14-year-old living deep in the country with his parents, James (David Duchovny) and Mary (Kim Jackson Davis). But one fateful day he finds out that James and Mary aren’t his real parents, but fugitives hiding in the woods from some mysterious bad guys who just found them. Adam flees, but not before his foster father tells him the name of his real father is Jacob Waterson. The boy looks up all the people he can find by that name and visits each of them, trying to discover who his real father is. 

The screening at Oxford’s Ford Theater will be proceeded by a recording of Thacker Mountain Radio Hour, the syndicated radio show that has longtime ties with the festival. Thacker Mountain is broadcast in Memphis by WYXR on Fridays at 6 a.m. Original Brat Pack member Andrew McCarthy, star of Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero, who went on to direct 15 episodes of Orange Is the New Black, will be the guest of honor. 

On Friday, the festivities move to the Malco Oxford Commons Studio Grille. Three Memphis-made feature films will be screening during the festival. The first is Juvenile: Five Stories (Friday, March 22nd, 4:45 p.m.), the documentary directed by Joann Self Selvidge and Sarah Fleming. The film traces the stories of Ariel, Michael, Romeo, Shimaine, and Ja’Vaune, who were all thrown into the juvenile justice system as children for a variety of reasons and are now helping others who are in the same place. The film is an examination of a deeply broken system by its own victims. 

The Blues Society (Friday, March 22nd, 7:30 p.m.) by Augusta Palmer is a self-described “moving image mixtape” about the Country Blues Festival held at the Overton Park Shell in the mid-1960s. The director’s father Robert Palmer, music writer and author of the landmark cultural history Deep Blues, was one of the organizers of the festival, which proved to be crucial in reintroducing the blues artists of the Depression era to rock-and-roll obsessed hippies, and securing recognition of the music’s cultural value. But selling the blues to affluent white audiences entailed compromise and distortion which have shaped music ever since. 

The third Memphis movie at the Oxford Film Festival is the most unlikely. Scent of Linden (Saturday, noon) is the only movie in the program with dialogue in Bulgarian. Producer/Director Sissy Denkova and writer Jordan Trippeer created story about the Bulgarian immigrant community in Memphis. Stefan (Ivan Barnev) comes to the States in search of a good paying job to support his ailing mother back home, and instantly falls in with a small but tight-knit group of eccentrics who are also chasing the elusive American dream. Scent of Linden recently completed successful theatrical runs in Bulgaria and Europe, and is now expanding to select screenings in the United States. 

After the awards ceremony on Saturday night, March 23rd, the winners will have encore screenings on Sunday. For a full lineup, tickets, and more information on the weekend’s events, visit ox-film.com. 

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Fredrick Wiseman’s Memphis Documentary “Juvenile Court” Screens At Rebranded Crosstown Arthouse Film Series

Crosstown Theater has rebranded their weekly film presentations as the Crosstown Arthouse Film Series. This better reflects the series’ content and mission of bringing classic, rarely seen, or overlooked films to Memphis audiences.

Case in point is tonight’s film, Juvenile Court. Director Fredrick Wiseman was one of the early practitioners of what was called “Direct Cinema”, a kind of American answer to cinéma vérité. Enabled by the development of the kind of handheld camera and audio equipment we in the digital age take for granted, filmmakers of the 1960s were able to capture reality in a way that their predecessors simply could not. Wiseman’s films like High School, Basic Training, and Missile were all about capturing everyday life in various contexts. In the early 1970s, he turned his camera on the Memphis justice system for what would become Juvenile Court. Wiseman doesn’t editorialize — although he was a pioneer of using editorial techniques to construct a narrative out of seemingly disconnected images and events, which producers of today’s reality shows have weaponized. Instead, he simply captures the faces and interactions of normal people in the abnormal circumstances that they are placed in.

Tonight’s screening will be introduced by filmmakers Joann Self-Selvidge and Sarah Fleming, who are currently engrossed in creating Juvenile, which traces the experiences of five people from all over the country who have been caught up in the tangle of the American juvenile justice system, and what lessons we can learn from their experience.

Tickets to the show are $5, and can be bought at the door only. Showtime is 7:30 PM at Crosstown Theater. 

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Memphis Filmmakers Take on School-to-Prison Pipeline with Juvenile Documentary

Memphis documentarians Joann Self-Selvidge and Sarah Fleming are teaming up to produce a documentary examining America’s flawed juvenile justice system from the point of view of the people who are affected by it firsthand.

“This is not the first time I’ve addressed the justice system in my documentary work, but it is the first time I’ve taken this deep of a dive,” says Self-Selvidge, whose last film See The Keepers, which she created with Sara Kaye Larson, won the Hometowner award at the Indie Memphis Film Festival in 2015.

Self-Selvidge has been working on Juvenile for three years, after a conversation with  public defender Stephen Bush alerted her to a trend of innovative reforms that were being tried all over the country. Fleming and Self-Selvidge’s short film “Viola: A Mother’s Story” served as a jumping-off point for the feature project, which the filmmakers say will explore “how brain science, constitutional rights, and smart on crime economics are being used in efforts to disrupt the cradle-to-prison pipeline.”

Viola – A Mother's Story of Juvenile Justice from True Story Pictures on Vimeo.

Memphis Filmmakers Take on School-to-Prison Pipeline with Juvenile Documentary (2)

“For the people who get caught up in the system, the narratives that are out there about the “bad kids”…are narratives that have not been constructed by the people who are directly impacted,” says Self-Selvidge. “When we have so many narratives that are out there about the mothering of children who are living right down the street from us, we forget. It becomes so easy to vilify the people we aren’t brave enough to listen to.”

Self-Selvidge says the film will feature stories of five kids who have been through the juvenile justice system in various parts of the country. “They’re all trying to make sense of what happened to them.”

After more than 30 interviews, three of the five subjects have been chosen in rural Missouri, Atlanta, and Brooklyn. Self-Selvidge and Fleming plan to find additional subjects in the Chicago area and the West Coast. The directors are currently engaged in a crowdfunding campaign on Seed and Spark to complete the three-year preproduction process.

“This is hard stuff to fix,” says Self-Selvidge. “The people who have the solutions that are going to work are the people who are closest to the problem…The different points of view in our movie are not politicized. It’s not liberal vs conservative. We have people speaking from the point of view of the victims and survivors of crime, and people speaking from the point of view of the justice-involved. Many times, they’re in the same family, or they’re the same people. People are victimized before they become offenders. Hurt people hurt people. Healed people heal people.”

Memphis Filmmakers Take on School-to-Prison Pipeline with Juvenile Documentary

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Never Seen It: Watching We Jam Econo with Documentary Filmmaker Joann Self-Selvidge

For the latest installment of Never Seen It, I wanted to watch a documentary with True Story Pictures founder Joann Self-Selvidge. Self-Selvidge is a documentarian whose last film, The Keepers, (renamed See The Keepers: Inside The Zoo) which she co-directed with Sara Kaye Larson, won awards at the Indie Memphis and Nashville film festivals, and is currently available for streaming.

After going through a lengthy list of documentaries (she’s seen a lot of docs), we settled on We Jam Econo, director Tim Irwin’s 2005 documentary about American punk rock pioneers The Minutemen.

Chris McCoy: What do you know about We Jam Econo?

Joann Self-Selvidge: I know absolutely nothing about it, and I intentionally didn’t go and read the IMDB entry before we watched it. I know it’s about The Minutemen, and that’s about it.

CM: Are you a Minutemen fan?

JSS: Yes, but not as much as somebody who was slightly older than me in the 80s. I was born in 1976. I’m a fan of Mike Watt and fIREHOSE.

CM: So you are Minutemen aware.

JSS: I am definitely Minutemen aware. But I don’t have records, which would disqualify me as a fan.

CM: For the record, you were listening to Mike Watt when we got here.

Mike Watt giving director Tim Irwin a tour of San Pedro, California in We Jam Econo

91 minutes later…

JSS: 1989 was my first Antenna show. I was thirteen in 1989. By the time I was 15, I was driving. I had a Mississippi driver’s license. They would let me in, because I didn’t drink, and they knew they didn’t have to worry about me. I would go to shows by myself. I grew up in Central Gardens, I went to St. Mary’s. I went to shows really young. But I did go to a lot of the punk rock shows. Steve [Selvidge, Joann’s husband] has a hardcore background. His first gig was when he was 13 at the Antenna club.

CM: So, what did you think about We Jam Econo?

JSS: I loved it! Thank you for making me watch it.

CM: As a director of documentaries, what did you think?

JSS: I thought it was beautiful. They did a really good job setting up the characters. The editing made Mike [Watt] kind of the narrator. The way they were the central part of it, and all of the people you expected to see were on the margins. They were just commentary, they weren’t the main emphasis.

CM: Henry Rollins was in it for two shots.

JSS: I was blown away that we didn’t see Rollins or Ian McKaye until more than a half hour into the movie. And they were talking about the drummer! I saw Minor Threat and Fugazi, Dead Milkmen…that was my entry into punk. From the first shows they played, in the film, I was like, I know this. This is awesome. I love that vibe. I didn’t know The Minutemen enough to appreciate the depth of their playing. I love music documentaries, and I’m married to a musician…Punk rock was always political. That’s one of the things that I love about it. The tension between Mike Watt and D. Boon was like, ‘I want to be super political!’ versus “I want to talk about Dada and Surrealism.” Their personalities fit together like that. And the drummer, he was just like, I’m going to get a New Wave haircut. I’m going to become what people want me to become to be part of the scene. The other two were like, fuck that shit. They were totally original. They had ideas that they put into music. The thing about punk rock is, you have something to say, and you say it, and I don’t give a fuck what anybody else thinks. If those songs had been in an arena, they would have been anthemic. As it was, they were in a shitty, piss-smelling hole in the wall.

CM: That sequence when they’re in Orange County, and people are spitting on them while they’re literally playing the best music that had ever been played on that stage. That to me is like Dylan going electric at a folk festival.

JSS: He was brilliant, and everybody pissed on him…You have to do your own thing. That’s what I appreciate about them…I’d heard about this film for years, but I had never watched it.

CM: I think it’s one of the best documentaries of the twenty first century. The editing is off the charts good.

JSS: My brain was hopping to all these different music documentaries I had seen, like the Stooges documentary. I was thinking about Cream, and those 12-minute jams. How many late-60s rock docs have I seen in my life? But it also reminded me of some of the stuff Dave Grohl has done. Lost Highway, where he went back to D.C. A few years back when The Hold Steady was touring, Steve and Tad, the other guitar player, got into a Foo Fighters wormhole. The Foo Fighters documentary, even though it’s kind of slow, made me much more of a Dave Grohl fan than I ever had been before.

The Minutemen in 1985: Mike Watt, D. Boone, and George Hurley

CM: What would you take away from this about how to make a good music documentary?

JSS: I’ve seen enough music docs to have lots of good ideas, and lots of ‘stay away from this’ ideas about how to incorporate live music recording. I thought this movie did that very well. You have to have a balance, and there has to be a really good reason to include an entire song. Unless it’s only 45 seconds long.

CM: They were on their third album before they broke two minutes.

JSS: That’s a huge factor to take into account before you make a music doc. When are we going to include an entire song and slow down the narrative pace of the film? You’re lucky with this, because it’s a punk rock doc about the guys who wrote the shortest songs in punk rock. Another thing I loved is, these guys talked about some intellectually and philosophically heavy shit, because they were great artists, great thinkers, and great musicians. You have to place those moments well.

CM: So, you’re not going to get the intellectual level you get in this movie in, say, the Def Leppard documentary.

JSS: I totally disagree with you, IF you had the right interview. Any person who is capable of making a living—let alone become a rock star—has got some really radical things going on in their humanity that makes them that charismatic. You’re going to get a sound bite at some point that speaks to that. If they’re no longer living, you have to dig for it, and hope there’s enough footage so there’s something you can find. That’s why the editing in this movie is so great. And the way they incorporated the new stuff with Mike Watt…brilliant.

CM: Mike Watt is the intellectual core of American punk rock.

JSS: But I loved it that it was not all about Mike. He was presenting the story. He was a part of it, but not the whole, and I appreciated that. It could have been all about him, but it wasn’t.

Never Seen It: Watching We Jam Econo with Documentary Filmmaker Joann Self-Selvidge

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Memphis Documentary The Keepers returning to Studio On The Square

Since its debut on opening night of last year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival, The Keepers has become a hit on the festival circuit. “We have been amazed at the response at film festivals,” says co-director Joann Self Selvidge. “Almost every screening has sold out, including a 9 AM show in Sedona!”

The film won awards at both Indie Memphis and the Nashville Film Festival. Co-director Sara Kaye Larson, says she’s been pleased with the level of audience engagement she has seen. “The film sparks some great conversations—everything from people identifying with the keepers’ dedication to working a job they are passionate about, to discussions about modern zoos, conservation and our relationship with animals. People really connect with it.”

Memphis Zoo keeper Carolyn

The Keepers is a cinéma vérité look at the lives of the people at the Memphis Zoo who are charged with caring for the animals. Selvidge says the film was the result of a unique alignment of opportunities. “We are independent filmmakers. We are not affiliated with the zoo. We began working on this film nearly five years ago, and because many of the zoo administrators are former zookeepers themselves, they understood our pitch. We were incredibly lucky to get this type of unprecedented access behind the scenes at a modern zoo. But we raised funds independently to make this film, and it’s one of the reasons we were able to make the film that we did.” 

Selvidge says she does not want the work entangled with the ongoing controversy surrounding the Memphis Zoo’s use of the Overton Park Greensward for parking. “Personally, we are both big supporters of the Overton Park Conservancy,” she says. “I live a 5-minute walk from the park, and I’m a lifelong Memphian, and urban parks and greenspace are very important issues to me. It’s been incredibly disconcerting that our film about zookeepers has become a target for the anger that people have against the zoo administration. We began working on this film years before parking on the greensward became an issue, so of course it’s not mentioned in the film.” 

The film will be screening for the next week at Studio On The Square, starting Thursday, March 31 at 7 PM with a special event hosted by Indie Memphis, featuring a Q & A with the directors. 

“A big reason why we made the film was to explore the complexity of our relationship as humans to exotic animals in captivity, and the zookeepers—who are lowest on the totem pole, who have no control over the decisions their bosses make—are the ones who work closest with these animals,” says Larson. “This is a fascinating job, with typical job frustrations, and a unique subculture. Zookeepers are amazing people who do amazing work. We feel fortunate that they let us into their lives. I’ll be happy if our film encourages awareness and understanding.”

You can read more about the making of the film in the Flyer’s Indie Memphis 2015 Cover Story. 

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2016 Oxford Film Festival Winners

Big crowds attended an expanded slate of films at this year’s Oxford Film Festival, which stretched through Sunday in the Mississippi college town.

Outstanding films among the more than 130 entrants screened during the five-day festival were recognized at Saturday night’s gala award ceremony at Oxford’s Lyric Theater. The big winner was Embers, the science fiction film by Claire Carré which took home two Hokas: Best Narrative Feature and the Alice Guy Blaché Female Filmmaker Award. 

Memphis filmmakers Joann Self Selvidge, Christopher Reyes,and Sarah Fleming celebrate their Best Editing win for the short documentary ‘Viola’.

Memphis filmmaker and video artist Christopher Reyes was awarded a Hoka for Best Editing for his work on Joann Self Selvidge and Sarah Fleming’s documentary “Viola: A Mother’s Story Of Juvenile Justice”.

Best Documentary Feature was awarded to Nick Brandestini’s Children Of The Arctic, with Best Documentary Short going to “The House Is Innocent” by Los Angeles director Nicholas Coles. The Narrative Short Hoka was awarded to the Belgian film “Blazing Sun” by Fred Castadot. The Mississippi awards went to the narrative short “The Gift” by Gabriel Robertson and the documentary “Finding Cleveland” by Larissa Lamb. Clay Hardwick’s “Fallen Star” won the music video award. The Experimental prize went to André Silva’s “cyberGenesis”. The Special Jury Award for Best Director went to Kostadin Bonev for “The Sinking of Sozopol”, and the Lisa Blount Memorial Acting Award went to Robert Longstreet. Other special jury prizes were awarded to “Three Fingers” by Paul D. Heart, “They Crawl Amongst Us!” by Sihanouk Mariona, and “Fitting The Description in North Portland” by Jarrat Taylor. The ensemble acting award went to the cast of the Los Angles comedy “The Week”.

The Hoka awards are named for a Chckasaw princess, and this was the 13th year the festival has awarded them to outstanding films entered in the film festival’s competition.  

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Oxford Film Festival 2016

The 13th year of the Oxford Film Festival marks the beginning of a new era for Mississippi’s premier film gathering. Since its inception in 2003, the festival had been run as an all-volunteer organization. But last year, executive director Molly Fergusson, operations director Michelle Emanuel, and hospitality director Diala Chaney decided to hang up their clipboards. The festival had gotten too big and needed a new infusion of support to continue.

“When the directors left, the community decided that it was important to continue,” new executive director Melanie Addington says. “The board of directors did some fund-raising to create a full-time position, and that also expanded our sponsorships so we could grow the festival. Basically, we doubled our sponsorships this year as everyone rallied around the idea of letting the festival continue.”

Addington takes over as the festival’s first full-time executive director after more than a decade of volunteering. “I’ve always been a fan of independent film, and I was really glad Oxford had something like this when I moved here. I liked getting involved, and I saw places that I could provide skills I had and help the festival grow. And then I just kept taking on more and more duties, as you do. It’s nice to be doing this full-time instead of on the weekends and instead of sleeping,” she says.

Food + Film

This year, the festival runs five days, beginning on Wednesday, February 17th. “It’s a special ticketed event, Food + Film, so you can eat what you’re seeing on the screen,” Addington says.

The first of six short films about food and drink at the festival’s opening night is director James Martin’s documentary The New Orleans Sazerac, tracing the history of the iconic regional cocktail that has captured the imagination of the current spirits revivalists. Using a number of interviews with Big Easy historians mixed with some careful photographic research and a little snazzy animation, Martin takes the audience all the way back to the dawn of the cocktail age in 1839, when apothecary Antoine Amédée Peychaud first mixed his family’s secret recipe of bitters with brandy, measuring portions with an egg cup known as a coquetier, from which we get the term “cocktail.” The film is detailed and informative, but brief enough that it doesn’t outstay its welcome, which means it will go down easy with one of its titular cocktails.

Other films at the opening-night event include Vish by Danny Klimetz, Oxford Canteen by Brett Mizelle and Heather Richie, and a pair of films about barbecue by filmmaker Joe York. “It’s a big eating and movie-watching festival,” Addington says.

Memphis Connections

Bluff City filmmakers will be out in force at this year’s festival. Friday night at 7:45 p.m. is the Mississippi premiere of The Keepers, Sara Kaye Larson and Joann Self Selvidge’s documentary about the people behind the scenes at the Memphis Zoo. It’s another chance for Mid-Southerners to see the film that won Best Documentary at the 2015 Indie Memphis Film Festival, playing to a pair of sold-out crowds.

Self Selvidge also codirected the documentary Viola: A Mother’s Story of Juvenile Justice, with Sarah Fleming. The moving short film is just one success story from what is planned to be a feature-length documentary about the Memphis juvenile justice system. Drew Smith’s charming short Snow Day, which, along with Viola, won special jury awards at Indie Memphis, will screen on Friday night, as will Edward Valibus’ music video for Faith Evans Ruch’s “Rock Me Slow,” which will compete in the music video bloc.

Syderek Watson, Marcus Hamilton, and Jose Joiner

This year’s Oxford Film Festival will also see the premiere of the first completed film funded by the Memphis Indie Grant program. G.B. Shannon’s short film proposal for Broke Dick Dog won the $5,000 competition in 2014. “The story that it originated from was actually a feature script,” Shannon says. “When the grant came around, I kind of pitched a truncated version of the feature script, which is a road trip movie about this guy who comes home from his mom’s funeral and finds out from a letter she gives him that he has two brothers. Her last wish is for them to track their father down and meet him and give him this letter.”

Shannon says truncating the concept from feature length to short helped refine and illuminate the story. The bulk of the action takes place at the ’50s-era offices of radio station WREC. “It’s on 240 around Frayser. I’d seen it for 20 years, and I always wanted to shoot something there. So when I decided the father was going to be a DJ, I thought oh, we gotta shoot it there. And they were open to it.”

Changing the father character to a radio DJ also changed the complexion of the cast. “I know more about classic soul and funk than I do oldies rock-and-roll, so I thought it needed to be a soul station. And I’m glad, because it broke me out of my comfort zone, and I got to audition people whom I had never worked with before.”

The all-black cast includes great performances from T.C. Sharpe, a veteran of three Craig Brewer films, Jose Joiner, Rosalyn Ross, Syderek Watson, and Marcus Hamilton. “Marcus had never been in anything before,” Shannon says. “He’d played a rapper in a Kroger commercial, but as for learning lines and stuff like that, he had done nothing. I needed somebody real, and I thought he nailed it.”

This will be Shannon’s fourth Oxford Film Festival entry, having won Best Short Film in 2013 with Fresh Skweezed. “They know how to do it right. The parties are great. Melanie’s fantastic. It’s just a fun festival that always has great films.”

Persistence of Memory

First-time filmmakers are often attracted to comedies, talky dramas, or low-budget horror films. Rarely has a first-timer tackled heady science fiction with as sure a hand as Claire Carré did in Embers, which makes its Mississippi debut on Friday at 8:30. As with all science fiction, it helps to have an original concept. The setup is familiar: A global plague has ended humanity’s reign upon the earth, but this is not a weaponized super-flu like The Stand or a zombie virus like The Walking Dead, but a transmissible neurological disease that resembles Alzheimer’s, robbing its victims of memory. An intertwined group of survivors roam the ruined landscape, including a couple, played by Jason Ritter and Iva Gocheva, who rediscover their love for each other anew every day. A silent child, played by Silvan Friedman, is separated from her father and thrown into a series of encounters that land her with James Robertson (Tucker Smallwood), a psychologist searching for a cure to the disease even as he himself is suffering from it. Meanwhile, Miranda (Greta Fernández) and her father (Roberto Cots) have been trapped in a high-tech bunker for nine years, trying to wait out the plague as they battle boredom and despair.

Greta Fernández in Embers

Embers‘ setting is carefully constructed. Imagine Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough film Memento expanded to encompass the entire world. Carré’s secret weapon is her sharp eye for locations, from entire abandoned neighborhoods in Gary, Indiana, to bomb shelters in Poland.

Embers makes a strong argument that it is our memory that makes us human. As one man, played by Matthew Goulish, wanders through a decrepit neighborhood, he struggles to understand how his malady has affected his perception of time, repeating the haunting refrain “Now is now, and here is here. And now is now…”

Guest Spots

The lineup of expert panels and discussions has tripled this year. “We used to have three. Now we have nine. And they’re all free, thanks to the Mississippi Humanities Council. You can do nothing but panels and have a full schedule all weekend,” Addington says.

The annual animation panel, which takes place on Sunday, brings back Adventure Time head writer and storyboard artist Kent Osborne, who will be joined by his fellow Adventure Time alumnus Jack Pendarvis; animator John Durbin from Moonbot Studios, who won an animation Oscar in 2011; and voice actor Susan Hickman, veteran of everything from MacGyver to Kiki’s Delivery Service.

And the festival will look to the future with the first presentation of immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences in the Mid-South. One of the VR films, Randal Kleiser’s Defrost, is fresh from its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. “It’s a narrative story that they put you in the center of it. Actors, people whose faces you know, are acting at you. That’s different from what I had thought of as VR, which was more computer animation,” Addington says.

“We needed to focus on the ‘festival’ part of our name as much as the ‘film’ part of our name,” Addington says. “It’s got to be about the experience and the movies … So that’s a big priority for me, to create things that you wouldn’t be able to experience unless you were at this event.”

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The Year in Film 2015

It’s fashionable to complain about how bad Hollywood movies have become. But from the perspective of a critic who has to watch it all go down, it’s simply not the case. At any given time in 2015, there was at least one good film in theaters in Memphis—it just may not have been the most heavily promoted one. So here’s my list of awards for a crowded, eventful year.

Worst Picture: Pixels

I watched a lot of crap this year, like the incoherent Terminator Genysis, the sociopathic San Andreas, the vomitous fanwank Furious 7, and the misbegotten Secret in Their Eyes. But those movies were just bad. Pixels not only sucked, it was mean-spirited, toxic, and ugly. Adam Sandler, it’s been a good run, but it’s time to retire.

Actually, I take that back. It hasn’t been a good run.

Most Divisive: Inherent Vice

Technically a 2014 release, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s ode to the lost world of California hippiedom didn’t play in Memphis until January. Its long takes and dense dialogue spun a powerful spell. But it wasn’t for everyone. Many people responded with either a “WTF?” or a visceral hatred. Such strongly split opinions are usually a sign of artistic success; you either loved it or hated it, but you won’t forget it.

Best Performances: Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, Room

Room is an inventive, harrowing, and beautiful work on every level, but the film’s most extraordinary element is the chemistry between Brie Larson and 9-year-old Jacob Tremblay, who play a mother and son held hostage by a sexual abuser. Larson’s been good in Short Term 12 and Trainwreck, but this is her real breakthrough performance. As for Tremblay, here’s hoping we’ve just gotten a taste of things to come.

Chewbacca

Best Performance By A Nonhuman: Chewbacca

Star Wars: The Force Awakens returned the Mother of All Franchises to cultural prominence after years in the prequel wilderness. Newcomers like Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver joined the returned cast of the Orig Trig Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in turning in good performances. Lawrence Kasdan’s script gave Chewbacca a lot more to do, and Peter Mayhew rose to the occasion with a surprisingly expressive performance. Let the Wookiee win.

Best Memphis Movie: The Keepers

Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson’s film about the people who keep the Memphis Zoo running ran away with Indie Memphis this year, selling out multiple shows and winning Best Hometowner Feature. Four years in the making, it’s a rarity in 21st century film: a patient verité portrait whose only agenda is compassion and wonder.

Best Conversation Starter: But for the Grace

In 2001, Memphis welcomed Sudanese refugee Emmanuel A. Amido. This year, he rewarded our hospitality with But for the Grace. The thoughtful film is a frank examination of race relations in America seen through the lens of religion. The Indie Memphis Audience Award winner sparked an intense Q&A session after its premiere screening that followed the filmmaker out into the lobby. It’s a timely reminder of the power of film to illuminate social change.

Best Comedy: What We Do in the Shadows

What happens when a group of vampire roommates stop being polite and start getting real? Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement and Eagle vs Shark‘s Taika Waititi codirected this deadpan masterpiece that applied the This Is Spinal Tap formula to the Twilight set. Their stellar cast’s enthusiasm and commitment to the gags made for the most biting comedy of the year.

Best Animation: Inside Out

The strongest Pixar film since Wall-E had heavy competition in the form of the Irish lullaby Song of the Sea, but ultimately, Inside Out was the year’s emotional favorite. It wasn’t just the combination of voice talent Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, and Phyllis Smith with the outstanding character design of Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness that made director Pete Docter’s film crackle, it was the way the entire carefully crafted package came together to deliver a message of acceptance and understanding for kids and adults who are wrestling with their feelings in a hard and changing world.

It Follows

Best Horror: It Follows

The best horror films are the ones that do a lot with a little, and It Follows is a sterling example of the breed. Director David Robert Mitchell’s second feature is a model of economy that sets up its simple premise with a single opening shot that tracks a desperate young woman running from an invisible tormentor. But there’s no escaping from the past here, only delaying the inevitable by spreading the curse of sex and death.

Teenage Dreams: Dope and The Diary of a Teenage Girl

2015 saw a pair of excellent coming-of-age films. Dope, written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, introduced actor Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a hapless nerd who learns to stand up for himself in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Inglewood, California. Somewhere between Risky Business and Do the Right Thing, it brought the teen comedy into the multicultural moment.

Similarly, Marielle Heller’s graphic novel adaptation The Diary of a Teenage Girl introduced British actress Bel Powley to American audiences, and took a completely different course than Dope. It’s a frank, sometimes painful exploration of teenage sexual awakening that cuts the harrowing plot with moments of magical realist reverie provided by a beautiful mix of animation and live action.

Immortal Music: Straight Outta Compton and Love & Mercy

The two best musical biopics of the year couldn’t have been more different. Straight Outta Compton was director F. Gary Gray’s straightforward story of N.W.A., depending on the performances of Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing his own father, Ice Cube, for its explosive impact. That it was a huge hit with audiences proved that this was the epic hip-hop movie the nation has been waiting for.

Director Bill Pohlad’s dreamlike Love & Mercy, on the other hand, used innovative structure and intricate sound design to tell the story of Brian Wilson’s rise to greatness and subsequent fall into insanity. In a better world, Paul Dano and John Cusack would share a Best Actor nomination for their tag-team portrayal of the Beach Boys resident genius.

Sicario

Best Cinematography: Sicario

From Benicio del Toro’s chilling stare to the twisty, timely screenplay, everything about director Denis Villeneuve’s drug-war epic crackles with life. But it’s Roger Deakins’ transcendent cinematography that cements its greatness. Deakins paints the bleak landscapes of the Southwest with subtle variations of color, and films an entire sequence in infrared with more beauty than most shooters can manage in visible light. If you want to see a master at the top of his game, look no further.

He’s Still Got It: Bridge of Spies

While marvelling about Bridge of Spies‘ performances, composition, and general artistic unity, I said “Why can’t all films be this well put together?”

To which the Flyer‘s Chris Davis replied, “Are you really asking why all directors can’t be as good as Steven Spielberg?”

Well, yeah, I am.

Hot Topic: Journalism

Journalism was the subject of four films this year, two good and two not so much. True Story saw Jonah Hill and James Franco get serious, but it was a dud. Truth told the story of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes’ fall from the top-of-the-TV-news tower, but its commitment to truth was questionable. The End of the Tour was a compelling portrait of the late author David Foster Wallace through the eyes of a scribe assigned to profile him. But the best of the bunch was Spotlight, the story of how the Boston Catholic pedophile priest scandal was uncovered, starring Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo. There’s a good chance you’ll be seeing Spotlight all over the Oscars this year.

Had To Be There: The Walk

Robert Zemeckis’ film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who tightrope-walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, was a hot mess. But the extended sequence of the feat itself was among the best uses of 3-D I’ve ever seen. The film flopped, and its real power simply won’t translate to home video, no matter how big your screen is, but on the big screen at the Paradiso, it was a stunning experience.

MVP: Samuel L. Jackson

First, he came back from the grave as Nick Fury to anchor Joss Whedon’s underrated Avengers: Age of Ultron. Then he channeled Rufus Thomas to provide a one-man Greek chorus for Spike Lee’s wild musical polemic Chi-Raq. He rounds out the year with a powerhouse performance in Quentin Tarantino’s widescreen western The Hateful Eight. Is it too late for him to run for president?

Best Documentary: Best of Enemies

Memphis writer/director Robert Gordon teamed up with Twenty Feet From Stardom director Morgan Neville to create this intellectual epic. With masterful editing of copious archival footage, they make a compelling case that the 1968 televised debate between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal laid out the political battleground for the next 40 years and changed television news forever. In a year full of good documentaries, none were more well-executed or important than this historic tour de force.

Best Picture: Mad Max: Fury Road

From the time the first trailers hit, it was obvious that 2015 would belong to one film. I’m not talking about The Force Awakens. I’m talking about Mad Max: Fury Road. Rarely has a single film rocked the body while engaging the mind like George Miller’s supreme symphony of crashing cars and heavy metal guitars. Charlize Theron’s performance as Imperator Furiosa will go down in history next to Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Sigourney Weaver in Alien as one of the greatest action turns of all time. The scene where she meets Max, played by Tom Hardy, may be the single best fight scene in cinema history. Miller worked on this film for 17 years, and it shows in every lovingly detailed frame. Destined to be studied for decades, Fury Road rides immortal, shiny, and chrome.

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Indie Memphis Day 7: A Bloody Good Time

Charisma Carpenter gets bloody in Girl In Woods

After a fantastic weekend filled with great films and events in Overton Square, Indie Memphis returns to the Orpheum Theatre’s Halloran Centre tonight with the documentary Breaking A Monster. Director Luke Meyer followed Unlocking The Truth, a talented metal band of 12- and 13-year olds whose talent and verve got them a record deal and thrust them, unprepared, into the swamp of the 21st century music industry. 

Indie Memphis Day 7: A Bloody Good Time

The second film at the Halloran Centre is Jeremy Benson’ horror tour de force Girl In Woods. You can read about the harrowing production in my interview with Benson in last week’s Flyer cover story. 

Indie Memphis Day 7: A Bloody Good Time (2)

Also tonight at the Halloran Centre is one of the many great panel discussions that Indie Memphis has been hosting this festival. If you’re a woman who works in video production or has interest in filmmaking, come out the Women Filmmakers In Charge panel with Indie Memphis Hometowner Feature Award winner Joann Self Selvidge; Orion: The Story Of The Man Who Would Be King director Jeanne Finlay, who is in town from Nottingham, England; veteran producer/director Sarah Fleming, who shared the Short Documentary award with Self Selvidge this year for “Viola”; and producer/director/editor Laura Jean Hocking. 

Back at Studio On The Square, there are two encore presentations. The first is Barge, this year’s Best Documentary award winner, and the second is the wild comedy Tangerine, which played on opening night of the festival. 

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Indie Memphis 2015, Day 3: Meet Memphis

After a strong start, tonight’s Indie Memphis programming takes a deep look at the city through the eyes of 11 of its filmmakers. 

Memphis artist Tom Wuchina

The Hometowner Documentaries block of shorts screens at the Halloran Centre beginning at 6 PM. Among the 9 films on the bill are “Tom Wuchina Art Of Memphis”, which highlights the work and life of an artist whose public pieces you have seen, but may not have known where they came from. Brian Manis’ 20-minute “Brewhouse: The Tennessee Brewery Story” fills in the gaps on one of Downtown’s most storied and prominent buildings on the eve of its big comeback. “Viola: A Mother’s Story Of Juvenile Justice” is the second work in the festival by Joann Self Selvidge, the documentarian whose film The Keepers wowed audiences on opening night. This time, she’s partnering with past Indie Memphis winner Sarah Fleming for an 8-minute preview of their upcoming feature documentary about the school-to-prison pipeline and how groups in Memphis are working for reform. 

Viola: A Mother’s Story of Juvenile Justice

Tonight’s narrative feature is Sean Mewshaw’s Tumbledown, starring Rebecca Hall as a widow collaborating with a writer, portrayed by former Saturday Night Live player Jason Sudeikis., to create a book about her late, eccentric artist husband. 

Indie Memphis 2015, Day 3: Meet Memphis