Bluff City Law isn’t the only production ramping up in Memphis this month. Matteo Servente is getting ready to roll camera on his new short film, “Nessun Dorma (No One Sleeps).”
Servente, who was born in Italy, has made Memphis his home for more than a decade. In 2017, he won the Memphis Film Prize with his short film “We Go On,” then went on to be the first person to ever win prizes for both a narrative and documentary short film at Indie Memphis. “Nessun Dorma” is based on a feature film Servente has been developing for more than five years. The story is about a 10-year-old child who steals a car to go on a quest to find a mermaid. When his car breaks down in an unfamiliar place, he asks for help from a local barber and a police dispatcher. “Their lives get a little bit turned upside down by the arrival of this kid, and they have to make a decision about whether to help him or not,” says Servente.
The lead part of the questing kid is played by Max Havens. “He responded to one of our postings for additions, and he was incredible,” says Servente. “So we’re really excited because of course a lot of this film is right on his shoulders, and he seems to be very much up to the task.”
Havens is going to have a lot of quality help. The police dispatcher will be played by veteran character actress Beth Grant, who has appeared in everything from The Office to American Gods. The part of the barber went to John Diehl, who has appeared on shows such as Friday Night Lights and The Shield. Servente says Grant persuaded Diehl to take the part. “He’s a friend of hers and was actually semi-retired from acting. But he’s doing this project because he’s acting with her, so it’s kind of a family thing for them. They’ve been friends for 40 years.”
The screenplay was written by Melissa Anderson Sweazy, who co-directed the documentary feature Good Grief, which swept the Hometowner Audience and Jury awards at Indie Memphis the same year as Servente’s double win. Shooting the project is acclaimed Memphis cinematographer Ryan Earl Parker.
Production of “Nessun Dorma” is supported by the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) Fiscal Sponsorship Program, where more than 40 people have already made a tax-deductible donation to the cause. Servente says this short film will hopefully clear the way toward the production of the eventual feature film version. You can see more about the IFP fiscal sponsorship program at this link.
Tonight at Studio On The Square, The Ballad of Shirley Collins. It would be hard to imagine what contemporary music would look like without the invaluable folk and blues archives of Alan Lomax. The songs he and his partner Shirley Collins collected on their epic road trip across the US in 1959 provided the basis for a couple of generations of music. Collins gets her due in this documentary, presented by Indie Memphis, that follows her through those years and into a successful career as singer of traditional English songs, before losing her voice in mysterious circumstances. Tickets available at Indie Memphis.
This Week At The Cinema: Indie Memphis Winners and BTS
Wednesday night, what’s sure to be the best shorts program of the year happens at Crosstown Arts: The Indie Memphis Award Winners Encore. Films include “Black 14,” an exquisitely edited, all-archival documentary film about a 1969 anti-racism protest by black college football players in Wyoming, and Narrative Short Film winner “Magic Bullet” by Amanda Lovejoy Street. The Hometowner short award winners include narrative short “Bonfire” by Kevin Brooks; Music Video Award winner “I’m Yours” by Faith Evans Ruch, directed by Melissa Anderson Sweazy; “Minority” by Will Robbins, and the experimental documentary “Windows” by Jason Allen Lee. More details at the Indie Memphis website.
Tonight, the 21st annual Indie Memphis Film Festival closes with a program that is always a highlight. The Hometowner Music Videos bloc contains 35 exceptional videos by Memphis artists and filmmakers.
At the awards ceremony last Saturday night, the Indie Memphis jury awarded Best Music Video to “Gomenake” by Someone Who Isn’t Me (S.W.I.M), directed by Akis Papastathopoulos. Both the band and the filmmaker are from Athens, Greece.
Music Video Monday Special Edition: Indie Memphis Winners (2)
The jury awarded two Hometowner videos: Honorable Mention went to “BW” by Weird Maestro, directed by your columnist, Christopher Scott McCoy. “BW” will make its world premiere tonight at the festival, and we’ll feature it on Music Video Monday when Unapologetic Records is ready to drop it.
The Hometowner Jury Award winner is a Music Video Monday alumna: “I’m Yours” by Faith Evans Ruch. The video was helmed by Melissa Anderson Sweazy, who co-directed Good Grief, the documentary which pulled off a rare sweep of the jury and audience awards and the poster contest at Indie Memphis 2017.
Music Video Monday Special Edition: Indie Memphis Winners
Tune in tomorrow (after you vote) for a full list of winners from Indie Memphis 2018!
Tuesday night at Studio on the Square, an acclaimed film from Spanish director Carla Simón, Summer 1993 tells the story of six-yea-old Frida (Laia Artigas), a young girl from Barcelona whose parents die unexpectedly. The little city girl must move to live with her aunt and uncle, and her first summer in the country makes for a memorable movie experience. Showtime is 7:00 PM, and tickets are on sale at the Indie Memphis website.
This Week At The Cinema: Little Girls and The Big Lebowski
Across town, the Paradiso will screen Julie Traymor’s cult musical Across The Universe. The 2007 film is essentially an experimental film set to the music of The Beatles starring Evan Rachel Woods as Lucy, title character from John Lennon’s immortal Sgt. Pepper’s song.
This Week At The Cinema: Little Girls and The Big Lebowski (2)
Wednesday night at Crosstown Arts, Indie Memphis Microcinema teams up with Film Fatales to bring a program of shorts made by women. One of the nine films screening at 7:30 is Camilla Hall’s An Everyday Problem, a documentary/narrative hybrid tackling the issue of gun violence by focusing on the experience of students in one Los Angeles high school.
Still from ‘An Everyday Problem’
Thursday night at the Memphis Jewish Community Center, the film that swept last year’s Indie Memphis Hometowner awards, Good Grief, will screen in an encore presentation. The film by directors Melissa Anderson Sweazy and Laura Jean Hocking delves into the lives of kids who are being treated by the Kemmons Wilson Center for Good Grief in Collierville. You can get tickets to the 7 PM screening on the MJCC website.
This Week At The Cinema: Little Girls and The Big Lebowski (4)
And, finally, on Sunday, The Big Lebowski. The Cohen Brothers comedy classic contains career-high performances from legends Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, and Steve Buschemi. The goofy film noir parody that became a lifestyle is being feted on its 20th anniversary by Tuner Classic Movies with a 2 p.m. screening at the Paradiso. Expect a full house of Achievers. Here’s the original 1998 trailer, which only hints at the greatness within.
This Week At The Cinema: Little Girls and The Big Lebowski (3)
Tuesday night at Studio on the Square, Indie Memphis presents Little Pink House, a dramatization of a true story of a community in Connecticut who resisted destructive gentrification all the way to the Supreme Court. Catherine Keener plays Suzette Kelo, the plaintiff in Kelo vs New London, a case which resonates today. Showtime is 7 p.m. Here’s the trailer:
This Week At The Cinema: Gentrification and Good Grief
On Wednesday, the film which swept the Hometowner awards at last year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival, Good Grief, will play at Malco Studio On The Square. The screening is a fund-raiser for the Kemmons Wilson Center for Good Grief, the Memphis facility that is the subject of the film. Directors Melissa Anderson Sweazy and Laura Jean Hocking will be on hand, along with the grief center’s Executive Director Angela Hamblen Kelly, with Q&A hosted by Joann Self Selvidge.
This Week At The Cinema: Gentrification and Good Grief (2)
Over at Crosstown Arts on Wednesday night is this year’s Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Short, “Heaven Is A Traffic Jam On The 405,” presented by Indie Memphis.
This Week At The Cinema: Gentrification and Good Grief (3)
Then on Friday, Mike McCarthy’s Midnight at the Studio returns with one of the most infamous, but misunderstood, films of all times, Todd Browning’s 1932 Freaks. Browning had previously directed Bela Lugosi in Dracula, and for his follow up, he drew on experiences he had running away with the circus as a teenager. The results are like nothing before or since.
This Week At The Cinema: Gentrification and Good Grief (4)
After a pause caused by the festival itself, here’s the next-to-last installment of Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits, where we count down the winners of the Best of Indie Memphis poll. You can get caught up with part one, part two, and part three.
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011)
Paradise Lost directors Joe Berlinger (left) and Bruce Sinofsky (right) pose with Jason Baldwin (center).
The West Memphis Three case is one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in American history. But if it weren’t for a couple of struggling directors pitching a true crime documentary to HBO in the early 1990s, Damian Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelly would still be in jail for a crime they didn’t commit. Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger’s came to the Mid South asking, how could three normal teenagers commit such a gruesome crime? But once they got here, they quickly became convinced that the accused were innocent. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills would prove to be one of the most consequential documentaries ever, and has influenced a generation of works from Serial to True Detective. Berlinger and Sinofsky followed the case for 18 years, and when new DNA evidence came to light, their cameras were there. In 2011, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory had its second public screening at Indie Memphis weeks after the West Memphis Three walked free. When Jason Baldwin walked onstage unannounced at the Q&A, it was one of the most electric moments in Indie Memphis history. Later that year, the film was nominated for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards.
Undefeated (2011)
The same film beat Paradise Lost 3 at both the Oscars and Indie Memphis’ documentary category that year. Undefeated was directed by Daniel Lindsey and T.J. Martin told the story of the Manassas High School Tigers and their coach Bill Courtney as they attempt to turn around their school’s historic losing streak on the football field. Today, Undefeated remains a sports movie staple.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks
Antenna (2012)
The Memphis punk scene started in January 1978, when the Sex Pistols played at the Taliesyn Ballroom—now the site of the Taco Bell on Union Avenue. A bunch of kids who thought they were the only ones listening to punk rock in Memphis found each other that night. Months later, some of them descended on The Well, a down-on-its-luck country western bar a few blocks from the Taliesyn, on Madison Avenue. In 1981, The Well became Antenna, the most radical music venue in the south. For the next fourteen years, Antenna was a haven for freaks and the home of new music in Memphis. National bands like R.E.M., Black Flag, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Green Day played at Antenna years before they were filling arenas. It was ground zero for Memphis’ alternative creative explosion that flew under the national radar while spawning groups like Panther Burns, Pezz, The Oblivians, The Grifters, and Jay Reatard—just to name a few.
When I was approached by Ross Johnson and John Floyd about making a documentary about Antenna and the music scene that thrived there, I knew it was something the Memphis community sorely needed. But I balked at the opportunity. I worried about the availability of archival footage. Antenna existed before the age when everyone had a cameraphone in their pockets. Would there be tape of bands like The Modifiers playing at Antenna? Turns out, I needn’t have worried. Antenna owner Steve McGehee knows everybody. By the time Antenna premiered at Indie Memphis in 2012, we had amassed more than 100 hours of vintage video, hundreds of still images, and 88 interviews, some of which were three hours long.
It’s difficult for me to talk about Antenna today. After winning the Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize at Indie Memphis 2012, we have tried in vain for years to find finishing funds to pay for the music licensing fees. I am extremely grateful that enough people remembered Antenna to vote it onto the list. Hopefully one day, everyone can see it. Until then, this is the only bit of untold Memphis music history I can share with you:
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (2)
Very Extremely Dangerous (2012)
One of the highlights of Indie Memphis 2017 was Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell proclaiming Friday, November 3 Best of Enemies Day. Director Robert Gordon, who helped originate the project he co-directed with Morgan Neville, has had a long and distinguished career as a writer and director before winning an Emmy for Best of Enemies. In 2012, a film he produced with Irish director Paul Duane made waves at Indie Memphis. Very Extremely Dangerous opens with Gordon and Duane almost getting in a car wreck with their subject Jerry McGill, a 70 year old junkie, criminal, and Memphis musician. McGill had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and he brought along Duane and Gordon’s camera to record his final comeback performance/crime spree. To call Very Extremely Dangerous a harrowing watch is a dramatic understatement, but somehow, McGill comes out of it as a sympathetic character.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (3)
Keep The Lights On (2012)
Memphis-born Ira Sachs has long been one of the most intimate and truthful directors of the indie era. He got his start in the Bluff City before Indie Memphis got rolling with The Delta, an autobiographical coming-of-age story. In 2005, when Hustle & Flow won the audience award at Sundance, Sachs’ film Forty Shades of Blue won the Grand Jury Prize. Keep The Lights On is the story of an extremely dysfunctional relationship between Erik (Thure Lindhardt) and Paul (Zachary Booth), a filmmaker and lawyer living in Sach’s adopted home of New York who can’t help but bring out the worst in each other. Sachs keeps the audience’s expectations vacillating between “I hope these two kids can get it together in the end” and “They need to stay the hell away from each other.” It’s a story about the joys and limits of romantic love.
Keep The Lights On was the first film in a trilogy of sorts from Sachs about trying to stay human while living in New York. 2014’s Love Is Strange stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as a pair of longtime partners whose love is finally legal, but who are unexpectedly ripped apart after they finally tie the knot. 2016’s Little Men is a story Sach says was inspired by his Memphis childhood about friendship between kids from different social classes who find their lives disrupted by the creeping gentrification of Brooklyn. Sachs’ work is humane, beautiful to a fault, and absolutely required viewing for Memphis film fans.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (4)
What I Love About Concrete (2013)
Remember when you were in high school and thought, “We should make a movie about our crazy lives!” Well, Alanna Stewart and Katherine Dohan actually did it, and their film is probably much better than yours would have been. The two White Station High Schoolers, with the help of Brett Hanover, created a home grown, magical realist masterpiece—imagine if Pretty In Pink had been written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Morgan Rose Stewart (sister of the director) stars as Molly, a woman who finds herself growing very-not-metaphorical wings in her senior year, just as she is preparing for college and the big essay contest. The practical special effects and handmade animation sequences carry considerable visual punch, but it’s the unmannered acting and wild expanse of it all that elevates What I Love About Concrete to the level of the sublime. The film won at Indie Memphis, and has the distinction of being Commercial Appeal movie writer John Beifuss’ only acting credit.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (5)
“I Wanted To Make A Movie About A Beautiful and Tragic Memphis” (2013)
“I sometimes find it easier to reveal intimate details about myself through art. This is prime example” says Laura Jean Hocking. After spending years locked in a small dark room with me editing Antenna, Hocking wanted to do something completely different. She wrote, produced, and directed this Midtown memoir completely by herself. It is at once a celebration of place, a confession, and a series of visual experiments. Hocking collaborated transatlantically with Memphis expat musician Jimi Enck, who scored the film while living in London.
At the 2017 Indie Memphis festival, Hocking and her co-director Melissa Anderson Sweazy won Best Hometowner Feature and the Audience Award for their documentary Good Grief about kids who have experienced tragedy and the counsellors who help them at the Kemmons Wilson Family Center for Good Grief in Collierville.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (6)
Short Term 12 (2013)
By 2013, Indie Memphis’ profile had risen high enough to land the biggest films on the festival circuit. Destin Daniel Cretton’s film Short Term 12, loosely inspired by his time as a counsellor in a group home for troubled teens, swept the Independent Spirit Awards and launched the career of Brie Larson. As one of the biggest vote-getters in the poll, it remains a favorite of Indie Memphis audiences.
It Felt Like Love (2013)
Here’s a little story that tells you what film festival life is like. In 2013, I was on the screening committee for Indie Memphis. We were tasked with finding the eight best features out of the hundreds of applicants that flood into Indie Memphis every year. Late in the season, we had whittled the list down to about a dozen when we noticed that no female directors were represented on the short list. Since it was pretty inconceivable that, in 2013, no women had made and submitted a decent movie, we dug back into the pile of DVDs. At the bottom was It Felt Like Love by Eliza Hitman, and when we popped it into the player, we were absolutely riveted. It was clear that this coming of age film was by far the best thing we had seen that year, and we almost lost it in the shuffle. Later, at the festival, the judges (who are not members of the screening committee) agreed, and It Felt Like Love won 2013’s Best Narrative Feature award.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (7)
In Thom Pain, the film which opened the 2017 Indie Memphis Film Festival last Wednesday, Rainn Wilson repeatedly teases the audience with the prospect of a raffle for valuable prizes, but never delivers. On Monday, after more than 200 film screenings at the Halloran Centre, Studio on the Square, Hattiloo Theater, Circuit Playhouse, Playhouse on the Square, and the Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill, the closing night Memphis Grizzlies Grizz Grant screening finally delivered on the promise of a raffle.
Indie Memphis’ Executive Director Ryan Watt says that the twentieth anniversary festival set a record for attendance by attracting more than 12,000 filmgoers during the past week. A program of encore screenings, technically still part of the festival, at the Malco Collierville Towne Cinema this weekend will push that number even higher.
Good Grief directors Melissa Anderson Sweazy (left) and Laura Jean Hocking (right) pose on the red carpet with Indie Memphis Film Festival Executive Director Ryan Watt.
At the Audience Awards, presented at the closing night reception, the Memphis-made documentary Good Grief completed a rare sweep of Hometowner feature awards. The film, directed by Melissa Anderson Sweazy and Laura Jean Hocking, was previously awarded Best Hometowner Feature on Saturday night at a raucous awards ceremony at Circuit Playhouse, as well as the Audience Choice for the Poster Contest. Previous films that have won both audience and jury awards include Phoebe Driscoll’s Pharaohs Of Memphis in 2014 and G.B. Shannon’s “Fresh Skweezed” in 2011. The record for most prizes won at Indie Memphis by a single film belongs to Morgan Jon Fox’s OMG/HAHAHA, which won five trophies in 2009.
The other big winner to emerge from this year’s festival is Matteo Servente. The Memphis director won two short film prizes for two different short films: “An Accidental Drowning” won the MLK 50 prize for Civil Rights-related films, and “We Go On” won the Hometowner Short Film competition. “We Go On”, with a screenplay by Memphis writer and Burke’s Books owner Corey Mesler, had previously won top honors at the Memphis Film Prize. Servente who came to Memphis from Italy ten years ago, dedicated his wins to the cause of immigrant’s rights, saying “This is what happens when you don’t build that wall!”
Hometowner Narrative Short Audience Award Winner Nathan Ross Murphy receives his trophy from Indie Memphis’ Ryan Watt.
The Narrative Feature award went to Cold November by Karl Jacob, and directors Landen Van Soest and Jeremy Levine took home the Documentary Feature award with For Akheem. The Hometowner Documentary Short award was won by “Blackout Day” by director Graham Uhelski.
Audience Award for Narrative Feature went to Mark Webber’s Flesh and Blood, while the audience chose Sideman by Scott Rosenbaum for Documentary Feature. The audience’s favorite Hometowner Narrative Feature was Nathan Ross Murphy’s “Muddy Water” and Lauren Squires Ready won the Documentary Short audience nod with “Bike Lee. Katori Hall’s “Arkabutla” was the audience choice among the MLK 50 films.
Good Grief and the award-winning short films will be on the program this Saturday at the Malco Collierville Towne Cinema. For more information visit the Indie Memphis website.
2016 was a good year for music videos by Memphis artists, musicians and filmmakers alike. I resist making a ranked list of movies in my year-end wrap up, but I know the crowd demands them, so every year I indulge my nerdery by ranking the music videos that have appeared in the Flyer’s Music Video Monday blog series. Since I sometimes go back into the vault for MVM posts, this competition is limited to videos that were uploaded since my Top Ten of 2015 post. (This proved to be a source of disappointment, since Breezy Lucia’s brilliant video for Julien Baker’s “Something” was in the top five until I discovered it had been uploaded in 2014). Last year, I did a top ten. This year, there were so many good videos, I decided to do a top 20.
Eileen Townsend in Caleb Sweazy’s ‘Bluebird Wings’
A good music video creates a synergy between the music and the action on the screen. It doesn’t have to have a story, but arresting images, fascinating motion through the frame, and meticulous editing are musts. I watched all of the videos and assigned them scores on both quality of video and quality of song. This was brought the cream to the top, but my scoring system proved to be inadequately granular when I discovered seven videos tied for first place, five tied for second, and three tied for third, forcing me to apply a series of arbitrary and increasingly silly criteria until I had an order I could live with. So if you’re looking for objectivity, you won’t find it here. As they say, it’s an honor to just be on the list.
20. Light Beam Rider – “A Place To Sleep Among The Creeps” Director: Nathan Ross Murphy
Leah Beth Bolton-Wingfield, Jacob Wingfield have to get past goulish doorman Donald Myers in this Halloween party nightmare. Outstanding production design breaks this video onto the list.
Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 1)
19. Richard James – “Children Of The Dust”
Director: George Hancock
The Special Rider got trippy with this sparkling slap of psilocybin shimmer.
Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 1) (2)
18. Preauxx “Humble Hustle”
Director: FaceICU
Preauxx is torn between angels and his demons in this banger.
Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 1) (4)
17. Faux Killas “Give It To Me”
Director: Moe Nunley
Let’s face it. We’re all suckers for stop motion animation featuring foul mouthed toys. But it’s the high energy thrashy workout of a song that elevates this one.
Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 1) (3)
16. Caleb Sweazy “Bluebird Wings”
Director: Melissa Anderson Sweazy
Actress (and former Flyer writer) Eileen Townsend steals the show as a noir femme fatale beset by second thoughts.
Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 1) (5)
15. Matt Lucas “East Side Nights/Home” Director: Rahimhotep Ishakarah
The two halves of this video couldn’t be more different, but somehow it all fits together. I liked this video a lot better when I revisited it than when I first posted a few months ago, so this one’s a grower.
Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 1) (6)
14. Dead Soldiers ft. Hooten Hollers “16 Tons” Directors: Michael Jasud & Sam Shansky
There’s nothing fancy in this video, just some stark monochrome of the two combined bands belting out the Tennessee Ernie Ford classic. But it’s just what the song needs. This is the perfect example of how simplicity is often a virtue for music videos.
Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 1) (7)
13. Angry Angles “Things Are Moving”
Director: 9ris 9ris
New Orleans-based video artist 9ris 9ris created abstract colorscapes with vintage video equipment for this updated Goner re-release of Jay Reatard’s early-century collaboration with rocker/model/DJ Alix Brown and Destruction Unit’s Ryan Rousseau.
Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 1) (8)
12. Chris Milam “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” Director:Chris Milam
Milam and Ben Siler riffed on D.A. Pennebaker and Bob Dylan’s groundbreaking promo clip for “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, and the results are alternately moving and hilarious.
Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 1) (9)
11. Deering & Down “Spaced Out Like An Astronaut” Director: Lahna Deering
In a departure for the Memphis by way of Alaska folk rockers, the golden voiced Deering lets guitarist Down take the lead while she put on the Major Tom helmet and created this otherworldly video.
Lisa Mac’s new single “Mr. Mystery” is a groovy love letter to a man who won’t make up his mind, produced by Eliot Ives (guitarist in Justine Timberlake’s band The Tennessee Kids) and Scott Hardin.
Director Melissa Anderson Sweazy says she wanted the video to “feel like that part in almost every dance movie when everything is falling apart for the hero/heroine: they are clashing with the head of the dance company, the love interest has blown them off, and they’ve just got to dance it out.”
Cinematographer Ryan Earl Parker shot dancers Natalie Fotopolous Reding and Alberto Gaspar in the Jack Robinson Gallery. “The chorus is so swoon-inducing that it just sweeps you up and makes you want to move. I wanted Natalie to be the stand in for all of us who wish they could truly dance like no one’s watching and look amazing while doing so.”
Music Video Monday: Lisa Mac
If you would like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
There are several Memphis filmmakers with multiple projects appearing in this year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival. One of the most prolific local filmmakers is Laura Jean Hocking, who boasts involvement in eight different projects screening during the weeklong festival. She co-directed the short narrative film “How To Skin A Cat” and the short documentary film “A.J.”; and created music videos for John Kilzer and Alex Da Ponte. As an editor, she cut the music documentary Verge and the narrative feature Bad, Bad Men. Melissa Anderson Sweazy’s music video “Bluebird”, and did initial assembly on frequent collaborator Sarah Fleming’s “Carbike”. Oddly enough, it all started because of her culinary prowess.
Jamie Harmon
Filmmaker Laura Jean Hocking
It was early 2000s and Laura Jean Hocking was doing craft services and props for her friend’s films. While helping out with her husband C. Scott McCoy’s film Automusik Can Do No Wrong, Hocking wound up peering over the shoulder of The Invaders director Prichard Smith. “I watched Prichard edit, and it just clicked. It was an epiphany,” said Hocking. “And I knew right then and there that I wanted to do this for a living.”
Hocking’s epiphany sparked an insatiable thirst for editing jobs. After she purchased an instruction book for Final Cut Pro, and completed every lesson in it, Hocking set out to edit a feature film she had just finished writing with McCoy. “It was 52 speaking parts, and everyone thought I was out of my mind to tackle that as my first editing project,” recalls Hocking. “After that, I wanted to edit any and every thing.”
Solomon Phillips in Laura Jean Hocking’s video for John Kilzer and Kirk Whalem’s song ‘Until We’re All Free’
More than 15 years later, Hocking pretty much has. She’s also produced, directed, or written countless other films. Two of her Indie Memphis projects in particular showcase Hocking’s ability to tackle subjects that can elicit a wide range of emotional responses.
In “A.J.” a short documentary that introduces audiences to the delicate work of the Kemmons Wilson Center for Good Grief, Hocking, fellow producer/director Melissa Anderson Sweazy, and producer/cinematographer Sarah Fleming decided to focus on an element of grief underexplored in documentaries — recovery. “We see the dark side represented in film plenty,” said Hocking. “We wanted to show how people get out of grief and how they get to the other side of it.”
‘A.J.’
On the flip side, the short film “How to Skin A Cat” demonstrates of Hocking’s ability to transition from the somber to the asinine within a single production year. And if you pressure Hocking enough, she’ll tell you it’s the film that she might love just a tiny bit more than her other film-children this festival, due largely to the ability to pay the actors and crew, thanks to the $7,500 in IndieGrant funds the project received. “Do you know how big that was? To be able to pay our actors?”Hocking asks.
In spite of a rapidly expanding filmography, Hocking has her sights set on the Memphis horizon and the future of Bluff City filmmaking. When people ask if she ever would consider moving to L.A., Hocking’s answer is a flat no.“Why would I want to move to L.A.? Here, I can make a difference,” Hocking notes. “It’s here that I have artistic freedom that isn’t usually given to you by way of a big studio.”
With a location of choice and the support of a close-knit film community, Hocking is poised to continue her constant self-challenge to try all things new in the world of filmmaking. And because her personal belief is to never cease trying new things, we are likely in store for watching a filmmaker whose list of works will continue to push norms. “After all,” Hocking added, “If you’re not learning, you’re dying.”
Jamie Harmon 
