Day 4 of Indie Memphis is packed with life. It begins at 11:30 a.m at Playhouse on the Square with the world premiere of Ferny & Luca by director Andrew Infante. “The film is really interesting,” says Indie Memphis Artistic Director Miriam Bale. “It’s basically a rewriting of Saturday Night Fever, or a really diverse look at a rom-com. It really captures being in your twenties, and it’s a great New York movie.”
At 2 p.m. is one of the biggest gets for this year’s festival. C’mon C’mon is by writer/director Mike Mills, who got an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay for his 2016 film 20th Century Women. C’mon C’mon is a road picture starring Joaquin Phoenix as an introverted artist who has to take his precocious nephew Jesse (Woody Norman) on a cross-country trip. The film also stars indie darling Gaby Hoffmann, perhaps best known for the series Transparent. The A24 release has been a hot ticket for this year’s festival.
At 5 p.m. is another world premiere at Circuit, this time for a Hometowner feature. Life Ain’t Like the Movies is by Memphis director Robert Butler. It’s a coming of age drama about an awkward 16 year old who can’t escape bullying at school or conflict with his father at home.
At 9 p.m., an Indie Memphis tradition that has been the source of a lot of great nights at Playhouse on the Square over the years: The Secret Screening. Probably the most talked-about secret screening in festival history was 2019’s Uncut Gems, which wowed Memphis audiences before its smash-hit debut later that year. Bale wouldn’t divulge to me what film she has lined up this year (I even said “please”), but she would say this: “I definitely think everyone watching it will really love it, even if they’re surprised, and even if it’s something they wouldn’t have realized they would love.”
Across town at the Malco Summer Drive-In, after the revival of 1989’s Chameleon Street, is the Hometowner Music Video Showcase. As the curator of the Memphis Flyer’s Music Video Monday series, and a connoisseur of the form myself, I can say that Memphis punches way above its weight in the music video ring. We’ve got “Warzone” by Chinese Connection Dub Embassy; director Jordan Danielz and Sharrika Evans taking on Idi X Teco’s “Buzzsaw Kick”; Talibah Safiya’s “Animal Kingdom” by Zaire Love; Kim Bledsoe Lloyd’s clip for “My Mind Comes From a High Place” by Robert Allen Parker; two by Don Lifted and Josh Cannon; “Slide” by PreauXX, 35Miles, and AWFM; Laura Jean Hocking’s video for the London industrial band Dead Anyway; and many more. It’s gonna be a rocking night.