Tag: Sara Driver

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Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway

Shannon Walton in Sweet Knives video for ‘I Don’t Wanna Die’

You’re going to be hard pressed to see everything great on Indie Memphis Sunday, so some triage is in order. We’re here to help.

First thing in the morning is the Hometowner Rising Filmmaker Shorts bloc (11:00 a.m., Ballet Memphis), where you can see the latest in new Memphis talent, including “Ritual” by Juliet Mace and Maddie Dean, which features perhaps the most brutal audition process ever.

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway

The retrospective of producer/director Sara Driver’s work continues with her new documentary Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Micheal Basquiat (1:30 p.m., Studio on the Square). Driver was there in the early 80s when Basquiat was a rising star in the New York art scene, and she’s produced this look at the kid on his way to becoming a legend.

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (2)

The companion piece to Driver’s latest is Downtown 81 (4:00 p.m., Hattiloo Theatre). Edo Bertoglio’s documentary gives a real-time look at the art and music scene built from the ashes of 70s New York that would go on to conquer the world. Look for a cameo from Memphis punk legend Tav Falco.

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (4)

You can see another Memphis legend in action in William Friedkin’s 1994 Blue Chips (4:00 p.m., Studio on the Square). Penny Hardaway, then a star recruit for the Memphis Tigers, appears as a star recruit for volatile college basketball coach Pete Bell, played by Nick Nolte. It’s the current University of Memphis Tigers basketball coach’s only big screen appearance to date, until someone makes a documentary about this hometown hero’s eventful life.

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (5)

The Ballet Memphis venue hosts two selections of Memphis filmmakers screening out of the competition at 1:50 and 7:00 p.m., continuing the unprecedentedly awesome run of Hometowner shorts this year. There are a lot of gems to be found here, such as Clint Till’s nursing home comedy “Hangry” and Garrett Atkinson and Dalton Sides’ “Interview With A Dead Man.” To give you a taste of the good stuff, here’s Munirah Safiyah Jones’ instant classic viral hit “Fuckboy Defense 101.”

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (3)

At 9:00 p.m., the festivities move over to Black Lodge in Crosstown for the Music Video Party. 44 music videos from all over the world will be featured on the Lodge’s three screens, including works by Memphis groups KadyRoxz, A Weirdo From Memphis, Al Kapone, Nick Black, Uriah Mitchell, Louise Page, Joe Restivo, Jana Jana, Javi, NOTS, Mark Edgar Stuart, Jeff Hulett, Stephen Chopek, and Impala. Director and editor Laura Jean Hocking has the most videos in the festival this year, with works for John Kilzer, Bruce Newman, and this one for Sweet Knives.

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (6)

If experimental horror and sci fi is more your speed, check out the Hometowner After Dark Shorts (9:30 p.m., Playhouse on the Square), which features Isaac M. Erickson’s paranoid thriller “Home Video 1997.”

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (7)

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis Day 4: The Beat Goes On

Bakosó: AfroBeats of Cuba

On Saturday at Indie Memphis 2019, the focus turns outwards. The only Hometowner feature is the essential Memphis ’69 (2:00 p.m., Ballet Memphis) which I wrote about in this week’s cover story. (Although, if Indie Memphis were around in 1989, Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train (6:30 p.m., Playhouse On The Square) would technically qualify for the Hometowner competition.)

Chyna Robinson’s No Ordinary Love has two screenings on Saturday — 10:30 a.m. at Hattiloo and 7:00 p.m. at Studio on the Square. I interviewed her for the cover story, and here’s a look at the film’s trailer:

Indie Memphis Day 4: The Beat Goes On

If you’re in the mood for some cartoons on Saturday morning (which I always am), trek down to Theaterworks for the Departures: Animated Shorts bloc, which includes Riley Thompson’s “When Planets Mate.”

Indie Memphis Day 4: The Beat Goes On (5)

After a Cat People screening at 11:00 a.m., the Sara Driver retrospective begins in earnest at 1:15 with her rarely seen 1986 feature Sleepwalk.

Sleepwalk

I have not seen Portrait of a Lady On Fire (3:30 p.m., Playhouse on the Square), but the name is amazing, and it certainly gives good trailer.

Indie Memphis Day 4: The Beat Goes On (6)

This is the second year Indie Memphis has given out an award for lifetime achievement in cinematography. This year’s recipient is Sean Price Williams, and you can see him in action with One Man Dies A Million Times (3:50 p.m., Studio on the Square).

Indie Memphis Day 4: The Beat Goes On (7)

Music documentaries are always an Indie Memphis highlight. Bakosó: Afro Beats of Cuba by director Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi chronicles the fascinating and vibrant musical culture of our neighbor to the south.

Indie Memphis Day 4: The Beat Goes On (2)

Flint, Michigan has been in the news for mostly bad reasons in the past few years —the community still doesn’t have potable water! Directors Roni Moore and James Blagden went to Flint to find the humanity among the downtrodden. In Midnight In Paris, they go to the prom with the town’s teenagers. 

Indie Memphis Day 4: The Beat Goes On (8)

Speaking of teenagers, The World Is Full Of Secrets (9:30 p.m., Studio on the Square) is director Graham Swon’s charming tale of sleepover ghost stories and real life anxiety.

TRAILER: OFICIAL – The World is Full of Secrets from Novos Cinemas on Vimeo.

Indie Memphis Day 4: The Beat Goes On (3)

Finally, a truly spooky midnight movie. The story of Kuroneko (11:40, Studio on the Square) comes from a Japanese folk tale of two women who were murdered by marauders during a civil war and return as ghosts who haunt a bamboo forest, seeking revenge. It’s another spooky pic by Sara Driver that will haunt your dreams on Saturday night.

Indie Memphis Day 4: The Beat Goes On (4)

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Harriet, Mystery Train, and Frankie Lead Indie Memphis 2019 Lineup

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.