Tag: The Keepers

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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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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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Film Features Film/TV

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 2015, Day 1: Tangerine Dreams

It’s time! Indie Memphis 2015 kicks off tonight at the Orpheum Theatre’s Halloran Centre. You can read my cover story about the annual festival here.  The opening film The Keepers is sold out, but as of this writing, there are still tickets available for Tangerine, director Sean S. Baker’s action comedy that was the talk of Sundance this year. Set in Los Angeles, and shot entirely on an iPhone 5S, the movie traces one very eventful day day in the life of Sin-Dee Rella, a transsexual sex worker who gets out of prison to find that her boyfriend/pimp has been cheating on her. 

Indie Memphis 2015, Day 1: Tangerine Dreams

Watch this space for daily Indie Memphis updates. See you at the festival! 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

The Keepers to Open Indie Memphis 2015

Memphis filmmakers Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson’s  documentary The Keepers will be the opening night film for this year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival. The film focuses on the people who keep the nationally acclaimed Memphis Zoo running, and their complex and sometimes heartbreaking relationships with the animals in their care. 

Carolyn Horton in The Keepers

The closing night feature will also be a documentary. Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, directed by British filmmaker Jeanne Finley, cuts to the origin of the “Elvis Is Still Alive” myth. In the late 1970s, a man named Jimmie Ellis who had a voice that was uncannily like The King’s made a name for himself as a masked singer named Orion, who, rumor had it, was actually Elvis. 

Orion

Among the other movies announced for the festival today are Todd Haynes’ Carol, starring Cate Blanchett, and a 25th anniversary screening of Metropolitan, a pioneering indie production that created a blueprint for countless low-budget ensemble pieces, with director Whit Stillman. The second opening night feature, Tangerine, is a surreal crime drama shot entirely on iPhones by director Sean Baker. You can see clips from all of the announced films in this short video. For more information, go to the Indie Memphis website. 

The Keepers to Open Indie Memphis 2015