The Flyer is now accepting nominations for the 20<30 Class of 2019. We’re looking to find representatives of the city’s best and brightest young people. Must be younger than 30 as of January 30, 2019. Send a brief bio/resume and headshot with your nomination to brucev@memphisflyer.com.
While the main festival doesn’t start until November 1, Indie Memphis is busy helping the next generation of Bluff City filmmakers get off the ground.
12-year-old Chris Stromopolos (left) starring in Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation
The Indie Memphis Youth Film Festival takes place this Saturday at the Orpheum Theatre’s Halloran Centre. Indie Memphis Executive Director Ryan Watt says the festival has had a youth block for some time, but it was time to spin it off into its own event. “This is the first step towards what we hope will be a bigger and more active youth program.”
The response to the new program has been overwhelming. “I was blown away by how many submissions we got. This thing is going to be really cool. We’re going to be showing 27 short films at the Halloran Centre all day long. And it’s 100% free for K-12.”
The program will begin at noon on Saturday with a free lunch for attendees. In addition to the youth film competition, there will be a series of classes by Memphis area filmmakers. “You’ll hear from Craig Brewer on storytelling, Morgan Jon Fox on acting, and Jordan Danelz on cinematography,” among others, says Watt.
The festival will provide additional inspiration with the story of real-life kids who lived their filmmaking dreams. Tonight, the documentary Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made will screen at Studio on the Square. It tells the story of Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, two kids from Ocean Springs, Mississippi who decided to remake Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas’ classic Raiders of the Lost Ark, shot for shot, using only a VHS camera and whatever other materials they could get their hands on. Remarkably, after six years of work, they succeeded—almost. (How did they pull of the scenes in the submarine? They used an ACTUAL submarine!) The documentary’s frame is the tale of how the childhood friends came back together as adults to film the only scene they couldn’t get right the first time, the epic “Flying Wing” fight.
A screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark: An Adaptation will be the climax of the Indie Memphis Youth Film Festival
Then, on Saturday night, the Youth Film Festival attendees will be treated to the actual product of Stromopolios, Zala, and their friends’ labors. Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation first premiered over a decade ago at the Oxford Film Festival, and it is a must-see for anyone who has ever wanted to make their own movies. It highlights both the determination and resourcefulness of the young cast and crew, and the enduring perfection of Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay, which continues to work just fine even when the visuals don’t measure up to Spielberg’s vision. Before the screening, the winners of the festival competition will be announced. The grand prize is a full day’s production services from Via Productions worth $4,000, plus $500 cash and an automatic entry into the main Indie Memphis competition for the winning film. There will also be an audience award worth $500, and a $250 award for the movie that best represents Memphis.
For more information, and to buy tickets to the events, go to Indiememphis.com
Indie Memphis Youth Film Festival Cultivates Next Crop Of Memphis Filmmakers
About three-quarters of the way through Italian writer/director Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth, Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) and his best friend Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) watch a totally nude Miss Universe (Madalina Diana Ghenea) slowly enter a hot tub. “Who is THAT?” Fred says.
“God,” Mick says.
Waiting to meet God is the primary theme of Youth, which recently took home Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor for Caine at the European Film Awards. When we meet Fred, the retired composer is meeting with a representative of Queen Elizabeth, who is offering him knighthood if he will only agree to come out of retirement and conduct his composition “Simple Songs” in a command performance. He refuses, citing “personal reasons.” He and Mick are staying at an ultra posh resort in the Swiss Alps that cinematographer Luca Bigazzi has a grand old time filming. But the constantly excellent food, happy-ending massages, and mediocre entertainment somehow only add to the funereal atmosphere. The name of the sculpture in the hotel lobby says it all: Alpine Prison. Fred has lost his hunger for creation, and thus his will to live.
Harvey Keitel, and Michael Caine in Youth
Mick, on the other hand, is at the hotel with a staff of writers creating his next film, which he calls “my testament.” His love of creation is intact, and that keeps his mind young, even if he can’t get it up for the fetching young prostitute who haunts the lobby.
Beside the ace cinematography, Caine and Keitel’s buddy routine is the best thing about Youth. Mick tries to puncture Fred’s growing cynicism and apathy, while Fred works hard at doing absolutely nothing. Sorrentino’s screenplay bounces the pair off of an unlikely group of well-heeled hotel guests, none of whom seem to be having any fun whatsoever. Fred’s daughter, Lena (Rachel Weisz), endures the dissolution of her marriage. Actor Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) is sullenly preparing for a role in a historical drama that, when revealed, gets the film’s biggest laugh. The once-youthful superstar footballer Maradona (Roly Serrano) is now morbidly obese, but still mobbed by fans. Veteran actress Brenda Morel (Jane Fonda) arrives late in the action to drop some plot bombshells and throw the most epic fit of the 2015 film season.
Caine glides through the loose collection of vignettes like some kind of ghost who hasn’t gotten around to dying yet. The slow revelation of the source of his pain is masterful and depends almost entirely on Caine’s facial control. Some of Sorrentino’s digressions work, and some of them don’t. The dialogue is occasionally clunky in an English-as-a-second-language kind of way. But as long as Caine and Keitel are around, ogling the young women and antagonizing the bored rich, Youth remains compelling.
Outside the Nappi by Nature salon on May 30th, poet J’malo Torriel, the salon’s owner Sefu Uhuru, and three others say they were brutally attacked by Memphis police officers for no apparent reason. Following the attack, three officers were relieved of duty pending an internal investigation.
Ironically, the group was there to begin rehearsal for their play Why We Die, a serious look at why so many young African-American men face untimely deaths in Memphis.
Torriel (pictured at right with Jasira Montsho) is a member of the spoken-word group Brotha’s Keepa. He began writing the play three years ago in response to the homicide rate for that demographic.
“It’s a play about four young men who are childhood friends. They all end up putting themselves in harm’s way because of social engineering,” says Torriel, who also directs and acts in the play.
“It tackles parents being careful of what they do in front of their children and being economically independent, so kids don’t grow up thinking they have to make money off of crime,” Torriel adds.
Proceeds from the play will benefit Brotha’s Keepa’s Youth Prison Prevention program, their Summer Youth Theatre Camp, and their efforts to feed homeless people downtown.
“Why We Die,” Friday-Saturday, September 28th-29th, 8 p.m. and Sunday, September 30th, 3 and 7:30 p.m., Southwest Tennessee Community College Theatre, 737 Union (409-2655 or 859-4051). $15 advance/$20 door.
About 10 years ago, gangs in Shelby County were confined to impoverished communities and their members were mostly young, African-American men from broken homes. These days, that isn’t the case.
“There’s no place left in Shelby County where we don’t have gang members,” says Reggie Henderson, chief prosecutor in the district attorney’s gang and narcotics unit. “I prosecute kids who come from wealthy families where both the mother and father have goods jobs and nice homes. Some gangs that were traditionally African American have white members now. All the old restrictions are gone.”
Law enforcement officials in Memphis say gang numbers are on the rise, although there is no comprehensive research on exactly how many gang members live in the area. As part of the Operation Safe Community plan unveiled earlier this month, the U.S. Attorney’s office will lead an effort to answer that question.
But Shelby County district attorney Bill Gibbons estimates that there are about 15,000 gang members in Memphis. Gibbons keeps a database of known gang members — those who admit membership after being arrested — and there are approximately 8,000 individuals on that list alone.
“We have about 5,000 hardcore gang members whose day-to-day lives focus on gang activity,” says Gibbons. “Then we have another 5,000 who are active in gangs but may also have jobs or go to college. Then we have another 5,000 that we call ‘wannabes.’ They’re 12- to 14-year-olds seeking gang affiliation.”
If Gibbons’ numbers are accurate, 1.6 percent of the county’s 900,000 residents are involved in a gang. And rising gang affiliation may be behind a recent spike in violent crime. From 2004 to 2005, the number of reported violent crimes involving three or more suspects — an indication of gang activity — increased by 38 percent.
Not only is gang affiliation on the rise, but members are targeting younger children in their recruiting efforts.
“Our greatest concern should be that recruiting of new gang members is occurring in elementary and middle school,” says Mike Heidingsfield, director of the Memphis/Shelby County Crime Commission. “From the media, we get a sense that [gang members] are young men in their early 20s, but it begins long before that. Schools are the single biggest center for gang recruitment.”
Gibbons says older gang members wait until school lets out, and then they talk to the kids in the time before their parents come home from work.
Henderson says there are over 100 active gangs in Memphis, but many of them are neighborhood sects of nationally affiliated gangs, such as the Vice Lords, Gangster Disciples, Crips, and Bloods. Unlike in most major cities, however, gangs in Memphis do not have a problem working together to make the local drug and sex trades more profitable. In August, the Memphis Police Department raided seven drug houses on Given Avenue in Binghamton. Police director Larry Godwin said that the illegal activity in the neighborhood involved Vice Lords and Gangster Disciples working together.
“Money seems to bring people together in Memphis,” says Henderson. “If there’s something to be gained, they can get along with each other.”