Roll ’em in the hills
Women in independent cinema are focus of this year’s Ozark Foothills FilmFest
Judy and Bob Pest founded the Ozark Foothills FilmFest in 2001, upon the suggestion of Dale Cole, a local bank president who thought Batesville could use the community enrichment and economic boost. The Pests figured, why not? After all, they’d run an independent theater in Kansas City, Mo., for seven years. But the first few years were more difficult than they expected. There was little support, financial or otherwise, and the four-day festival was spread among three towns – Batesville, Heber Springs and Searcy.
“After about the first three years, we got going in the direction we needed to go,” Bob Pest says. Now promotional posters dot Main Street windows, and the festival averages 3,000 ticket sales a year. Funding comes from grants and sponsorships. Lyon College helps cover panelists’ travel, and the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville offers the use of its auditorium.
Ozark Foothills offers the cheapest access of any film festival in the country. Attending a screening costs about $4. Twenty-five bucks buys a pass to all the screenings.
And unlike most festivals, it isn’t competitive. The films are simply screened, which, according to Pest, is a deliberate effort to encourage filmmaker networking: “Instead of worrying about who’s better than who, or who wins the award, they all sit down and get to know each other.” This year, 70 films were submitted, and 34 were selected. At noon on Sunday, there will be a showcase of eight short films made by Arkansans.
Most years the festival has a loose theme. Once, in homage to the region’s growing Hispanic population, Ozark showed several Mexican films, paired with a traveling exhibit of vintage Mexican movie posters. Another year’s theme was racing, in honor of the local racetrack, Batesville Motor Speedway.
This year’s “The Female Face of Indie Film” was inspired by the current political climate. “Women are simply not respected in America,” Pest says.
At 8 p.m. Friday, the festival will screen the 1927 film Underworld, largely recognized as the first gangster film, with live accompaniment by Boston’s Alloy Orchestra (admission is $8-$12). It’s the kind of weirdly marvelous cultural endeavor that rarely graces landlocked American towns of 10,000 – especially since Alloy has spent the past two decades playing their silent film compositions everywhere, from cruise ships to the Louvre in Paris.
BUZZ FILMS
All screenings are at Independence Hall, UACCB, 2005 White Drive, Batesville, and cost between $3 and $5, unless otherwise noted.
Reconvergence (7 p.m. Thursday) is more philosophical inquiry than traditional documentary. Four characters pontificate on the meaning of life, their place in it and our place in history. Pete Estep, a Harvard-educated neuroscientist, is obsessed with immortality. Waite Rawls a stockbroker turned historian, is mesmerized by the Civil War and uses archival sound clips and computer manipulation to re-create the “Rebel yell,” as emitted by the Confederate army. Eustace Conway, a naturalist and educator, wants to find a remedy to our increasing disconnection from the natural world. Caleb Whitaker is a poet exploring shamanism. Landers Theater, 332 E. Main St.
Black Marks on White Paper
(6 p.m., Friday) This documentary, made by Paragould minister Bob Hager, will have its world premiere. This is the story of Bennie Warner, a Liberian minister who, as a village child, witnessed a man making “black marks on white paper.” Thus began Warner’s journey toward literacy, the ministry and ultimately, the vice presidency of Liberia. In 1980, following a military coup, Warner attempted to run a government-in-exile from the Ivory Coast before moving to America. In 1998, he was appointed district superintendent of the United Methodist Church for south Arkansas. Warner will be available for a Q&A following the screening.
Empire Builder (12:30 p.m. Saturday): Any indie-film buff will recognize this film’s 32-year-old director, Kris Swanberg, the wife and frequent collaborator of prolific filmmaker Joe Swanberg. But Kris Swanberg isn’t riding any coattails here. This film is introspective, poetic and ominous, more Terrence Malick than her husband’s mumblecore. Empire Builder is about Jenny (Kate Sheil), a young housewife living in a Chicago high-rise. She’s a former food activist, trapped on a metaphorical treadmill that promises endless soccer practice carpools. Her husband, played by Joe Swanberg, is blithely unaware, carving the baby’s dinner into minuscule bites and treating Jenny to “date-night,” as she mourns the passage of her independent identity. When Jenny and the baby spend a week at a rural cabin, alone but for the insects and an intriguing handyman, Jenny dabbles with the idea of another life – not necessarily a better life, just something different. The movie is slow and carefully shot, with understated visual repetition. The close, claustrophobic holds on mundane tasks, such as chopping wood, preparing food and scrubbing clothes, betray Kris Swanberg’s early experience making documentaries. Atmosphere (swishing grass, whistling wind) and eerie music (violin and gothic piano melodies) outweigh dialogue, and moments of levity are sparse. This is the closest this year’s festival gets to a feature horror flick.
It’s an interesting selection for a female-themed a festival. The film encourages fraught, complicated feelings toward the protagonist, which are largely due to her status as wife and mother. Her disregard for her privilege may seem contemptible, but it’s an uncomfortable contempt, flavored by questions of who’s qualified to judge and what society says domestic life should look like. Many people will relate to Jenny, compounding the angst-ridden tone of the movie with a more personal anxiety. Martha Stephens’ Pilgrim
Song (3 p.m. Saturday) explores ennui and existentialist discontent from the perspective of a 30-something male, not yet trapped in the big commitments of parenthood, marriage and a mortgage. James, played by Tim Morton, is a laid-off band instructor. He’s not sure where things are headed with his long-suffering girlfriend, and he barely remembers the notso-distant days when living was easy. He decides to spend the summer hiking the Appalachian Trail. Along the way, he meets colorful locals who remind him that relationships are worth the effort, and joy is a choice. Set against lush mountain scenery, bird song and gently strummed banjo, Pilgrim Song is primarily a meditation on love. The images are painterly, with some shots as elegant and luminous as the work of Renaissance masters. Pilgrim Song premiered at the Austin, Texas, South by Southwest last year, and won the $10,000 Oxford American prize at the 2012 Little Rock Film Festival.
In Matteo Servente and Sarah Ledbetter’s first feature, The Romance of Loneliness (Saturday, 6 p.m.), 20-something Amanda (whom music fans will recognize as Memphis-based songstress Amy Lavere) is living out of her car. She can’t figure out if she wants to move in with her boyfriend, go back to the college-town from which she came or go somewhere else. First, though, she has to join her grandmother and sister at cousin Christina’s wedding. Christina, also in her early 20s, is marrying the female captain of the girls’ volleyball team, in a small celebration behind their sun-speckled cottage. Mina, the grandmother, played by Lynn Cohen (of The Hunger Games fame) puts on a good face, but she’s trying to come to terms with a union she doesn’t understand or fully respect.
Amanda is accustomed to relying on her older sister, Margot, for guidance. But at the moment, Margot is distracted by her own problems. This uncertainty is underscored by the giddiness of the brides — a giddiness that seems subversive not because they’re two women committing to life together, but because they’re two very young women, forging a difficult path often considered the province of “mature” gay people. It’s a brilliant subtext, forcing those who believe in equal marriage to examine their own mainstream conditioning.
But on the surface, this is a sweet, Southern comingof-age tale. It’s mint greens and pale pinks, wide-planked floors, sun-dappled dresses and twinkling porch lights. That it manages to explore a political issue in an unassuming way, while remaining natural, charming and easy to watch, is The Romance of Loneliness’ chief accomplishment.
No Trespassing (7:30 p.m. Saturday) is a micro-budget documentary that tracks filmmaker and social-worker Kate Siegenthaler into the deepest, poorest pockets of the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks. Siegenthaler’s clients talk about poverty, drug abuse and child neglect, interspersed with clips of expert insight and punctuated with a sad music montage. It’s fascinating because it offers a real-world glimpse of communities mostly explored through academia and fiction. But it’s also problematic, due to how manipulated that “real-world” glimpse seems. We tour a house brimming with children, trash and crumbling plaster. It’s difficult to tell if the mother is under the influence, mentally ill or has a low-IQ. Another woman weeps because she has chosen methamphetamine over her children. A grandmother says her grandson suffers because of “things men did to him.” Then the grandson, about 13 or so, appears —“Tell me what you do when you get angry, to punish yourself?” the social worker asks him. Ozark Foothills will be the film’s world premiere.
Ya’ke Smith’s Wolf (2:30 p.m. Sunday) is a film fest veteran. It premiered at South by Southwest 2012 and came away with the Arkansas Times Audience Award at last year’s Little Rock Film Festival. Shot in a noir style of shadows, reflections and streetlights, Wolf tackles the taboo topic of pedophilia in the black church. More than reportage, sensationalism or religious indictment, this film is about the emotional fallout — how abuse is a cyclical problem; how a child, introduced too early to intimacy and desire attempts to process these experiences; how a victim protects and even loves an abuser; and how the guilt, shame, betrayal and anger tear a family apart.
Jordan Cooper plays Carl, a bookish teenager with an often absent truck-driving father and a mother trying to make it through her final month at the university. Their pastor, Bishop Anderson, has an important role in the family. He has helped Carl’s parents keep their marriage afloat encouraged Carl’s mother to return to school, and until recently, offered Carl affection and sleepovers at the rectory. But Anderson has a history of abusing boys in his parish, and the church has a history of helping him conceal this.
Hearts of the Dulcimer (7 p.m. Sunday) is about the Appalachian dulcimer, which first appeared in the early 19th century, and how it was appropriated by California folk culture of the 1960s. The documentary will celebrate its worldwide premiere at the Ozark Foothills FilmFest.
Check ozarkfoothillsfilmfest.org or call (870) 251-1189 for a complete schedule and more information.