Arkansas Cinema Society sets Premiere event lineup

Details of the Arkansas Cinema Society inaugural event — called Premiere — were announced last week and it sounds as if the nonprofit group is planning to make good on its promise to bring ambitious film programming and interesting filmmakers to Arkansas.

Premiere will be held Aug. 24-26 in Little Rock, at the Ron Robinson Theater in the River Market District, and will feature writer-director David Lowery (Ain’t Those Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon and A Ghost Story) and actor Adam Driver (HBO’s Girls, Inside Llewyn Davis, Paterson and Star Wars: The Force Awakens) presenting their films. After the screenings they’ll hold conversations with Jeff Nichols, the Little Rockborn filmmaker who founded the society.

In a news release that accompanied the announcement, Nichols says: “It has always been a dream of mine to intersect these two worlds, introducing some of the friends I have met in the film industry with my hometown and vice versa. I’m grateful that Adam and David were willing to make the time to join us for the ACS’s Premiere in August, and I’m thrilled that the Arkansas community will have access to these two artists who are doing some amazing work at the top of their

game.”

The event will begin with a screening of the Sundance hit release Patti Cake$. The second day, ACS will host an afternoon showing of the drama Paterson, a 2016 Cannes Film Festival award-winner that stars Driver as an aspiring poet and bus driver. Next, ACS will screen Star Wars: The Force Awakens, in which Driver plays villain Kylo Ren. Nichols and Driver will have onstage conversations after both films.

On the final day, Lowery will screen his Disney feature Pete’s Dragon, a 2016 adaptation of the 1977 musical by the same name. His latest film, A Ghost Story, which stars Casey Affleck as a recently deceased man who occupies the house he lived in with his wife, will be shown that evening.

Nichols will host Lowery in a conversation after Pete’s Dragon and moderate a Q&A with him after A Ghost Story.

Tickets for each of the five screenings will cost $35 and include access to the conversations or Q&As after the screenings as well as admission to the after-parties each evening. Tickets and more information can be found at goelevent.com/ACS/e/ Search.