INDIE MEMPHIS FILM FESTIVAL RAISES A ‘RUKUS’ (AND OTHER FILMS)

Watch enough films and you’ll notice the movies seem to be in conversation with one another, sharing information and ideas in a cinematic version of the schoolyard game in which a whispered confidence is repeated, mouth to ear, so that each iteration becomes something new.

Sometimes the connections are not unexpected, as when “Negro Terror” and “Memphis Majic“— two documentaries about music and race in Memphis — include footage of the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue.

But many of the dozens and dozens of features and shorts that will screen through Monday during the 21st annual Indie Memphis Film Festival demonstrate a kinship that defies geography and other circumstances of production. They benefit from their proximity to each other and from their place within a festival that this year has insisted on the value of diverse and international perspectives while maintaining a Memphicentric — if that’s not a word, it ought to be — identity.

Perhaps the world’s first soccer science-fiction satire, “Diamantino,” from Portugal, screens at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Studio on the Square, where “Sorry to Bother You” — directed by festival guest Boots Riley — can be viewed a couple hours later, at midnight. Together, they suggest that comedic sci-fi may be an appropriate response to the absurdity of a world embracing a particularly buffoonish albeit dangerous fascism: In each film, the hero exposes an outlandish conspiracy involving body transformation via genetic engineering.

Another social/cultural satire is “I Am Not a Witch,” from Zambia, about a little girl identified as a witch who is exploited for profit by a political boss. Pay attention, and at about the 25-minute mark you’ll detect the ghostly and utterly unexpected croak of Charlie Feathers floating over the south-central African plane, as if the film itself knew it would find a showcase in Memphis, where Feathers cut many of his signature recordings. (“I Am Not a Witch” screens at 9 p.m. Saturday at Playhouse on the Square, with a post-fest encore at 8:30 p.m. Nov. 8 at the Ridgeway Cinema Grill.)

The festival’s impressive roster of visiting filmmakers includes several prodigals. Suzannah Herbert, a 2006 Central High School graduate, returns to her hometown with her directorial feature debut, “Wrestle” (3:30 p.m. Saturday, Playhouse).

“Indie Memphis is so special to me, because it’s my hometown and it’s where my first film showed,” said Herbert, 30. “It’s been a part of each step of my career.”

An outstanding documentary, “Wrestle” essentially embeds viewers with the wrestling team at a failing Huntsville, Alabama, high school. We’d say the film offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective, except a fly likely wouldn’t be able to sculpt 650 hours of footage into a gripping 96 minutes of compassionate portraiture that suggests not only the much-acclaimed “Minding the Gap” (which screens Sunday at Indie Memphis) but the current Starz high-school documentary series, “America To Me,” from Steve “Hoop Dreams” James.

Herbert said she and chief cinematographer Sinisa Kukic relocated from New York to Huntsville for five months to shoot “Wrestle.” The result is a film — with Lauren Belfer credited as co-director — that transcends the tropes of the follow-the-team-to-the-championship sports documentary to illuminate issues of race, privilege, exploitation and responsibility through the stories of four wrestlers in different weight classes.

“We really made a conscious decision early to commit,” said Herbert, who didn’t want to be one of those filmmakers who “fly in and out” for a documentary project.

“We were around literally for everything,” she said. “Every practice, every tournament, when they woke up, when they went to bed — they played hours of video games and we would just hang out. So when really intense situations happened — fear, anger, cops, emotional scenes with their girlfriends or their moms — they were OK with us being there. They trusted us, and we trusted them.”

A documentary with an even closer Memphis connection is “Memphis Majic” (1:40 p.m. Sunday, TheatreWorks), directed by Eddie Bailey, who emphasizes: “It’s ‘Memphis Majic’ with a J and the J is for ‘jookin’.”

In other words, “Memphis Majic” chronicles the history and impact of “jookin’,” a Memphis-birthed form of funky-flow street dance or “urban ballet” (Bailey’s term) that evolved in response to local hip-hop in the 1980s. (The soundtrack includes such regional classics “Get Crunk” by DJ Squeeky and “Lock Em in Da Trunk” by DJ Zirk.)

Another native Memphian who now lives in New York, Bailey, 38, said he was inspired to make his movie by a desire to help jookin’ — described by one practitioner as moonwalking on water” — become “a household word, like breakdancing.” But what he learned is that to make a movie about jookin’ required him to make “a documentary about Memphis — the infrastructure of Memphis, because it rose out of the concrete of Memphis, a world-class city that has so much to offer but so often is overlooked.”

Another Memphis documentary by Memphis filmmakers is the unclassifiable “Rukus“(6:30 p.m. Saturday, Playhouse, and 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Ridgeway), by Brett Hanover, working in