Oxford (and Canada) show some guts

Dubbing Mississippi’s socalled religious conscience law “morally reprehensible,” the Oxford Film Festival — a proving ground and showcase for many Memphis and Mid-south filmmakers over the past 13 years — has added a category devoted to films with gay and transgender content to its next event, set to take place in late February 2017.

“We’ve always shown LGBT films, but we’re strengthening what we have to create a specific category,” said Melanie Addington, 38, festival executive director. She said she was in talks with people involved in other LGBT festivals to help program films for Oxford.

The move is a response to legislation signed April 5 by Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant that allows business owners and government officials to cite religious objections in denying services to gay people. The law threatens to harm the state’s recruitment of film projects, and also could hurt participation in film festivals, which traditionally attract a large number of out-of-state filmmakers, jurors and other guests. (Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed similar controversial legislation last month, after Disney and other studios vowed to pull millions of dollars in production from the state if the law were passed.)

“The Oxford Film Festival is deeply troubled and disheartened by the passage of (the law),” wrote Addington, in a statement issued April 5. “The Oxford Film Festival’s mission is not only to entertain with independent cinema, but to enlighten with a range of diverse voices.”

Some longtime festival participants already have said via social media that they might not return to Oxford if the law is not repealed. “I totally understand and honor the decision to boycott, but this is my home,” Addington said. “We’re trying to show there’s a lot more to Mississippi than one dumb law.”

An immediate impact of the law is the addition of a program of Southern LGBT films that will be screened in conjunction with Oxford’s first “Pride Parade,” set for May 7.

The program — titled “LGBTQ Shorts: Struggles and Celebrations of Being Out in the Deep South” — will screen at 4 p.m. May 8 at The Shelter on Van Buren, a relatively new Oxford coffeehouse, bar and restaurant located on the east side of the town square. Filmmakers will be in attendance to discuss the films. The screening is presented in partnership with the Crossroads Film Festival of Jackson, Mississippi.

Meanwhile, back in Memphis, producers of “Million Dollar Quartet” fortunately do not have to deal with the moral dilemma of doing business with Mississippi. Although several of the program’s key characters, including Elvis and Ike Turner, have deep Mississippi roots, the CMT television series about the 1950s birth of rock and roll is not scheduled to shoot in that state, although filming is taking place in Arkansas as well as in Memphis and other areas of West Tennessee.

FROMCANADA, WITHGUTS

Films ranging from the heartbreaking to the stomach-churning will be screened next month when the Memphis in May International Festival joins forces with Indie Memphis to host a four-movie series devoted to directors from this year’s Memphis in May honored country, Canada.

The movies — two of which will be making their Memphis public-screening debuts — will be shown at 7 p.m. each Wednesday in May at the Malco Studio on the Square. Tickets are $10 per movie, or $8 for Indie Memphis members. For advance tickets, visit the Indie Memphis website.

Here’s the “Cinema of Canada” lineup:

■ May 4 — “Monsieur Lazhar”: (PG-13, 94 min.). Directed by Quebec native Philippe Falardeau, this 2012 nominee for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film chronicles the difficulties faced by an Algerian immigrant (Mohamed Fellag) who is hired to replace a popular teacher who committed suicide in her Montreal public school classroom. The movie screened previously in Memphis only one time, during the 2014 Rhodes College Tournées French Film Festival.

■ May 11 — “The Forbidden Room” (Not rated, 130 min.): Making its Memphis debut, the latest unclassifiable and mysterious

from Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin features such oddities as a lumberjack who materializes inside a submarine and a sentient, free-traveling mustache that lives on after the death of the man who grew it.

■ May 18 — “Stories We Tell” (PG-13, 108 min.): Another Memphis debut, this acclaimed and highly personal 2012 documentary from Toronto actress/filmmaker Sarah Polley uses interviews, documents, Super 8 re-creations of “home movies,” and other material to take a deep dive into her troubling family history. The movie was named best documentary of its year by the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle.

■ May 25 — “Videodrome” (R, 89 min.): Arguably the most internationally successful of Canadian film directors, Torontoborn David Cronenberg began his career with extremely graphic science fiction and “body horror” movies, including this controversial 1983 masterpiece famous for a scene in which James Woods inserts a pulsating videocassette tape into a vertical slit that has formed in his stomach. (Later, a TV set disgorges fleshy guts rather than tubes and wires from its broken screen.) The supporting cast includes Deborah Harry of Blondie as a kinky psychiatrist.

Contact John Beifuss at beifuss@commercialappeal. com; 901-529-2394

Courtesy of universal Blondie’s Deborah Harry turns heads while some of her co-stars split stomachs and spill guts in David Cronenberg’s “videodrome,” which screens May 25 during the “Cinema of Canada” fest.