The Commercial Appeal - Go Memphis
The Sundance Film Festival comes to the Memphis drive-in
The relationship between Indie Memphis and Sundance is much deeper and broader than the “Official Partner – 2021 Sundance Film Festival” logo on the Memphis film organization’s website might suggest to those who recognize that such stamps are commonplace in the world of arts programming.
In this case, the branding is not just opportunistic or promotional; it’s a sign of “mutual admiration,” according to Indie Memphis artistic director Miriam Bale, who points out that Sundance Film Festival director Tabitha Jackson and Sundance producing director Gina Duncan were the closing-night speakers for the “Black Creators Forum” during the 2020 Indie Memphis Film Festival.
“Sundance asked us to be one of their ‘satellite screens’ because they were really excited about our programming and our vision and our values, honestly,” Bale said.
In this case, the “satellite screen” refers to the Malco Summer Quartet Drive-in, which will bring a significant portion of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival to Memphis when Indie Memphis hosts screenings Jan. 28-Feb. 2 at the drive-in.
Twelve films will screen at the drivein over six nights, starting with “Strawberry Mansion,” the new movie from writer-director-actor Kentucker Audley, who traces his origins as a moviemaker back to his days as a Memphis resident and Indie Memphis Film Festival awardwinner, with such works as 2007’s “Team Picture” and 2010’s “Open Five” (produced by Ryan Watt, five years before he became Indie Memphis executive director).
“As soon as it became known that Kentucker’s film was going to be a Sundance selection, it was clear that it would be in our festival,” Bale said.
Also on the schedule are a horror movie; potential Oscar contenders; and new work by women directors.
Traditionally held each January in Park City, Utah, the world-famous Sundance Film Festival, co-founded by Robert Redford, faced the same pandemicmandated challenges this year as such smaller events as Indie Memphis did last year.
With a traditional festival not an option, Sundance (like Indie Memphis) contrived a combination of online and limited-attendance in-person programming. This enabled the organization to expand its outreach by partnering with 26 “satellite screens” in 16 states and Puerto Rico.
“They really want it to feel like the whole festival is happening simultaneously across the country,” said Indie Memphis executive director Ryan Watt.
In addition to the Summer Quartet Drive-in, the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville will be a Tennessee “satellite screen,” showing movies in a makeshift “drive-in” on the theater parking lot. (While indoor cinemas have remained closed or have operated with severe restrictions for much of the pandemic, drive-ins generally have remained open, on the theory that the outdoor environment and the automobile-enclosed isolation of the drive-in experience inhibit the spread of the novel coronavirus.)
Local organizations selected as “satellites” have programmed their own mini-sundance festivals, based on which of the 66 feature films chosen for Sundance 2021 would be available on any given night. As a result, every satellite venue’s schedule is different.
For example, only one film was chosen by both Indie Memphis and the Belcourt: “Judas and the Black Messiah,” a movie that has inspired Oscar buzz for actor Lakeith Stanfield, the “Atlanta” star who came to the Indie Memphis Film Festival in 2003 with “Short Term 12.”
“Our schedule is unique to us,” Bale said. “It is totally tailor-made for Indie Memphis. We worked for a really long time with Sundance. We had a lot of back-and-forth.
“The films that we ended up choosing are like Indie Memphis in that, as usual, we try to pick some of the best and most interesting films of the year and then we want to match our particular interests, such as having a significant number of films by women filmmakers.
“It was really fun to have (Sundance) come to understand our curatorial vision,” said Bale, adding that Sundance in recent years has returned to “some of the indie values” that inspired the festival in the first place, when it first was organized by Redford and associates in 1978 as the Us/utah Film Festival.
Admission to the Indie Memphis “satellite screenings” at the drive-in is $25 per night, per vehicle (or $20, for Indie Memphis members). Most nights offer a double feature, with Sundance/indie Memphis occupying only one of the drive-in’s four screens; the exception is Thursday’s opening night, when Sundance movies will be shown opposite each other, on different screens.
Each film at the drive-in will feature pre-recorded introductions from the filmmakers. In addition, question-andanswer sessions and other “Beyond Film” supplements will be available online, including a talk with “Strawberry Mansion” directors Audley and Albert Birney conducted by Watt, and a talk by Bale with directors Claudia Weill and Penny Allen, whose groundbreaking films “Girlfriends” and “Property,” respectively, debuted at the 1978 festival.
What’s playing in Memphis
Here is the drive-in schedule: “Strawberry Mansion,” 8:30 p.m. Jan. 28: Four years after their gorilla-atlarge reverie “Sylvio,” the filmmaking team of Albert Birney and ex-memphian Kentucker Audley reunite for a “surreal romantic fantasy” (according to the Sundance program) set in the not-toodistant future, when “an all-seeing surveillance state conducts ‘dream audits’ to collect taxes on the unconscious lives of the populace.”
“Censor,” 9 p.m. Jan. 28: Writer-director Prano Bailey-bond’s shocker is a “bloody love letter” to “1980s aesthetics” about a film censor who perhaps has watched one eye-gouging and decapitation too many.
“I Was a Simple Man,” 6 p.m. Jan. 29: “Crazy Rich Asians” star Constance Wu is a ghost who visits her husband in “pastoral” Hawaii in this “achingly intimate” drama from writer-director Christopher Makoto Yogi.
“Cryptozoo,” 9 p.m. Jan. 29: Dash Shaw’s animated feature imagines a world in which unicorns and other “disputed” creatures are held captive for
display.
“Passing,” 6 p.m. Jan. 30: Actress Rebecca Hall makes her directorial debut with a 1920s-set psychological thriller (adapted from Nella Larsen’s 1919 Harlem Renaissance novel) that stars Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson as Black women who can “pass” for white.
“Superior,” 9 p.m. Jan. 30: Sister actresses Alessandra and Ani Mesa portray twins in Erin Vassilopoulos’ “visually luscious thriller,” which “oozes style and intention... from the music to the set design.”
“All Light, Everywhere,” 6 p.m. Jan. 31: Drawing on physics, technology and more, documentarian Theo Anthony (”Rat Film”) examines “the inherent limitations, biases, and blind spots that skew how we... construct our realities.”
“Mayday,” 9 p.m. Jan. 31: Karen Cinorre’s “feminist fever dream” is “an ambitious reimagining of a war film” that drops a young woman (Grace Van Patten) into “an alternate world, she meets a crew of female soldiers caught in an endless war.”
“Ailey,” 6 p.m. Feb. 1: Documentary director Jamila Wignot uses the “visual poetry” of filmmaking to convey the artistry of the “poetry through movement” innovated by the iconic African American dancer and dance company founder Alvin Ailey.
“Judas and the Black Messiah,” 9 p.m. Feb. 1: From director Shaka King, the most high-profile of these Sundance films casts “Get Out” escapee Daniel Kaluuya as doomed Black Panther Fred Hampton. The cast includes Lakeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons and Martin Sheen, as J. Edgar Hoover.
“Marvelous and the Black Hole,” 6 p.m. Feb. 2: A teenage delinquent (newcomer Miya Cech) befriends a surly children’s party magician (veteran Rhea Perlman) in this coming-of-age comedy-drama from director Kate Tsang.
“Philly D.A.,” 8:30 p.m. Feb. 2: Documentary directors Ted Passion and Yoni Brook look at “the long-shot election and tumultuous first term of Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s unapologetic District Attorney,” who since 2017 has “sued police officers who perpetuated brutality and corruption” more than 75 times.
For tickets or more information, visit indiememphis.org/sundance-festival.