The Oxford Film Festival’s 11th Weekly Virtual Film Fest, Virtual Art House and OFF to the DRIVE IN films are highlighted by politics, activism, and big personalities onscreen.
The Virtual ART HOUSE screenings of Dawn Porter’s JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE about the legendary congressman, Cheryl Hanes and Gina Leibrecht’s AI WEIWEI: YOURS TRULY, focusing on the internationally renowned artist and activist, and Harry Mavromichalis’ OLYMPIA, profiling Academy Award-winner Olympia Dukakis give the film treatment to a tri of iconic and larger-than-life personalities. The Weekly Film Fest shines the spotlight on more Mississippi local talent, voices and topics with two new short film programs.
OFF to the DRIVE IN screens the always-popular RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK on back-to-back evenings July 3 & 4, and then offers up more family-friendly fare on July 9 with Ian Cheney and Martha Shane’s emoji documentary PICTURE CHARACTER at Cannon Lot and Disney’s animated blockbuster FROZEN at Water Valley.
Oxford Film Festival Executive Director Melanie Addington said, “John Lewis, Ai Weiwei, and Olympia Dukakis would be the guests at one of those dream dinner parties one might imagine having. Well, we can’t make that happen for obvious reasons, but we can feature films about their amazing and entertaining lives and exploits. They also happen to be important voices, which is something we will also highlight with two new shorts packages which shine a light on Mississippi issues in particular.
“Finally, it’s a great week for families at OFF to the DRIVE IN with RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, PICTURE CHARACTER, and, of course, the launch of our new screen in Water Valley with FROZEN.”
OXFORD FILM FESTIVAL 2020 11th WEEKLY VIRTUAL FILM FEST
Films, events and descriptions
Political Shorts Block
TRT: 69 min
DEAR JOHNNY REB: AN ARGUMENT AGAINST CONFEDERATE MEMORIALS
Director: Philip Scarborough
Country: USA, Running Time: 7:45 min
Film is an expression of thought and a desire by a number of native Mississippians to the Confederate “sentinels” looming over courthouse lawns and public parks across the state.
FOREVER VOTERS
Director: Sky Bergman
Country: USA, Running Time: 7:02 min
Why do only 36% of 18-25 year olds actually vote? Many high school seniors are eligible to vote and have very strong opinions, but lack the knowledge about the voting process and how to register. The League of Women Voters is stepping in to educate high school students to prepare them for voting, because they know that people who vote early, vote forever.
HOW WE VOTE HERE
Director: Hanna Miller
Country: USA, Running Time: 19 min
As America’s voting infrastructure crumbles, can a scrappy Silicon Valley startup gain the trust of a sleepy town in rural Mississippi in order to test drive the future of voting technology?
ROOT SHOCKED
Director: Cecilia Brown
Country: USA, Running Time: 15:57 min
A story of generational loss, racial disparity, and the steps taken by one family to force the city of Portland to reckon with its racist history.
TRUMPED IN TUPELO
Director: V.G. Bates
Country: USA, Running Time: 19:35 min
TRUMPED IN TUPELO captures the cult-like vibe of a Trump rally as we ask a “Santa” for Trump, a “Q” follower and other loyalists, Why? As the “horrible media,” we got flipped off by gray-haired women and little girls. Before Trump arrived, the Secret Service pulled us from the crowd for our protection.
Mississippi Shorts Block
TRT: 91:26 min
NADJA
Director: Vincenzo Mistretta
Country: USA, Running Time: 15 min
Inspired by the surrealist novel Nadja by Andre Breton, the film begins, as does the novel, with the question, “Who am I?” and then launches into an original story of a young woman who has questions about her birth mother and the mysteries surrounding her life with her father.
PANDA
Director: Trent Dickens
Country: USA, Running Time: 35:39 min
PANDA, is a Neo-Noir short film about a man who hides from the world behind a mask. Falling down the rabbit hole, he is thrust into a world of violence, blue acid, a mysterious woman, and an angry shadow. Soon he realizes that the decisions we all make affect everything more than we think.
STAY IN THE CIRCLE
Director: Jarratt Taylor
Country: USA, Running Time: 6 min
Campmeeting began as a religious revival but currently exists more like a family reunion. Older generations found Jesus while younger ones discover their roots. The nature of the event has changed but the Old Methodist campground continues to be a place for everyone to gather. Regardless of age, it has become a place to reflect on the dead and the living.
THE BLACKSMITH OF OXFORD
Director: Michael Ford
Country: USA, Running Time: 13:42 min
Mr. Marion Randolph Hall, blacksmith since 1910 in Oxford, Miss. His memory as shared by three of his apprentices.
THE BROTHERS BROTHERS
Director: Kyle Taubken
Country: USA, Running Time: 14:18 min
Two brothers, one a small-town pastor in a marriage crisis and the other a flashy doctor with questionable morals, come home to help their overbearing mother in the aftermath of their father’s unexpected death.
WEIGHT TO MY WEIGHT
Director: Maggie Bushway
Country: USA, Running Time: 3:47 min
Addison Bridges is a 19-year-old CrossFit coach as well as a junior at Ole Miss. Throughout her teenage years, Bridges struggled with an eating disorder that eventually caused her to have a breakdown. Now she is in a position to coach and influence others who may be going through the same thing.
OFF to the DRIVE IN
FROZEN
Directors: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Country: USA; Runtime: 102 min
When the newly crowned Queen Elsa accidentally uses her power to turn things into ice to curse her home in infinite winter, her sister Anna teams up with a mountain man, his playful reindeer, and a snowman to change the weather condition.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)
Director: George A. Romero
Country: USA, Running Time: 96 min
A ragtag group of Pennsylvanians barricade themselves in an old farmhouse to remain safe from a bloodthirsty, flesh-eating breed of monsters who are ravaging the East Coast of the United States.
PICTURE CHARACTER
Directors: Ian Cheney, Martha Shane
Country: Canada, Running Time: 81 min
Emojis are a worldwide phenomenon, with some arguing that these smiling poops and heart-eyed faces are on the verge of actually becoming their own language.
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)
Director: Steven Spielberg
In 1936, archeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before Adolf Hitler’s Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.
VIRTUAL ART HOUSE
AI WEIWEI: YOURS TRULY
Directors: Cheryl Hanes, Gina Leibrecht
Country: USA, Running Time: 76 min
Human rights become profoundly personal when dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s monumental exhibition on Alcatraz inspires thousands of visitors to connect with prisoners of conscience worldwide.
JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE
Director: Dawn Porter
Country: USA, Running Time: 96 min
JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Dawn Porter (TRAPPED, GIDEON’S ARMY), chronicles the life and career of the legendary civil rights activist and Democratic Representative from Georgia. Using interviews and rare archival footage, JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE chronicles John Robert Lewis’ 60-plus years of social activism and legislative action on civil rights, voting rights, gun control, health-care reform and immigration. Using present-day interviews with Lewis, now 80 years old, Porter explores his childhood experiences, his inspiring family and his fateful meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957. In addition to her interviews with Lewis and his family, Porter’s primarily cinéma verité film also includes interviews with political leaders, Congressional colleagues, and other people who figure prominently in his life.
OLYMPIA
Director: Harry Mavromichalis
Country: USA, Running Time: 100 min
The award-winning documentary film OLYMPIA is a sublimely intimate fly on the wall verité documentary that tells a poignant story of a woman becoming her own woman on her own terms to assert a gigantic creative force into the world. Rebelling against her old world panty-sniffing suspicious Greek mother to assert her strong sexual drive, fighting the feeling she was “too ethnic” amid the Boston Brahmin at BU, and starting her own theatre company in New Jersey instead of waiting for the phone to ring, Olympia Dukakis models how to live life with blazing courage. Throughout an engrossing story that seamlessly blends past and present, she opens her heart and exposes her truest self to the audience. The raw honesty with which Olympia leads us into the core of herself is what makes this film exceptional.
WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS
Director: Ciro Guerra
Country: USA, Running Time: 115 min
The Magistrate of an isolated frontier settlement on the border of an unnamed empire looks forward to an easy retirement until the arrival of Colonel Joll, whose task it is to report on the activities of the ‘barbarians’ and on the security situation on the border. Joll conducts a series of ruthless interrogations, which leads the Magistrate to question his loyalty to the empire.
WEEKLY VIRTUAL FILM FEST TICKETS:
Political Shorts Block
https://watch.eventive.org/2020oxff/play/5e9c9ce0fb3a4500293f7050
Live Q&A set for July 2 at 5 p.m.
Mississippi Shorts Block
https://watch.eventive.org/2020oxff/play/5e9c9f22129eb700393fbadd
Live Q&A set for July 9 at 6 p.m.
VIRTUAL ART HOUSE RENTAL TICKETS:
AI-WEI WEI: YOURS TRULY
https://oxfordac.eventive.org/schedule/5ef4e3baa58fe5008d29ace8
JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE
https://oxfordac.eventive.org/schedule/5efbcbbcfa3519005475c061
OLYMPIA
https://oxfordac.eventive.org/schedule/5efbe380b9dc140083da3ee0
WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS
https://oxfordac.eventive.org/schedule/5efbd690e603e900630a65ec
OFF to the DRIVE-IN TICKETS
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
https://oxfordac.eventive.org/schedule/5eda170be24881002980569e
July 2 at 8 p.m. at Cannon Lot (100 Thacker loop)
Pre-purchases only
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
https://oxfordac.eventive.org/schedule/5eda1abf57229e003d03782d
July 3 at 8 p.m. at Cannon Lot (100 Thacker loop)
Pre-purchases only
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
https://oxfordac.eventive.org/schedule/5eda1aec1961bd008a677840
July 4 at 8 p.m. at Cannon Lot (100 Thacker loop)
Pre-purchases only
PICTURE CHARACTER
https://oxfordac.eventive.org/schedule/5eda1b247c2fef0097e3238a
July 9 at 8 p.m. at Cannon Lot (100 Thacker loop)
Pre-purchases only
FROZEN
https://oxfordac.eventive.org/schedule/5ef6b579f1140f003e79ab64
July 9 at 1004 Central St., Water Valley
Pre-purchases only
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