The Little Rock Film Festival has scored a late coup, adding "Beasts of the Southern Wild," the Sundance Grand Jury prize winner, to its line-up. Set in a mythical Delta community that's preparing to weather a Katrina-esque storm, the film is a key addition to a festival that's focused on highlighting the best in Southern film. After winning Sundance and being rapturously received at Cannes, "Beasts" comes to Little Rock as the favorite to win the $10,000 Oxford American Eye on the South prize.

Another exciting late add: "Bernie," the latest from Richard Linklater. Starring Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey and the late Rick Dial. See the trailer on the jump.

• 'Lola Versus'

The Little Rock Film Fest has announced the slate of films that'll compete in for Golden Rock Awards in narrative and documentary categories. According to festival artistic director Brent Renaud, This has been by far our most competitive year ever. These selections from the United States, Iraq, Africa, India and beyond, represent the very best in what is happening in independent film today."

See the list on the jump.

UPDATE: I've added links to trailers to just about everything.

And here's the trailer for probably the most well-known film that's been announced, "Lola Versus," staring indie darling Greta Gerwig and Joel Kinnaman (AKA "The Killing's" Holder, not looking/talking like the white Snoop Dogg).

• Brian Chilson
• Brent Renaud, Jack Lofton and Craig Renaud

Big shakeups abound in the Little Rock Film Festival offices, just days after the close of the festival's fifth year.

Today, the LRFF announced that co-founder Brent Renaud has been appointed executive director of the newly created Arkansas Film Institute, a "state-wide initiative to promote and support filmmaking and film culture in Arkansas."

More on the institute from the release:

It will be the overarching organization under which the Little Rock Film Festival, the LRFF Youth! Program, the Reel Civil Rights Film Festival, the 48 Hour Film Festival, and the Argenta Film Series will operate. Additional projects are under way, with the goal of continuing the momentum created for the film community, both in Arkansas and regionally. We look forward to working with Christopher Crane at the Arkansas Film Commission to help bring out of state productions to Arkansas, and with filmmakers and film festivals within the state to support local productions and crew training.

Meanwhile, LRFF executive director Jack Lofton announced his resignation today.

Despite the odd timing of the announcement, Lofton described the split as "amicable and mutually beneficial." He said he'd continue "to pursue projects to promote film in Arkansas." In exactly what capacity, he wasn't ready to say, though he did reveal that he has funding in place for his project and the beginnings of a schedule of events.

With Lofton out, co-founders Owen Brainard and Craig Renaud will serve as co-executive directors of the festival.

I've got a call in to Brent Renaud to find out more about the institute. When I hear back, I'll update the post.

The Times Brian Chilson was on the scene last night at the Arkansas Times-sponsored Little Rock Film Festival Gala at the Clinton Center, snapping pictures of the Trans Am from "Smokey and the Bandit" and just about all the attendees.

See the slideshow here.

"The Last Mountain," a documentary about the catastrophic effects of coal mining, won the $10,000 Oxford American Southern Film Award at the Little Rock Film Festival Gala at the Clinton Center tonight. Meanwhile, as predicted, Robbie Pickering's "Natural Selection" won the Golden Rock Award for Best Narrative Film, while another of our favorites, "Marathon Boy" won the Golden Rock for Best Documentary.

The LRFF also formally announced the creation of the Arkansas Film Studies Institute, which we first reported on several months back. It'll serve as the umbrella organization that oversees the Little Rock Film Fest, the 48 Film Fest and the soon-to-return Arkansas Film Society, which will host screenings at the Argenta Community Theater.

See a complete list of winners on the jump.

It could be because my aversion to the words "romance" and "indie" hugging up to each other automatically sinks my expectations, so when I see one that hits me, it hits hard. Maybe it's simply because the movie echoed my own thoughts on the frivolity of romance in time of revolution.

Maybe it's because I've been curious and excited to see how the omnipresence of social media will come to affect - for better or worse - the (ahem) language of film. "The Social Network" employed social media only peripherally. Godard flirted with it in "Film Socialisme" and "Catfish" strangled us with it. But director David Dusa intertwines his movie with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even Google Image Search with an almost organic elegance that compliments, never overwhelms, the story.

The movie follows Gecko, a Parian Muslim bellboy (likes: never-ending parkour, dislikes: following politics), as he falls for - or flings with? - Anahita, whose attention is turned to her native Tehran during the 2009 Green Revolution, which she obsessively follows on her laptop and ever-present iPhone. (But who didn't?)

You can probably use that small synopsis to cobble together the story arc. But a romance it isn't; this is a movie, lens zoomed in tight and away from the revolution, about tone. And it's nearly pitch-perfect: hyper-kinetics, sly smoochie faces, ham-handed Boudelaire allusions and all.

I'd love to write about it more and flesh out more of my thoughts - fluid in my head but rushed here on the blog - but it's film festival week and I'm heading right back to Riverdale.

"Alamar," a Spanish film firmly rooted in what's alternately been called Slow Cinema and neo-minimalism, was one of the highlights of last year's festival. This year, "Jess + Moss," another atmospheric meditation on youth and its surroundings, is poised to stand out in the same light. Set on a Kentucky tobacco farm, the movie moves at a kudzu's pace, exploring the depth of memory and the nature of family through two second cousins who spend a summer removed from the adults in their family. Judging from clips, the cinematography alone seems to warrant a viewing. Captured with more than 30 random 16mm film stocks, the slow, varied photography compliments the film's Southern mood. (Think "George Washington," the debut from Arkansas native David Gordon Green.) Those looking for a slice of adventurous, poetic filmmaking, make time for this one. Director Clay Jeter will be on hand for the weekend screenings.

5:50 p.m., Sat., Riverdale
11:45 a.m. Sun. Riverdale

It's only natural to be a tad apprehensive about a movie with a running time that flirts with a butt-numbing three-hour mark. But few directors can fill an intimidating stretch of film as expertly as Steve James. The documentarian earned his stripes (and status as a modern-day great) in 1994 with "Hoop Dreams," the monumental basketball documentary. "The Interrupters" sees James turn his eye yet again on inner-city Chicago, tracking the work of CeaseFire, an organization whose members work to decrease soaring murder rates by mediating gang disputes in the city's most dangerous war zones.

Filmed right in the middle of the powder keg, the doc follows three entrenched counselors, all reformed ex-criminals with violent pasts, taking to living rooms, prisons, funerals and the literal streets to cool down hot heads, sometimes successfully and, on occasion, in vain. James himself will be on hand during the festival to discuss his brand of docu-journalism and his films at large.

4:40 p.m. Sat., Riverdale
noon Sun., Riverdale

Of all the viral phenomena in recent memory — spaghetti cat, "Chocolate Rain," "don't tase me, bro!" — Jimmy McMillan seems perhaps most likely to enjoy some sort of lasting fame. Because, for one, the former New York gubernatorial candidate with the Rent is 2 Damn High Party is memorably odd. His facial hair calls to mind Santa Claus, a carnival barker and chin Afros. He seems to always wear gloves. And his resume — Vietnam veteran, black belt Karate master, private investigator, former stripper and '70s soul singer — suggests that he's a blaxploitation super hero come to life. But what truly sets him apart from all those other oddities we pass around on YouTube is his message. Sure, it's delivered staccato with all sorts of funny flourishes, but we remember McMillan because he speaks the truth: The rent is too damn high. Fisher-Cohen's film, which makes its debut at the LRFF, follows McMillan from his rise to fame to the media fixation that followed. Both he and McMillan will be on hand at the festival.

4:30 p.m. Sat., Clinton School
3:50 p.m. Sun., Riverdale

I'm still sorting out my feelings on "Natural Selection," the debut feature by Robbie Pickering that screened at the festival last night and plays again at 2:20 p.m. Saturday at Riverdale. Tonally, it fits somewhere in between "Harold and Maude" and "Napoleon Dynamite" — it's a highly stylized, oddball character study. But unlike those films and much to its credit, "Natural Selection" doesn't keep the quirk from letting in real human emotion.

Large credit's surely due to Robbie Pickering, the young debut director who spoke, charmingly and confession-ally after the screening about making the movie. (It took him six years to get it made. His mom and, more metaphorically, birth theory inspired the film.) But it's the acting that really sells the film. Rachael Harris, whose name you probably don't know even though you've seen her in dozens of roles, is absolutely fantastic as Linda White, the dutiful, Christian wife of a woman married to a man who thinks it's a sin to spill his seed into her barren womb. And Matt O'Leary kills as Raymond, the loveable f-up junky who Linda believes was born from her husband's artificially inseminated sperm.

Yup, it's pretty wacky, and the first half of the movie plays like a drunk live-action version of "Looney Tunes," with Pickering hilariously beating the hell out of Raymond, who thinks he's escaping, but is really always pursuing, Linda's chirpy, oblivious Road Runner.

Then things get darker and more real. But, surprisingly, for the most part it works.

Here's betting that this SXSW winner comes away with some sort of prize at the LRFF as well.