Little Rock Film Festival, Day 1
So Lindsey Millar's up in NYC for some godawful reason, and I'm filling in on da blog for the film festival. Who am I, you wonder? Derek Jenkins, guest editor of 2007's Oxford American Movie Issue and something of a film-lover.
5,000 miles away, the Cannes Film Festival is in full swing. A couple thousand miles further east, and yet somehow closer to home, 46 Arkansas service members have died at war. Hundreds more continue to serve.
So it's no surprise that the unofficial but inescapable concern of the first annual Little Rock Film Festival is the occupation of Iraq. Craig and Brent Renaud won wide acclaim for bringing distant events home in their fine doc, Off to War, and, along with their tireless co-founders, have assembled a docket sure to continue that good work. Beside a fresh print of Killer of Sheep, the new comedy from Judd Apatow, and the phenomenal Old Joy, they've scheduled a bunch of intriguing docs covering the war, as well as a top-notch panel on filming Iraq. And they're attempting to head future events off at the pass with some prescient picks.
Tonight's screening of The Situation was well-attended and set the tone (I just stumbled in from the after-party at the Peabody; Chris Denny continues to be something else), but tomorrow's when the real fun begins(and when I reassure myself that this is all worth missing the last home stand for the Diamond Hogs)....
On the menu in the afternoon:
(Most of) Jonestown
War Tapes
Liberia: An Uncivil War
