LIVE FROM MEMPHIS

The Indie Memphis Film Festival gets into full swing tonight. This is my favorite event of the year in Memphis; the festival itself is consistently packed with more good movies than I could possibly have time to see, plus I get to talk to other filmmakers, find out what they're working on, get new ideas, and generally get fired up about making movies.

^{Kim Howard and Adam Remsen on the set of "Scrambled Eggs", which will screen at Indie Memphis on Wednesday, Oct. 14 at 6:45 pm as part of Shorts Program 2. Photograph by Laura Jean Hocking.} 

I first attended back in 2001.  I've seen some amazing movies at the festival, movies that remind me of just how limitless the possibilities of the medium are.  A few stand out in my mind:

Make Out with Violence:  A truly amazing effort from some guys who had never made a movie before. This was a feature-length movie that was (1) a tender coming-of-age story about the summer after high school, and (2) an awesome zombie flick. The movie's true achievement was that it managed to be both of those elements simultaneously, without diluting either of them and without simply smooshing two different movies together into an untenable mosaic like American Beauty.

Bunnyland:  Brett Hanover is all of maybe 20 years old, but he makes documentaries that irresistibly evoke Errol Morris. The way he edits his footage together, juxtaposing images and dialogue and themes, is just astonishing. He's going to be a world-famous documentarian one day, and I sincerely hope he stays in Memphis to do it. His earlier movie Timecube was worthy of Werner Herzog. (I know, I just mentioned Morris and Herzog. Seriously, Hanover is that good.)

Eat:  OK, I'm a bit biased, as I had a minor role in this movie. Nonetheless, the premiere was a major thrill, the theater packed and the crowd roaring. One of my favorite memories of Indie Memphis.

The Phil Chambliss retrospective a couple of years ago: This was an interesting one, and sparked a lot of good conversations. Chambliss's movies are the filmmaking equivalent of folk art; think Howard Finster with a video camera. The movies are bizarre and the pacing is jarringly odd at first, but as you watch it becomes utterly hypnotic. I'm not totally sold on the "Auteur from Arkansas" label that's been pinned on him, but there was one shot in one of his movies that will stick with me forever. (If you saw the program: It was the dog running behind the truck.)