SOUTHERN INDIE SHORT DOCS FILM FESTIVAL
UPCOMING FALL 2023
WALLER’S COFFEE SHOP
ARTS, ENVIRONMENT & SOCIAL JUSTICE
*** TICKETS TO BE AVAILABLE HERE (RSVP $10) ***
Our screenings showcase short documentaries about people and places in the South. We look for films that reveal the true heart, art, and soul of the region. Organized by local independent filmmaker Hal Jacobs (director of “Northside Tavern,” “Common Good Atlanta,” and “Lillian Smith.”)
Meet and greet filmmakers, who are invited to attend and talk about their work.
DIRECTIONS: Waller’s Coffee Shop is located at 240 DeKalb Industrial Way, Decatur, Ga. 30030. Coffee/beer/wine available with wraps and desserts.
SPRING 2023 LINEUP
THE LAST LAST HIKE
THE LAST LAST HIKE
83-year-old Nimblewill Nomad is about to become the oldest person to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. But he didn’t start at Springer Mountain, Georgia – his trek began on Flagg Mountain in Alabama, the true southern terminus of the Appalachian Mountain Range. Throughout his odyssey, he’s meeting hikers along the way and sharing the magic of Flagg Mountain, where he has been the caretaker for the past three years. With more than two decades and 50,000 miles of hiking experience behind him, will this really be his last last hike? [Céline François, 2021, 20 min.]
https://www.southernexposurefilms.org/films/the-last-last-hike
Okefenokee Destiny
Okefenokee Destiny
A love letter from locals to a deeply mysterious and largely unknown swamp as it comes under pressure from a mining company that could destroy it before it gains its rightful protected place in the world. [Suzan Satterfield, 2022, 14 min.]
The Wintering Grounds
The Wintering Grounds
For most of the year, bands of world class freestyle kayakers roam the land in search of waves. But when the rivers freeze, everyone finds their way to a special spot on the Chattahoochee River on the Alabama-Georgia border. Squatting in an abandoned parking lot, they spend the winter training for the next world championships on North America’s best winter whitewater. Although called “certifiable lunatics” by the locals, this tight knit group is proof of the power of family and that indeed everything is more fun with friends. [Jeff Springer, 2022, 26 min.]
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/414495487
Young Kings
YOUNG KINGS
From Ponce De Leon to Ralph David Abernathy, this film explores the exciting world of bike culture in the heart of Atlanta. [Jonathan Banks & Dr. Arshley Emile, 2022, 23 min.]
Land Before Land
Land Before Land
This short film considers the resulting blurriness between what is considered natural and what is cultural in the massive Southern landscape transformations over the past 200 years. [Steve Bransford, 2023, 10 min.]
Raising the Mobelisk
On March 12, 2023, artist Michael Murrell invited friends to join him at his 30,000-square-foot Habersham Mill studio to help raise the 18’9”-foot hexagon mobelisk that he began building in 2018. The cap (aka pyramidian) is made of North Carolina mica sheets and the shaft is coated with Georgia clay. [HJacobsCreative, 2023]
Andy Warhol Films Jack Smith Filming Normal Love (A lost 1963 Andy Warhol film)
How do you remake a missing Warhol film that no one has seen since its original screening in February 1964? You gather a cast of twelve or so dancers in fall 2022 willing to dance on a giant wooden birthday cake located on a remote pine farm in LaGrange, Ga. The resulting film takes a light joyous look at a 1960s Warhol experience. “That’s kind of what Warhol was about, a celebration of life in a lot of ways.” [Bruce Checefsky, 2023, 5 min.]
PAST SCREENINGS
Meltdown in Dixie. In the wake of the 2015 Charleston Massacre, a battle erupts in Orangeburg, South Carolina, between the Sons of Confederate Veterans and an ice cream shop owner forced to fly the Confederate flag in his parking lot. The film explores the broader role of Confederate symbolism in the 21st century and the lingering racial oppression which symbols such as this help maintain. [Directed by Emily Harrold, 2021, 40 min.]
Sound of Judgement. In North Carolina's Alamance County, a place with a history of racism, protests are restricted and violence feels imminent. In Graham, a newfound activist is targeted, a die-hard Confederate loyalist radicalizes, and the sheriff won't back down. [Directed by Julia Wall, 2021, 20 min.]
Freeman Vines: Hanging Tree Guitars. For decades, artist Freeman Vines has made guitars in his shop in eastern North Carolina using found objects, including wood from a tree where a man was once lynched. Freeman Vines' sculpture and words are the subject of the book "Hanging Tree Guitars" by Freeman Vines with Timothy Duffy and Zoe Van Buren. [Directed by Elliot Blumberg, 2021, 8 min.]
Michael Murrell: Art, Nature and Catawampus. For five decades, sculptor Michael Murrell has made work that explores our human relationship with nature. He is drawn to the spiritual qualities in the artworks and utilitarian objects of other cultures, specifically Oceanic, African, and Native American, an ethnographic interest he combines with an accumulation of personal experience to inform much of his long career. With over 200 exhibitions of his work, Murrell has chosen to retain most of it so that it can be displayed to the public in a former cotton mill in the north Georgia foothills. [Directed by Hal Jacobs, 2021, 24 min.]
The Environmental Justice Movement in Atlanta’s Westside [excerpt]. Environmental historian Will Bryan describes Atlanta's legacy of water problems and how the environmental justice movement started in West Atlanta in the early 1900s. His site visits starts with the Gulch in downtown Atlanta and ends on the Proctor Creek Greenway. [Directed by Hal Jacobs, 2020, 6:00 min.]
Extended version: https://vimeo.com/504805130
Finding the Flint. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is best known for a few things:It’s the world’s busiest airport, seeing over 100,000,000 passengers every year, and it’s massive, employing over 60,000 people and making it Georgia’s largest employer. What travelers and Georgia residents probably don't know is that the airport is also home to a more natural defining feature: the headwaters of Georgia’s Flint River, which flow into a concrete culvert just north of the airport. [Directed by J.D. Belcher, 2021, 8 min.]
River Rats and Junior Leaguers: The Story Behind the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. Hear the story about how a coalition of river rats, Junior Leaguers, conservationists, activists, government officials and others, including a President, saved the land along the river from raging development in the 1970s. [Directed by Hal Jacobs, 2022, 7 min.]
https://vimeo.com/672392396/318fe87c71
Extended version: https://vimeo.com/681586381/7d579383ae
The Old Man’s Game. For over 25 years, a group of hoopsters have met up in a Atlanta high school gym for pickup basketball. As they get older, the game stays the same age. [Directed by Hal Jacobs, 2020, 7 min.]
Huntsville Station
Directed by: Jamie Meltzer, Chris Filippone
Duration: 14 mins
Every weekday, dozens of inmates are released on parole from the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. Their first stop is the Greyhound bus station, where they take their first tentative steps back into life on the outside. The abrupt return of everyday satisfactions — like scratching a lottery ticket, smoking a cigarette and putting on a spritz of cologne are overwhelming to some. Huntsville Station is a meditative look at the first moments of a major life transition as the former inmates reflect on their past and plan for the future.
6000 Waiting
directed by: Michael McDonald
Duration: 28 mins
6,000 Waiting tells the powerful stories of three Georgians with developmental disabilities whose lives are significantly impacted by the staggering lack and complexity of state Medicaid waiver funding.
A film from The Storytelling Project, and made possible through a partnership between the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities and L’Arche Atlanta, 6,000 Waiting calls for a more inclusive Georgia that has the compassion, political will and accountability to make policy decisions that result in meaningful benefits for people living with developmental disabilities. While they wait for their applications to snake through the maze of confusing guidelines and procedures, these residents and their families can live in exacerbated poverty, isolation, and emotional and physical distress.
Experience the affecting portraits of Nick, Ben and Noah as they embark on their journeys to acquire this elusive funding. Each at a different life stage, they seek to crumble the barrier to belonging and win the right to create a legacy of who they really are. With persistence, courage and self-determination, they fight to access the resources they desperately need to live life on their own terms.
Invisible Hands
directed by: Yulian Martinez-Escobar
Duration: 8:34 mins
With sweat and toil, migrant farm workers provide the unnoticed labor needed to bring food to the American table, from seed to harvest. Invisible Hands is an intimate film documenting a group of Mexican seasonal laborers in rural South Carolina. The film is set at a farm in Ridge Spring, a historically conservative community with strong links to their Confederate heritage, but also the temporary home of hundreds of seasonal workers who double the town’s population for more than half the year. The community is an island that the characters never leave except the few months they return home to Mexico. This film follows a typical day in their shoes.
https://bittersoutherner.com/video/invisible-hands
Between the Lines: Liz At Large
directed by: Abi Cole
Duration: 4:32 mins
Liz Montague first emailed The New Yorker’s cartoon editor out of frustration that all of the illustrations featured white subjects. She began contributing to the magazine in 2019 and became the first Black, female cartoonist in The New Yorker’s near century run. Montague’s cartoons push the publication’s boundaries through focussing on the intersection of self and social awareness in an accessible style with clean lines and representative subjects. Montague sketches a world in which Black women are the main characters.
Renaissance Man
Directed by: Carson Hunt
Duration: 10:25 mins
We all need a place to belong... and a people to belong to. William is a 60 year old, former Army tank driver, who lives in the middle of nowhere surrounded by his cats. On a whim, and with no acting experience whatsoever, he auditions for a Medieval Faire an hour and a half away. It's a life changing decision that leads him to the one thing he's been missing his entire life... family.
Walk, Run, Ride, and Live
directed by: Patrick Albright
Duration: 7:21 mins
A man comes to terms with his health and the state of health for an entire race.
EMERGING/STUDENT FILMMAKER:
Pussy Queens
directed by: Emily Gonzalez
Duration: 11:24 mins
Savannah and Atlanta drag queens reveal their journeys with gender expression and how drag as an art form has shaped their identities.
FULL DOC: Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence
Directors: Hal & Henry Jacobs
SEPT. 4-6, 2020 (zoom talkback: Sept. 6, 7 p.m.)
WEEKEND 1
FULL DOC: Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence
FREE RSVP: Virtual Screening: Sept. 4-6
FREE RSVP: Zoom Talkback: Sept. 6, 7 p.m.
Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was one of the first white southern authors to speak out against white supremacy and segregation. A child of the South, she was seen as a traitor to the South for her stance on racial and gender equality. A friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr., she used her fame after writing a bestselling novel ("Strange Fruit") to denounce the toxic social conditions that repressed the lives and imaginations of both blacks and whites. With her lifelong partner Paula Snelling, she educated privileged white girls at her summer camp in north Georgia and tried to open their minds to a world of compassion and creativity. Here was a southern woman who remained in the South and wasn't afraid to break the silence against the demagogues. Directed by Hal & Henry Jacobs, “Breaking the Silence” (54 min.) premiered in fall 2019 and is an official selection of the Morehouse College Human Rights Film Festival, Macon Film Festival, and South Georgia Film Festival.
WEEKEND 2… ATL Arts
(above) Clark Ashton, Carol John, Lonnie Holley, Tamika Harper, Jon Abercrombie, Tim McDonough, Kyle “Blackcattips”, George Staib
FREE RSVP: Virtual Screening: Sept. 11 - 13
FREE RSVP: Zoom Talkback: Sept. 13, 7 p.m.
Metro Atlanta artists from across the creative spectrum are featured in this series of short films and excerpts from longer pieces.
Trailer for Thumbs Up for Mother Universe (2019), a 95-minute documentary film about the life and work of Alabama visual artist and musician Lonnie Holley that is the result of 22 years of filming by Atlanta filmmaker George King. [2:43]
www.georgeking-assoc.com/lonnieholleystoryDecatur photographer/filmmaker Virginie Drujon-Kippelen profiles Athens visual artist Carol John. [3:09]
https://vimeo.com/334522162Atlanta filmmaker Fenell Wilkins profiles Def Poet Tamika "Georgia Me" Harper. [6:04]
www.georgiamethepoet.comAn excerpt from Atlanta actor/director Tim McDonough’s original one-man show a bunch of different ways i’d like to die that premiered in 2018 (prod. HJacobsCreative). [12:00]
trailer: https://vimeo.com/356648550
full version: https://vimeo.com/346622956
www.timmcdonough.netAn excerpt from Atlanta choreographer George Staib’s “fence” (2019) and the short dance film “rose water,” which was filmed on Arabia Mountain (2019) (prod. HJacobsCreative). [5:00]
www.staibdance.comDecatur photographer Beate Sass profiles Decatur artist Jon Abercrombie. [8:58]
beatesass.comFilmmaker Weston Manders profiles BlackCatTips (aka Kyle Brooks), a street-folk artist who lives in Arabia Mountain, Ga. [3:09]
https://vimeo.com/295634813
www.blackcattips.com
www.westonmanders.comArtist/musician Clark Ashton’s short historical documentary and song about his property on Druid Hill in DeKalb County where he maintains a studio and sculpture garden (“Mechanical Riverfront Kingdom”) of his work. [9:23]
https://vimeo.com/323562209
www.clarkashton.org
WEEKEND 3: SOUTHERN ARTS
(above) Jennifer Crandall, Mary Lee Bendolph, Henry “Gip” Gipson, Sam Ezell, Steven Burke, Ulysses Davis
FREE RSVP: Virtual Screening: Sept. 18 - 20
Recorded Zoom Talkback: Sept. 20
HOW TO RSVP: Submit your RSVP (see above links) and before the opening screening date or talk-back you will receive an email (from Georgia Center for the Book) with a link to the screening webpage or zoom webinar. RSVPs for the talkback end at 6 p.m. before the event.
Short films that explore everything from the spoken word to blues, from paintings and carvings to folk art buildings.
Jennifer Crandall has traveled across the state of Alabama in her video series “Whitman Alabama” to film people from all walks of life reciting verses from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” So naturally we asked her to pick out one of her favorites. [12:35]
whitmanalabama.comMaris Curran explores the work of five acclaimed African American quilters from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. [14:00]
https://vimeo.com/338319342
www.globalonenessproject.org/people/maris-curranBlues musician Jontavious Willis from Greenville, Ga., visits Birmingham juke joint operator Henry 'Gip' Gipson (who died in 2019) in this 2017 short film by photographer/filmmaker Henry Jacobs. [5:00]
jontaviouswillis.com
henrymjacobs.comKevin Wells (UNC-Greensboro) profiles self-taught North Carolina artist Sam Ezell. [11:00]
www.krwells.comSteven Burke and Randy Campbell’s collection of over 1,200 American folk art buildings is the centerpiece of this short film by Marsha Gordon and Louis Cherry. [15:16]
marshagordon99.wixsite.com/filmprof/rendered-smallSteven Gray and Alexia Oldini examine the life and work of 20th century artist and master barber Ulysses Davis. [10:00]
www.imdb.com/title/tt10040782
FULL DOC: The Pasaquoyan
Director: Doug Loggins
SEPT. 25-27, 2020 (zoom talkback: Sept. 27, 7 p.m.)
WEEKEND 4
FULL DOC: The Pasaquoyan
Virtual Screening: Sept. 25 - 27
Recorded Zoom Talkback, Sept. 27
Doug Loggins’ 1993 documentary (57 min.) about the life and works of visionary artist Eddie Owens Martin, aka St. EOM, who was a farmer, fortune teller, prostitute, prophet, artist, and architect of Pasaquan - an art environment where the past and the future come together. His story crosses space and time, travelling from 1920's New York City to Buena Vista, Georgia, to the psychic realm of giants with upswept hair. His story is told through interviews with Tom Patterson (author of St. Eom in the Land of Pasaquan, 2018), Bruce Hampton, Fred Fussell, and others.
On Sunday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m. EST, a Zoom Q&A will be held with the filmmaker and special guests: writer Tom Patterson (St. Eom in the Land of Pasaquan: The Life and Times and Art of Eddie Owens Martin; Michael McFalls, director of Pasaquan; and artist/photographer/writer Fred Fussell.
https://www.amazon.com/Pasaquoyan-visionary-artist-Martin-k/dp/B003YHB7JO
PAST SCREENINGS
(formerly Avondale Towne Short Docs Festival)
PHOTOGRAPH BY PATRICK HEAGNEY FOR ATLANTA MAGAZINE (JUNE 2018)
Clark Ashton: The Artist of Druid Hill
Monday, December 10, 2018, 7:00 p.m.
Short films by and about the artist of Druid Hill, Clark Ashton. For the last 30 years, he’s created a body of artwork that thousands drive by everyday on busy North Druid Hills Road, yet few stop long enough to truly appreciate the depth and beauty of the work.
Here's a chance to get up close and personal.
And learn more about growing corn.
Screening followed by a Q&A with the artist.
LINKS
Homepage of John Clark Ashton Cornelius Farmer
DeKalb History Center Blog Post (by Samantha Mooney, 11/14/18)
2017 Atlanta Artadia Awardee Spotlight
“Clark Ashton: Shouting to the Hard of Hearing” (by Donna Mintz, artsatl.com, 2/3/16)
Voting matters.
November 5, 2018
We’ll see politics through the lens of two short films currently on the festival circuit.
“Come and Take It” (2018), co-directed by Austin filmmakers PJ Raval and Ellen Spiro, follows the young University of Texas graduate behind a controversial protest against guns on campus. Targeting the idiocy of Texas' "campus carry" law (which allows loaded handguns in public university classrooms), the protest called for demonstrators to brandish sex toys (which is illegal). In today’s political climate, "Come & Take It" shines a spotlight on the collective power of young people and their ability to engage and enact political change.
“Fight for the First” (2017), directed by Sharon Liese, begins as fledgling reporters at the Columbia Missourian rush to report unprecedented student protests on campus and try to gain access to the governor. These young journalists fight for their constitutional right to report the truth at a local level, while on a national scale, truth and news reporting is under attack. What’s a young journalist to do?
https://vimeo.com/239012146
Plus a few other short docs that take a look, sometimes a humorous one, at elections and political matters:
“Admit it. Republicans have broken politics.” by Vox, published on Oct. 29, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mICxKmCjF-4&t=1s
“Florida Man” (2017), by Topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKF5ffgXebE
We also highly recommend…
“Trump Is Making America Great Again: Just not the Way He Thinks,” by Taige Jensen, published on Sept. 17, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/opinion/trump-maga.html
SPECIAL SCREENING RELATED TO FLORIDA HURRICANE:
“Five Days Later” (2018), by by Jeremy Asher Lynch, Max Knies, and Kay Parker
“The Brainwashing of My Dad”
OctOBER 18, 2018
July 2, 2018
Water as in…
— the streams in metro Atlanta and water monitoring efforts by our neighbors AND the Chattahoochee River where four million people turn on their taps and, lo and behold, get their drinking water (Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, HJacobsCreative, 2017 & 2018)
— memories of the Creek people who lived in this region from an ancestor who keeps the Creek language alive (“Hearing the Call: The Cultural and Spiritual Journey of Rosemary McCombs Maxey,” Craig Womack and Steve Bransford, 8 min. excerpt, 2018)
— how many of us have spent the night alone on a 25-foot sailboat far out in the Gulf of Mexico?… these two 20-somethings made a short film about the adventure of a lifetime (Haden Macbeth, 8 min., 2018)
— if you’ve never jumped into a clear Florida spring this will give you an idea… as well as the springs’ connection to the Floridan Aquifer (Sami Kattan, 8 min. excerpt, 2017)
— this more complete version of the 2015 documentary by Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme (who died in 2017) looks at biologist and South Carolinian Tyrone Hayes, who discovered that the pesticide Atrazine was harming frogs and then became targeted in a slur campaign by Syngenta US (“What’s Motivating Hayes?”, 30 min.).
