A User’s Guide

Starting Monday, for the following week, Nashville will be overrun by junkies, thieves, gangsters, gamblers, kung-fu killers and dysfunctional families. The city should be proud. As the Nashville Film Festival enters its 34th year, it boasts a lineup of films that would have been unthinkable seven years ago, when dwindling crowds and lackluster films left its very survival in doubt. Today, its annual attendance tops 10,000, and for its duration the downstairs lobby of Regal’s Green Hills megaplex is a churning sea of ticketholders, staffers and visiting celebs.

The question now, for both the festival staff and the city, is what to do with that mandate. This year the NFF has a new spring schedule, a new name—marked by the dropping of “independent,” a word that no longer has any useful meaning—and an identity still in development. Is it a showcase for the avant-garde and experimental, as it was when Mary Jane Coleman founded it as Sinking Creek in 1969? Is it a tool to help build industry ties between Music City and Hollywood? Is it a booster program for local talent? Above all, is it a festival for audiences who want to see world-class films, or for filmmakers who want to show their work in a relatively casual environment?

At this point, the NFF is essentially all these things. Most remarkable is the unprecedented amount of Nashville-produced work, including two locally generated features (David Abbott’s Charlie’s War and A.W. Vidmer’s Stuey), at least two feature-length documentaries (Thom Oliphant’s Alive From Brushy Mountain and Lawrence Robbin’s Music City Long Shot), and literally dozens of shorts. The makers, an encouragingly diverse bunch, range from underground teen artist Jamin Orrall to Watkins Film School alumnus Kevin Shaw to Vanderbilt screenwriting professor Will Akers. Even Coke Sams’ redoctored Existo returns to welcome the Age of Bush.

Just as encouraging are the films cherry-picked from the agenda-setting Toronto, New York and Sundance festivals. Established world-cinema talents like Alan Rudolph (The Secret Lives of Dentists), Britain’s Ken Loach (Sweet Sixteen) and Japan’s Seijun Suzuki (Pistol Opera) join rising international talents such as South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, whose romantic drama Turning Gate is one of the festival’s unquestioned highlights. Though these films are finishing their run on the festival circuit, they’re still showing months ahead of any Nashville playdate—assuming they get one. Add a strong roster of documentaries, revival screenings, shorts and animated films, along with industry panels addressing topics from screenwriting to music supervision, and the NFF seems comfortably poised to satisfy cinephiles and casual moviegoers alike.

For the Scene’s annual Nashville Film Festival guide, we cut right to the chase—with no-holds-barred capsule reviews of more than 40 films and programming blocks. The reviews will help guide you through scheduling conflicts and the inevitable tough choices that result. To make the process even simpler, we close with a few practical tips. Buy advance tickets, instructions for which can be found at www.nashvillefilmfestival.org. That goes double for surefire sellouts like Stuey, King of Bluegrass, The Secret Lives of Dentists, The Weather Underground and the popular Tennessee Film Night and animation blocks. (Don’t even think about getting into Friday night’s invitation-only Charlie’s War premiere with Oprah Winfrey and Diane Ladd in attendance; its Sunday screenings will also likely sell out in advance.)

Second, ride the buzz—talk to as many people as possible in line about what they’ve seen, and act accordingly. Ask questions at the post-film Q&A’s: the better the response, the more likely filmmakers are to return (and spread the word). Line up for popular films at least 20 minutes ahead of time, or you may not get a seat. Check the festival desk in the downstairs Green Hills lobby for added shows, cancellations and other updates. And take a chance on a movie you know nothing about. Oftentimes, those are the ones you’ll remember most.

And now, on with the show.

(Festival blurbs by Donna Bowman, Joan Brasher, Jonathan Flax, Brittney Gilbert, Noel Murray, Rob Nelson, Theodoros Panayides, Jim Ridley and Joshua H. Rothkopf.)

Movies marked with a ♦ are strongly recommended by Scene reviewers.

Monday, April 28

♦ Spellbound (7 p.m.) There’s no “a” in “irresistible,” right? Every year, 9 million schoolkids set out on the local/regional path that leads to the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. Of those, 249 students will make the cut, and in his Oscar-nominated documentary director Jeffrey Blitz follows eight grade-school word warriors to the bitter end. The diverse group shares little more than a torturous study ethic and tirelessly supportive parents, and director Blitz gives us a rooting stake in all their stories, which results in nail-biting tension once the elimination rounds begin. (If you don’t believe me, just wait until the athlete son of Indian parents gets stuck on “Darjeeling.”) Like the great Hands on a Hardbody, this proves there is no more engrossing subject than the everyday obsessions of like-minded Americans. J.R.