As proof of the Nashville Film Festival's breadth, it doesn't get any more diverse than this: Peter Falk, meet Rick Wakeman.
The 77-year-old Falk, of Cassavetes and Columbo fame, and prog-rock pioneer Wakeman are among the just-announced participants in this year's eight-day festival, starting April 14 at Regal's Green Hills megaplex. Falk will appear with the festival's opening-night film, The Thing About My Folks, a comedy written by co-star Paul Reiser (who will also be on hand). Yes keyboardist and soundtrack composer Wakeman will host an evening discussion and demonstration of film scoring.
Other confirmed guests include John Pierson, the TV host, author and producer's representative who launched the careers of Spike Lee, Michael Moore, Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater; and producer Cary Brokaw, whose credits include Closer, Angels in America and Robert Altman's The Player.
The guests join another strong lineup for the 36-year-old festival, a mix of independent features, documentaries, animated and live-action shorts and experimental films. Along with previously announced titles such as Asia Argento's Knoxville-filmed JT LeRoy adaptation The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things—which stars Argento, Peter Fonda, Winona Ryder and Marilyn Manson—the schedule now boasts films by directors Park Chan-wook, Jia Zhang-ke and current Nashvillian Harmony Korine (who will screen Above the Below, a documentary he shot for British TV about magician David Blaine).
"There are still a few things I can't announce, and a few things I couldn't get," says NFF artistic director Brian Gordon. "But as word about the festival has spread, it's been easier for us to get movies."
As proof, he points to films such as The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a documentary portrait of the demon-haunted Texas singer-songwriter that won raves at Sundance, and Chinese director Jia's The World, a drama about alienated teens in a global theme park that won the prestigious Golden Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival. The festival was also able to secure the terrific kidnapping thriller Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance by South Korean director Park, who went on to win last year's grand prize at Cannes.
As the above suggests, the festival circuit has turned into an alternative distribution route, with films that crisscross the country and the world from one event to the next. But Gordon says the abundance of regional festivals only helps the NFF, as its mid-April schedule allows it to play films en route to other cities. "We'll be getting movies from San Francisco and sending others off to Orlando," Gordon notes. Mandy McBroom, the NFF's festival coordinator, says they received almost 200 more submissions than last year.
The festival extends its new emphasis on music documentaries, with local premieres of films on the late Townes Van Zandt, ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, P-Funk keyboard wizard Bernie Worrell, a cappella gospel greats Sweet Honey in the Rock and the duo of Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer. Music legend Cowboy Jack Clement will be on hand for Cowboy Jack's Home Movies, a new film that compiles clips from his decades of uproarious home productions starring the loose-limbed likes of Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.
In general, the documentary lineup looks especially strong. Ruth Leitman's popular Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Women of Wrestling profiles women such as The Fabulous Moolah and Gladys "Kill 'Em" Gillem from the days when GLOW wasn't even a spark. Raymond Depardon's The 10th District Court: Moments of Trials, a hit at the Toronto and New York festivals, gathers incidents from a Paris courtroom. Reel Paradise, from Hoop Dreams director Steve James, follows John Pierson and his family for a year as they operate a movie theater in remote Fiji.
The dramatic features are no less diverse, starting with the socialist summer-camp sex comedy Revolution of Pigs—tantalizingly described by Gordon as "an Estonian Meatballs meets If...as produced by Roger Corman." (Aw, another one?) Hank Williams First Nation explores the impact of country music on a Native American community, while the drama Conspiracy of Silence addresses the clash over celibacy in the Catholic Church. Former Nashvillian Rich Ragsdale chips in The Curse of El Charro, a shocker whose cast includes veteran heavy Danny Trejo and Motorhead's beloved Lemmy.
Add "Luke," a completed short by experimental-film giant Bruce Conner that uses footage shot on the set of Cool Hand Luke, and this year's Oscar-winning animated piece "Ryan," and Gordon sounds justified in claiming something for everyone—whether they're fans of A Woman Under the Influence or Tales from Topographic Oceans. Advance tickets go on sale March 24.
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