Every day in Nashville, audiences can see any mainstream Hollywood movie they want, in any of two dozen different multiplexes scattered around town. For seven days each year, though, in one theater only, local viewers discover just how narrow the view is on all those wide screens. For the week-long duration of the 27th annual Sinking Creek Film/Video Festival, which kicks off Nov. 16-24 at Vanderbilt’s Sarratt Cinema, audiences will be exposed to extreme visions, experimental techniques, and unfamiliar views of familiar material.

The independent film and video festival faces serious challenges, among them the departure this December of artistic director Meryl Truett. A genuine movie fan as well as an articulate spokesperson, Truett was largely responsible for raising the festival’s profile outside Nashville in the past five years. Without her guiding vision—or her knowledge of the national festival circuit—Sinking Creek will suffer. The recently hired executive director, Scarlett Graham, and the artistic director who succeeds Truett must keep Sinking Creek from becoming either a schlocky Sundance wanna-be or a boutique for self-indulgent esoterica. The festival’s frequently stalemated board of directors needs a plan of action.

Nevertheless, the need for a Sinking Creek at this stage in Nashville’s film and video industry is crucial. The push is on for Nashville filmmakers to initiate their own projects, in the hope that they’ll finally strike that long-delayed spark that ignites the industry. But without exposure to the full range of brilliant, foolhardy, or crazily ambitious cinematic developments—most of which are taking place in short films, not features—Nashville filmmakers suffer an automatic disadvantage against their counterparts in New York and L.A. To become a world-class film center, or filmmaker, you’ve got to have access to world-class films.

One such movie is the centerpiece of Sinking Creek this year. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, a profoundly disquieting documentary by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, chronicles the trials of three teens accused of killing, raping, and mutilating three 8-year-old boys in East Memphis, Ark., in 1993. At first, the film abounds in tragicomic grotesqueries. Smiling relatives sing “Happy Birthday” for a suspected child murderer; a victim’s stepfather addresses a pumpkin as if it were one of the accused killers—before ripping it apart with bullets.

As the movie progresses, though, the filmmakers undermine our certainties about the appearance of guilt and grief. In the second half, when a startling new suspect arises, Paradise Lost becomes a gripping true-life thriller packed with ambiguities that create a grim sense of unease.

One of the directors, Joe Berlinger, will be at Sinking Creek Wednesday night to present and discuss the film. The week’s other featured guest, animator Raman Hui, will arrive Nov. 21 to show selections from his Pacific Arts Images company, a pioneer in computer animation. The festival’s customarily sold-out animation night has been moved to Saturday, Nov. 23, to accommodate crowds, and the week features numerous theme programs, including showings of gay and lesbian films and an afternoon focusing on women’s issues.

From Saturday’s opening cocktail reception at the Country Music Hall of Fame—which honors regional filmmakers Pete Neff, Steven Ross, Loree Gold, Jane Pittman, and Jonathan Shockley—to the closing-night presentation of The Making of “Mirage”, an intriguing fake documentary about the attempt to finance and distribute an independent feature, Sinking Creek offers Nashville filmgoers and filmmakers a chance to see films they’ll most likely never see otherwise. The following programs and films are some of the highlights:

Weird and Fun Films (10 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19) Don’t let the lame category heading turn you away from one of the festival’s most interesting programs. Among the highlights: Joseph Maidenburg’s “Robert: Portrait of a Legend,” a Zelig-like account of a claymation superstar’s career in Hollywood; and Andrew Bloom’s “Voice Mail,” in which an attempt to purchase a chess set from late-night TV triggers catastrophe. The evening’s title may be weak, but how else would you classify a German expressionist fantasy about a giant squid painter (Miles Inada’s “Francisco Pulpo’s Scincinnati”), a parody of Douglas Fairbanks’ two-tone Technicolor swashbucklers (Sean Coughlin’s “The Duel”), and a short entitled “Evil Demon Golf Ball From Hell”?

Racial Relations: Where Do We Go From Here (1 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20) Two of the festival’s most promising films premiere, unfortunately, in a poorly attended afternoon slot. In Spark, directed by Garret Williams, a young African-American couple must confront their own fears and prejudices when their car breaks down in a remote stretch of desert. Chris Lawson’s Broken Ground allows black and white citizens of Birmingham to speak with blistering candor about their uneasy coexistence. Movies rarely tackle the woeful, widening division between races and cultures, except in the most sensational or shallow terms—e.g., every John Grisham adaptation this year. These films should bring the fire much closer to home.

“Who Do You Think You’re Fooling?” (midnight Wednesday, Nov. 20) Already something of an underground legend, Mike White’s 10-minute video “appropriates” footage from Reservoir Dogs to prove that Quentin Tarantino swiped everything from plot to shots from Ringo Lam’s 1987 Hong Kong thriller City on Fire. Mr. White’s got balls, as the subtitle “The Story of a Robbery” indicates, but the evidence isn’t all that shocking: He might’ve had a better case if he’d compared the adrenaline-shot monologue in Martin Scorsese’s obscure documentary American Boy with the hypo scene in Pulp Fiction.

New Experimental (10 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 21) Film editing, film storytelling, even the strip of celluloid itself undergoes a rigorous deconstruction in this challenging program of avant-garde shorts. Don’t miss Jo Andres’ “Black Kites,” a 26-minute film about Alma Hajric, a Sarajevan visual artist who was forced to take refuge in a basement shelter when the city came under siege. Also promising is John Turk’s “Particle Physique,” which uses the disintegration of film emulsions as a metaphor for urban decay.

College Alternative (10 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21) If you missed Stacy Goldate’s wry, observant documentary Lucy Barks! at any of its mobbed screenings at Lucy’s Record Shop, here’s your chance to see it without having to peer above heads or between legs. Also on the bill is a well-made, absorbing short film called “The Pit,” in which two alienated teens find fleeting glimpses of tenderness and support in the frenzy of a mosh pit. The director, Jed Kaleko, drives in his symbolism with a sledgehammer—think suicide victims juxtaposed with signs advertising “Fresh Meats”—but the strobe-light editing is startlingly effective.

After Sunset and Slow Food (10 p.m. Friday, Nov. 22) Twin obsessions of roadside Americana—drive-ins and barbecue—receive their due in this program of acclaimed documentaries. Jon Bokenkamp’s After Sunset: The Life and Times of the Drive-In examines the colorful 63-year history and troubling future of America’s “ozoners.” In Slow Food/Fast Times, director Joe Murphy mounts an exhaustive two-year odyssey through the pits and pork palaces of seven states.

The people who made these films took an extraordinary gamble. To attend Sinking Creek, you risk losing only a few bucks and a couple of hours’ time. Tickets are $3 or $4, depending on the time of the screening; a festival schedule is available at the Sarratt main desk. Take a chance on any given night, whether you’re familiar with the films or not. The risk could pay off handsomely.—Jim Ridley

Sweet Virginia

The Virginia Film Festival began in 1987 as The Virginia Festival of American Film. This year’s festival—which ran from Oct. 31 through Nov. 2 in Charlottesville, Va.—was the first to drop the “American” from its moniker and to include films from abroad. The focus, though, remained and will remain on the American cinema.

The new name isn’t the only change the Virginia Film Festival has undergone lately, though. What was once a four-and-a-half-day festival has been scaled back to two full days and two half-days, the result of a severely slashed budget. This may be for the best. This year’s slate—limited to three quality venues and a compact program—was easy to navigate yet far from dull.

Early festival themes were genre-driven, but of late they’ve been more esoteric. Last year was “U.S. and Them,” an examination, through movies, of America’s attitudes toward foreigners and vice versa. This year it was “Wild Spaces, Endangered Places,” a look at dying cultures and the people who flee them—in other words, road movies, travelogues, and Westerns.

This year’s festival was a lively mix of acknowledged classics, lesser-seen oldies, and new independent film shorts, documentaries, and features. Charlottesville audiences could choose from a schedule that included North by Northwest, Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, Sweet Smell of Success, and the American premiere of Michelangelo Antonioni’s uncut The Passenger, along with rarities such as John Ford’s Wagon Master and Antonioni’s The Red Desert.

In addition, there are always one or two last-second surprises—premieres of soon-to-be-released major films that may or not relate to the year’s theme. This year, the major coup was a screening of Shine, the magnificent Australian film that has been the talk of the major festivals (Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Venice, etc.); it’ll create a wider buzz when it’s officially distributed this Christmas. As soon as Shine ended, I was ready to see it again; it may well be the best film of the year.

More interesting than the “name” features, though, are the smaller films—the ones rarely shown outside a festival setting. The first night of the Virginia Film Festival offered the remarkable Deseret, a documentary about the history of Utah told in an experimental structuralist format. Starting with the first article The New York Times published about the Mormons, director James Benning juxtaposes sentences from 150 years of Utah-related articles with beautiful images of the landscape. The shots begin in black-and-white and switch to color at the turn of the century, and the pace picks up as journalistic style changes from elaborate paragraphs to short, punchy sentences. The film provokes thought about the imaginary boundaries that make up a land, how its inhabitants relive the dilemmas of their ancestors, and the way the biases of the Eastern establishment color the portrayal of life in the West.

One of the advantages of the Virginia Film Festival is that its scholarly emphasis—its rigorous adhesion to a theme, coupled with post-film discussions—encourages festival-goers to seek connections among the many films. Iara Lee’s overrated documentary Synthetic Pleasures, for example, was undercut by a later program of “ephemeral films” from the collection of archivist Rick Prelinger. Prelinger’s presentation of corny, ludicrously patriotic industrial short films from the 1940s and ’50s helped underscore the lack of context in Lee’s shallow portrait of modern technological marvels. Saturday’s screenwriter’s panel—which featured Frank Pierson (Cool Hand Luke), Jay Presson Allen (Cabaret), and Peter Wollen (The Passenger)—raised the issue of setting as the most important element in a screenplay, giving attentive filmgoers another cinematic element to consider.

That force of linkage—between old movies and new, and between ideas in different presentations—is the unique selling point of the Virginia Film Festival. It’s not the weekend’s only benefit, however. Smaller festivals, removed from the hype and klieg lights of a Sundance or Cannes, often offer a clearer picture of the state of independent cinema. Last year, the only real “independent spirit” on display came from makers of short films, who work more out of tenacity and personal expression than potential financial gain. This year, when Sunny Lee, the director of a charming short called “Cowgirl,” discussed the intense competition to get shorts into festivals—where the directors can shmooze their way into deals—I began to despair for the future of short filmmaking.

Luckily, the quality of independent features this year raised my spirits. In addition to Deseret, there was Staccato Purr of the Exhaust, a deadpan “anti-road-movie” by newcomer Luis Meza; although about 20 minutes too long, its warped comic vision of a man unable to get out of L.A. filtered Jarmusch and Buñuel through a fresh sensibility. Also of note were Greg Mottola’s debut film The Daytrippers, an original comedy about infidelity and snooping among the members of a suburban family; and Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day, Christopher Munch’s historical drama about the attempt to salvage a dying railroad. All three films, and even the somewhat tedious Color, were heartening, because they represented a personal vision rather than a portfolio for more lucrative work. Perhaps the tide is turning back again and the glut of blah indies is loosening up.

With hope, the board of directors can continue to make the Virginia Film Festival a weekend for the entertainment and edification of intelligent film lovers, all of whom are treated with welcome respect. Anyone interested in receiving information about next year’s festival should call 1-800-UVA-FEST. Nashville to Charlottesville is about a nine-hour drive, and it’s especially lovely in autumn.—Noel Murray