Who doesn’t like a good film? Ok, who doesn’t like a weekend of good films?
Those of who raised your hands, please put the paper down and walk away. The rest of you, get ready, because the 13th Annual Sidewalk Film Festival is upon us at last, and a trove of indie cinema await you, tucked away in venues sprinkled throughout Birmingam’s theatre district. We at the Weekly have sampled the vast selection and chosen a few to tell you more about. Enjoy, and see you in the seats!
NARRATIVE FEATURES
Bag of Hammers—Saturday, 12:45, Carver Theatre Given the title of this film, one might think viewers were in for some violence-laden mafia flick, but the opposite couldn’t be truer. The film, directed by Brian Crano, begins as an off-the-wall buddy comedy about two itinerant, small-time con-men. It’s all snarky dialogue at first, but just when the film has you laughing, it socks you with a surprisingly sentimental core. Forced to deal with the all-too real lives of the collapsing family next door, the two hucksters find their own comfortable existence changing in unexpected ways. It’s a rare film that can make you honestly laugh and cry in the same sitting, but the performances by almost every lead in Bag of Hammers is superb, and tilt this film from good to great. SG
David—Saturday, 4:15 p.m., Rushton Theater Winner of the Brookyln Film Festival’s Audience award, David tells the story of Daud, an 11-year-old Muslim boy. While studying his grandfather’s Quran in a Brooklyn park, Daud spies a group of boys studying the Torah, and when one leaves his book on a bench, the lonesome Daud finds himself going undercover as “David” to enter the boys’ school. There, he’s mistaken for a Jew and taken as friend. For the first time, he shoots hoops, swaps trading cards, and defies his pious father’s rules.
The film’s simple moments—boys swimming at the beach, an awkward family dinner—ring with verisimilitude. Director Joel Fendelman works to balance the mundane with the sacred, while Daud hides his Muslim identify from his Jewish friends and his Jewish friends from his Muslim family. KW
Homecoming—Sunday, 10:25 a.m., Alabama Power “War is hell,” the old saying goes. But there’s more to that hell than gunshots and explosions. Soldiers don’t just give up their safety when they go overseas. They give up some of their youth as well. In Homecoming, Estelle (Brea Grant), an army medic, returns home for 18 days to visit her friends and family in Celebration, Florida. Her mother decides to celebrate a different holiday each day of her leave to catch up on what Estelle missed out on the rest of the year. She gets up to mischief around town with her two old friends, but the magic isn’t there anymore. They’re older now, thing have changed, and they can never be the same as they were before the war. AM
Sahkanaga—Sunday, 12:30 p.m., Alabama Power Sahkanaga is a strong dramatic feature from writer and director John Henry Summerour that has created heavy buzz on the festival circuit. It is based in fact, on a horrific incident in 2002 in Walker County, Ga., where as many as 2,000 bodies that were supposed to have been cremated were found dumped around the property of the crematory. The protagonist is a teenager named Paul (Trevor Neuhoff) whose father runs the local funeral home. Paul’s dad doesn’t know that the guy he hires to do the cremations is dumping bodies in the woods. It is Paul who makes the discovery. This creates turmoil in the little town and turns his family into social pariahs, at least for a time. Sahkanaga examines the horrible power of secrets, as well as what happens when the bonds of trust on which society depends are broken, especially as regards something as sacred as burial. The film also deals with the touching but perhaps doomed romance between Paul and Lyla (Kristin Rievley), whose grandfather’s body was among those dumped in the woods. The film makes adroit use of some non-professional actors, many of whom had connections to the real-life scandal. JC
Prairie Love—Sunday, 7:35 p.m., Carver Theatre The mysterious man we know only as Vagrant (Jeremy Clark) roams the wintry North Dakota expanse in his station wagon, listening to crazy self-help tapes, shooting deer and living off the land. One day he finds a man half frozen to death in the snow, and lets him into his car to thaw. He finds out the man, known as NoDak (Garth Bloomberg), was on his way to meet his prison pen-pal girlfriend (Holly Lynn Ellis), who doesn’t know what he looks like. Upon hearing this, the Vagrant decides to leave NoDak behind and take his girlfriend for himself.
This premise easily could have been used to make a thriller, but Prairie Love has a charming, oddball tone all its own. Seeing the wide-open, snow-covered prairies makes you understand how someone could go a little crazy out there, and the characters remain funny and endearing despite some of the terrible things they do. CN
Wuss—Sunday, 7:15 p.m., Alabama Power Auditorium Mitch Parker (Nate Rubin) was a high school nerd who now teaches English at his alma mater. He lives with his mother, and is picked on by his sister, his boss, his friends, virtually everyone in his life. One day he sends a disrespectful student to the principal’s office, and later finds out the kid is a drug dealer. When the kid and his friends beat up Mitch, he is too embarrassed to call the police, but begins to plot revenge, aided by his best student, a pretty girl named Maddie (Alicia Anthony).
Writer/director Clay Liford has made a film that is very funny, even though it is surprisingly bleak at times. Some of the supporting characters could have more depth, but the film is anchored by a great performance from Rubin. The film makes you sympathize with Mitch, but it often goes places you wouldn’t expect. CN
DOCUMENTARY FEATURES
Unlikely Treasures—Saturday, 12:40 p.m., Alabama Power Auditorium Do you collect buttons, books, baseball cards or any of a thousand other things? Well, you’re not alone. Director Tally Abecassis’ documentary provides insight into those who have the “collecting gene.” The film shows the social problems and compulsion for organization that can come with collecting, but also makes it seem like an endearing, almost healthy pastime. The people in the film collect more for love than money—copper cake molds, ceramic E.T. figurines, tea tags and train-set parts fill the film. One man from Montreal reveals that his passion is collecting Quebecois country music.
The movie also revels in the act of rummaging through garage sales or flea markets, instead of buying things on eBay, and the film profiles some fascinating nostalgia shops and junk emporia. The City Reliquary in Brooklyn is a place designed to give New York City’s collectors a space to show off their collections. Elsewhere, in Greensboro, N.C., began as a store, but the original owner’s grandson has allowed artists to turn the collections there into art, resulting in displays with titles such as Toynado and Game Board Rainbow.
However, those of you with a tendency to be pack rats should beware: This movie will remind you just how much you need a Mr. Miyagi action figure or some Super Mario Bros. stationery in your life. CN
The Greater Good—Saturday, 2:55 p.m., Hill Event Center This documentary from director Kendall Nelson examines the debate around vaccines. The filmmakers talk with people from both sides of the aisle, including vaccine advocates such as Dr. Chris Offit, and vaccine critics such as Dr. Bob Sears, who wrote The Vaccine Book.
The film is obviously slanted against vaccinations, as we get few individual profiles in the film, including a girl who became sick after getting the Gardasil vaccine for HPV, and a couple who lost their infant child shortly after she received vaccinations. Meanwhile, vaccine proponents like Offit tend to seem a little harsh.
While you may not become convinced that vaccines cause autism, the film does make some persuasive arguments about, among other things, the potentially harmful additives in vaccines and the way pharmaceutical companies can get vaccines fast-tracked before enough research about their safety has been fully done. It will leave you certain that we at least need to re-examine the way vaccinations are done in this country. CN
Knocking Girls Down—Saturday, 8:45 p.m., Alabama Power Knocking Girls Down is an entertaining documentary from the University of Alabama Center for Public Television about the Tragic City Rollers, Birmingham’s all-women roller derby team. For the uninitiated, roller derby is a full-body contact, roller-skating, alternativeculture team sport, perhaps best known to contemporary audiences through Drew Barrymore’s 2009 film Whip It. The makers of the documentary interview skaters Dixie Thrash (the team founder), the Schnott-Nose Kid, Acute Pain, Bama Slamma, Suge Fight, Anne Rollin and practice-squad member and derby aspirant Temper Tantrum. The film follows the Rollers as they train and compete (in their tough-cute costume-uniforms, often featuring tutus and torn fishnet stockings) against North Carolina’s Trauma Queens and Huntsville’s Dixie Derby Girls. We also see them in their real jobs (nurse, librarian, cop, etc), and supporting each other through injury and other challenges. Knocking Girls Down is not a sport’s movie as much as it is about the “girls” (which is how they refer to each other) looking for some sort of meaning and place in the world, and finding it during the bouts: nirvana on skates when knocking girls down. As Temper Tantrum puts it, “Being aggressive as a woman in considered so taboo. Being aggressive can be so empowering.” SS
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth—Sunday, 10:30 a.m., RMTC Cabaret Theatre The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis is often held up as an example of the abject failure of government housing. Built in the early 1950s, it was a complex of 33 highrise apartment buildings spread over 57 acres.
Soon, the isolated buildings turned into a haven for crime and poverty, and by 1972, the towers were being torn down. Director Chad Friedrichs’ documentary tries to figure out why the project was such a failure.
Pruitt-Igoe was conceived as a response to the wartime overcrowding facing the city, but the government failed to anticipate the problems that would face the cities in the next few decades. This includes how the white middle class largely abandoned cities for suburbia, greatly reducing cities’ tax bases, and how industry left the cities as well, stranding the lower class far away from the jobs they came to the cities for in the first place.
The way the projects were run mirrored these problems as well. The federal government built the projects, but maintenance was paid for from tenants’ rents. Of course, only sufficiently poor people were allowed into the projects, so the rents were inadequate to pay for proper maintenance. As the buildings deteriorated, fewer people wanted to live there, which resulted in even less rent collected, and a vicious cycle. Eventually, the high rises emptied, leaving behind a perfect place for drug gangs to set up shop.
The filmmakers also talk to people who lived at Pruitt-Igoe, getting firsthand stories of the project’s legacy, both good and bad. One woman wants to dispel the notion that the project was a purely evil place, and tells of the good memories she has of growing up there. Another man wonders whether seeing his brother murdered at Pruitt-Igoe has made him a harder, more standoffish adult.
The country is full of failed housing projects, and The Pruitt-Igoe Myth teaches a lesson that we could have learned a lot sooner. CN
SoLa: Louisiana Water Stories—Sunday, 10:30 a.m., Alabama Loft Southern Louisiana (SoLa) is defined by its waterways. They influence everything in the state, from politics and economics to culture and communities. SoLa: Louisiana Water Stories explores the world that has been built around the water, placing it in a larger context that makes clear the fact that Southern Louisiana’s problems are, in a way, America’s problems. When Oceans 8, the production company behind SoLa, went to Southern Louisiana in 2008, they had no idea that the worst ecological disasters in history, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, would take place while they were filming. Unchecked corporate interests are threatening to put an end to entire ways of life in Southern Louisiana. Birmingham residents, whose drinking water is currently being threatened by mining interests, should be able to relate to Southern Louisiana’s plight. AM
The Reconstruction of Asa Carter— Sunday, 12:30 p.m., Hill Center In 1976, Forrest Carter published The Education of Little Tree, a memoir about his youth as an orphaned Cherokee boy. The memoir went on to become wildly popular in the 1980s and 1990s, inspiring people with its message of acceptance and peace. But Forrest Carter was never a Cherokee boy. In fact, he was never Forrest Carter. He was, in fact, named Asa Earl Carter and, prior to his literary career, had the dubious distinctions of founding a militant branch of the Ku Klux Clan and writing speeches for Alabama’s famed segregationist governor George Wallace. The Reconstruction of Asa Carter explores how a man who had lived as a violent racist for years transformed himself into a beacon of tolerance. The Reconstruction of Asa Carter is real-life poof that the truth is relative. AM
Live at Preservation Hall: A Louisiana Fairytale—Sunday, 1:10 p.m., Carver Theatre This documentary chronicles the collaboration between the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the rock group My Morning Jacket. The jazz band is based at the legendary Preservation Hall in New Orleans’ French Quarter, and its goal is to preserve Dixieland and New Orleans jazz.
Some of us might prefer our jazz to stay as pure as possible, but the Preservation Hall band members are happy to get their music out to as wide an audience as possible, and the two bands work together well. Their set includes old tunes like “St. James Infirmary Blues” and “Mother-in-Law” as well as some of My Morning Jacket’s own songs.
The film shows another side of My Morning Jacket as well, as frontman Jim James sings a lot of the songs through an old bullhorn, in an effort to give the songs a crackling, old-timey feel. Director Danny Clinch does a good job capturing the magic of the Preservation Hall, and how, with its bare walls, few seats and peeling paint, it can transport you to another time. Yet the music always feels alive and of the present.
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band will be performing live on the Sidewalk Central stage on Sat., Aug. 27, at 6:45pm. CN
Where Soldiers Come From— Sunday, 1:15 p.m., Alabama Theatre Providing an intimate look at the lives of soldiers, this documentary from director Heather Courtney follows three soldiers before, during and after their deployment to Afghanistan. Lured by college tuition and delayed deployment, as well as not really having any better ideas, a group of friends from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula enlists in the National Guard. The friends are Cole, Bodi and Dom, who is a talented artist. We see them as they work, hang out with their friends and go to their one-weekend-a-month training exercises. Then, their unit is deployed.
Somehow, the filmmakers got permission to follow the guys around Afghanistan, showing them on the base and as they go out on missions. Their job is to sweep for IEDs, and they do so in huge trucks that have big metal arms on them. Because of this, the guys get blown up so much that they all develop some form of traumatic brain injury. The army pays for their education, but it breaks their brains first.
Like The Deer Hunter minus the Russian roulette, this film begins with typical young friends and ends with disillusioned veterans, showing us the true cost of war. CN
The Man in the Glass: The Dale Brown Story—Sunday, 3:00 p.m., Carver Theatre The Man in the Glass is a documentary, written and directed by Birmingham’s Patrick Sheehan, about famed college basketball coach Dale Brown. He’s the man who, beginning in 1972, took the hoops program at football-mad LSU to heights it had never achieved, including visits to the NCAA Final Four in 1981 and 1986. He also built a reputation as a P.T.Barnum-style promoter, a campaigner for racial justice in Louisiana who actively recruited black players, and a rebel who battled what he saw as the unfairness of some NCAA rules. If you like sports, especially college basketball, you will enjoy this film. It was not made on the cheap. New Orleans jazz trumpet legend Wynton Marsalis supplies the music, and the long list of talking heads include sportscaster Tim Brando; the always-irritating TV basketball analyst Dick Vitale; former NBA star and Brown recruit Shaquille O’Neal; legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, whom Brown claimed as mentor; and actor Matthew McConaughey, who chose Brown to help him prepare for his role as an inspirational coach in the film We are Marshall. JC
Page One: Inside the New York Times— Sunday, 6:15 p.m., Alabama Theatre This year’s closing night film is a documentary by Andrew Rossi about the New York Times’ attempt to reinvent itself in a digital medium. For one year, Rossi gained unprecedented access to the inner sanctum of the Grey Lady as its employees scrambled to rescue one of America’s last great publications from the maw of obsolescence. A celebration of old-school journalistic credibility and the ability to adapt to change, Page One provides an over-the-shoulder look at what may be one of the defining events of modern journalism and the people and ideas that made such a moment possible, not to mention an intricate look at the inner workings of a massive publishing behemoth. The film centers on the paper’s Media Desk, a section created to cover the ever-shifting landscape of media in the internet age, and its argument that print journalism is still a vital part of the way we engage in the ongoing conversation about our lives and the world we live in strikes true. SG
Other Films We’re Looking Forward To:
Autoerotic: Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights and Weekends) is a Sidewalk veteran, and his latest, co-directed with local boy Adam Wingard, is an anthology film centering around stories about sex.
The Innkeepers: Ti West’s last film, the excellent House of the Devil, played Sidewalk in 2009. His new shocker is the festival’s opening night film, and it concerns a couple of employees at a soon-to-close hotel who try to take advantage of the inn’s reputation of being haunted in an effort to save the place and discover that it isn’t just a legend.
Missing Pieces: Alabama native Kenton Bartlett directs this tale of a man (Sons of Anarchy star Mark Boone Junior) who kidnaps two strangers in the hopes that they will fall in love.
Senna: This documentary follows the life of famed Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, who won the F1 world championship three times before his tragic death at age 34.
Silver Tongues: This dark drama stars Oz actor Lee Tergesen and Enid Graham as a couple who put on elaborate cons more to ruin people’s lives than for any monetary gain.
Film capsules written by Sam George, Jesse Chambers, Carey Norris, Andy McWhorter, Scoop Schwaiger and Katherine Webb. Please send your comments to sam@bhamweekly.com.
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