Cameras roll in Meridian for Rails to Reels Film Festival
Published 1:16 pm Wednesday, October 18, 2017
- Bill Graham / The Meridian StarRoger Smith, left, manager of the Temple Theatre in Meridian, and Thomas Burton look forward to this year's Rail to Real Film Festival. Burton is the festival's organizer. The festival begins at 5:30 p.m. on Friday and runs until late into the evening, and then it takes up again at 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Awards are scheduled for about 10 p.m. Saturday.
Beginning Thursday night, the city of Meridian may take on some characteristics of a film set.
This year’s Rails to Reels Film Festival features a “FLASH Film Festival” in which two directors, Michael Williams, from West Point, and Miles Doleac, from Hattiesburg, are slated to work with crews for 48 hours as they produce two short films to be shown Saturday night before the festival’s awards ceremony at the Temple Theatre.
That means some intensified, and some potentially very visible, film-making will take place in town over this period. Thomas Burton, the Rails to Reels Film Festival organizer, characterized the two directors as well-suited to the task.
“They’re relentless, and they’re fun to be around,” Burton said.
Meridian actor Elliott Street has played a key role in crafting the FLASH Film Festival and will host it, Burton said.
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The directors have already sketched out plans and chosen cast members, Burton said, but people who want to be production assistants during the process can come to the Temple Theatre ballroom for a 7 p.m. Thursday meeting. He advised people to arrive at least a half-hour or so early.
“They can be put on a team, and they can learn the process first-hand,” Burton said. “They probably would help put props on a set, help with lights, make sure that things get moved properly from location to location…”
He said the process would help people interested in filmmaking snatch a close-up of the process.
“Really they’re getting a taste of what it takes to make a movie,” Burton said. “We’re just trying to inspire young people, and people who are interested.”
As for the main festival, Burton said more films focus on Meridian than in past years, and he noted the experimental nature of the storytelling for just about all the pieces. Very few, he said, follow the traditional exposition-to-conflict-to-resolution formula.
“I think they’re off the script,” he said of the films. “They’re all unique … Most of these are thumbprints of the director.”
The festival begins at 5:30 p.m. Friday and runs until late into the evening, and then it takes up again at 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Awards are scheduled for about 10 p.m. Saturday.
The offerings contain a combination of documentaries and tales spun from filmmakers’ deepest imaginations. Burton said, too, that a number of films are exploring people who live in Meridian but may not be readily known. He mentioned Chelsea Carter’s “I, Lovett” and Dale Tice’s “Little City — Big Voices” as tapping some of those personalities.
Carter, from Meridian, said the subject of her film, Wilson Lovett, carved out a career as a designer who had great success in California, among other places. He currently lives in Meridian, where Carter said he was born and raised. Carter filmed him telling his story, and she also directed about a dozen people to act out scenes for the film.
“When you look at him and you come across him, he’s a smaller man,” she said. “But he has this huge story, and he pushes other people to help him succeed. He helped highlight other people, but he never had anyone in his corner to highlight him.”
Jill Johnson’s film also focuses on a powerful designer from Meridian — and she said her contact with that designer, Barclay Fryery, helped to spark her own creativity. Johnson interviewed Fryery at his home in Meridian, where he was enduring cancer. He died in May.
“This creativity that he has was so powerful that it keeps channeling into those of us who want to carry on his legacy,” Johnson said.
Johnson, a freelance writer in Westport, Connecticut, made her film about Fryery after creating a book about him called “Cancer Looks Good on You” as he lived his last days in Meridian. The film is called “Designing from Above.”
Fryery soared as an interior designer after living much of his life in Connecticut, and Johnson worked to capture — or at least to touch — that creativity in her film. Johnson said Fryery’s work has been featured in “Elle Decor,” “House Beautiful” and a variety of other outlets.
Johnson said she tried to convey in her film a kind of deep-rooted optimism — a hard-won sort of optimism—that she felt emanating from Fryery.
“Having grown up gay in the deep south he faced a lot of obstacles as a kid,” Johnson said. “He really craved acceptance from people in Meridian.”
Burton said the festival’s filmmakers tended to be involved in many phases of the process. Andy Galloway, who made the film “The Eviction,” was motivated by a homeless encampment in Dallas, Texas and spent hours beneath a bridge developing connections with the people he filmed.
“The more I was down there, the more I could be trusted,” he said. “I could only shoot from 2 to 4:30 p.m. That was the best time for light.”
For Galloway, documentary work focuses on people striving to find a voice.
“Most of my works as a documentary filmmaker are about the forgotten man and the guy who’s trying to fight the system,” Galloway said.
As Burton talked about the films, he also noted the complex narrative — storylines, he said, that are sometimes packed into very short pieces. The film “Run For It,” by Meridian resident Daniel C. Ethridge, finishes at just a hair more than four minutes, but it explores the life of a track star with a cousin who finds himself plunged into gambling.
Citing Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson, Ethridge said he likes a tightly woven, intensity-laced film.
“We want everybody to be sort of out of breath from being involved in the movies,” he said.
And then there are the endings. Burton noted a number of finishes that don’t create a traditional sort of resolution — such as a film called “Almost Mine,” by Frank Ladner.
The film’s idea, Ladner explained, was sparked by questions his son asked him that led up to, in kind of crescendo-like fashion, a knock-knock joke. The man in the film, Ladner said, is “dealing with problems, with questions about whether his love will remember him.” And so he keeps asking that question, of whether she will remember him, and finally he receives a kind of answer.
Ladner, from Poplarville, said the film contrasts dramatically with the mockumentary style of his past work.
“I’ve totally abandoned the process I’m comfortable with,” he said.
And there are more, dozens more, films that may not fit in these pages — at least this time around — but that will find an audience starting at 5:30 p.m. on Friday.
A Journey Through Pines
Jimmy Andrews
Director
A daughter finds her father’s hidden journal and learns he was in love with someone other than her mother. She sets out on a journey to find the woman her father must have loved and unexpectedly learns the meaning of “unconditional love.”
Designing From Above
Jill Johnson
Director
Wow. Just one word: Wow. That is the reaction designer and stylist Barclay Fryery sought and elicited from those who viewed his creations. Barclay, a native of Meridian, Mississippi, died on May 26, 2017. While his life was short, his inspirations were large. He might start with a simple spark, the shade of pink in a Spanish bullfighter’s stockings, for example, and transform an entire room. He placed no limits on his designs. He dreamed big and exceeded expectations, both with his artistic creations and his life. Barclay left not only a legacy of beauty, he etched life lessons into the memories he left behind—and in his last two months on earth, he recorded them for posterity in his book: Cancer Looks Good on You. This film captures snippets of his life, his vision, the lifestyle he created, and the philosophy of optimism and compassion he nurtured—whether overcoming abuse, dealing with loss, coping with an HIV diagnosis, or facing cancer. Just as anyone who met Barclay was touched by him, we hope this montage of his design tips, wisdom, and wit touches your heart, mind, or funny bone.
by Lee Rudnicki
A little girl (DYLAN) saves the life of an alien fighter pilot (FLOWER). Dylan brings Flower home, into her family’s ocean front mansion … during a reality TV shoot.
by Caleb Haynes
A troubled young man encounters a strange figure after an accident. Now, he must try to find a way out without succumbing to whatever the future may hold for him.
by Matthew McCoy
Focuses on Guitar Players in Hattiesburg
by Chris Lawing
It’s the 80s, and 15-year-old, drugged out Greg face plants into a glass coffee table. His parents have had enough – it’s time for Greg to get straightened out. So off to rehab with him! But Greg isn’t done partying. He plans one last bash to send himself off like a king. After a long night, Greg will find out who he really is and who his true friends are.
Brandon Polanco
Director
An epic transformation manifests from a seemingly routine interview.
As a failed everyman begins to work through pages and pages of questions, time elongates. He finds himself tormented, isolated, battling the unknown, ultimately transcending into a heightened reality, discovering a new life between multiple worlds both familiar and otherworldly.
by Chris Bufkin
The Devil’s Road is historical fiction involving some of the people who lived in Mississippi and traveled the Natchez Trace in the early 1800s, including the nation’s first serial killers
by Caleb Haynes
Three best friends are out on a fishing trip when things start to go sideways. Tensions run high between the three as they wonder what will happen at the end of it all?
by shayne weems Music Video
by Daniel Ethridge
Buck is a high school track star with a cousin ( JoJo) who has become entangled with a violent gambling ring. When JoJo attempts to convince Buck to throw an upcoming State Track competition to settle his gambling debts everything gets complicated.
by Frank Ladner
A Lapis Lazuli mining couple have a potentially comedic misunderstanding in post-apocalyptic Colorado.
by Andy Galloway
The Eviction is a documentary about the closure of a homeless encampment in Dallas, Texas. The causes, consequences, of those affected and the trials of those who are trying to help are all examined.
by Chelsea Carter
A documentary about Wilson Lovett. An artist who was born and raised in Meridian, Ms and grew to live an extraordinary life, accomplished many great things at a young age, helped others and returned home. This is his story.
Lucy Macedo Producer – Skyko Director/Writer
A young man awakens on his couch and pieces together a dark romantic weekend that will change his life forever.
by Paul Williams
Film buffs Marty and Anna come into conflict when dreamer Marty’s desire to reopen the local movie theater clashes with the reality of the impending birth of their child.
Behind the Woods and Across the Sea
by Doug Phillips
Born Onufry Filipovich in the Russian Empire, Owen Phillips came to America alone, with nothing, at the age of 16. His story is the story of one man and millions of people. The 20 million immigrants who, like him, arrived in America a century ago fueled the astonishing economic growth that transformed the United States from an economic backwater into the world’s leading economy.
by Anaiis Cisco
‘Breathless’ is the story of Larry, a middle aged Black man, whose trip to the bodega for coffee and cigarettes leads to his unwarranted death.
Larry, a father “figure” and street “entrepreneur” in his Brooklyn community, stops by Major Deli to see the owner, and for his usual coffee and cigarettes. On his way out, he breaks up a fight between neighborhood teens, resulting in an illegal cigarette transaction. Consequently, two undercover officers approach Larry, accusing him of selling illegal cigarettes. This encounter with the police quickly escalates and leads to Larry’s untimely death.
Banjos, Bluegrass, and Squirrel Barkers
by Rick Bowman
In the early 1960’s the “folk music revival” had a strong impact on bluegrass music across the country including San Diego, California, where a group of young men from different backgrounds gathered to make this traditional music.
by David Volino
Chris and Becca spend a night together, after not seeing each other for years.
by Josiah Cuneo
Daydreams of dancers flood the thoughts of a woman as she says goodbye.
by Lynn Forney
Perfect explores a woman whose obsession with perfection has greatly altered her idea of what it means to keep everything in its place.
Perfect was filmed in Mississippi with a Mississippi crew.
Bob in the Rain and the Lizard of Hope
by Maria Chiara Venturini Music Video
by Glenn Payne
Missing lunches, maniacal villains, monster detectives, and mechanical men: When office life gets boring you can always escape to the streets of Cubicle City.
by Fiona Cochrane Music Video
by Fiona Cochrane
It’s 2011 and twentyfive plan to write, record then release a fresh song every two weeks of the year.
twentyfive are two unknown, indie songwriters in a bare bones studio in the industrial West of Melbourne – Australia’s music capital. They have a studio set-up which is a piece of Melbourne history – a 1957 train carriage, lovingly restored, fitted out with a Tiki Bar.
Cath loves pop, Nick loves garage rock. She wants jazz flute, he wants a dirty guitar. Is this ever going to work, are they totally deluded, is it an impossible goal? Will anyone even care or notice in the century of information and product overload? This is not reality TV, it’s not a competition, it’s real musicians doing their own thing. And we’ve had to wait five years to see the result!
by Andrew Huggins
A modern day adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown” from 1835.
by Dylan Scott
An odd couple finds themselves on the run after committing murder. The two find shelter at what they think is a safe house and are being watched by an unknown neighbor.
by Shawn Tolleson
Five college friends on the cusp of 30 reunite for a wedding weekend. When their long-lost sixth friend – the former best friend of the groom and soul mate of the bride – shows up uninvited and unexpected, they are each forced to reexamine their lives and choices.
by Dale Tice
Meridian, Mississippi, a little city along the southern corridor, has a rich legacy of songwriters. Little City Big Voices takes a look behind of what it is about this city that has produced so much talent and where Meridian stands now as a Musical scene.
by Miles Doleac
Celebrated fiction writer and former priest, Colin Hampstead, and his wife, Kayleigh, are tormented by the ghost of her late sister, as the details of her grisly death are slowly uncovered.
