Friday night will begin with music at 5pm by Ocean Springs native David Lynn.
At 7:30, the films will begin with this year’s winner of the Best Student Film category: Erin Lou’s film, “The Moon and The Night”. “The Moon and the Night” is a 19-minute long film about a girl in rural Hawaii who must confront her father for entering her beloved dog into a dog fight. The Friday night film block will also feature Kalainithan Kalaichelvan’s film, “Petit Four”, which was the winner of this year’s $10,000 Artist Vodka Award. “Petit Four” is about a married couple’s struggle when one suspects the other of having an affair with a ghost. The Best Narrative Feature of this year’s film festival will also be screened during the Friday night film block. The winner of the Narrative Feature is Jordan Noel’s 90-minute film, “This World Alone” which follows the journey of Sam, a bookworm in her late-teens, navigating life on an Earth without any technology or power after a cataclysmic event. After an accident, Sam is forced to leave her two mother figures and put her makeshift parents’s opposing worldviews to the test.
Saturday will begin with music by Jacob Turner, a regular on the Greenhouse on Porter’s Stage. Once the sun goes down, the films will start, featuring this year’s Best Mississippi Music Video, “Wash My Hands” directed by Christian Walker. Mississippi blue’s royalty, Cedric Burnside, performs his hit “Wash My Hands” at the legendary Royal Studios in Memphis. Another feature of the night includes the winner of the Best Music Documentary Short called “It’s Now or Never: A Race to Save Colonel Parker’s Complex” which is directed by Austin Daniel Blasingame and follows a man’s determination to preserve a historical music landmark. “Negro Terror” the winner of the Best Music Documentary will also be screened during the Saturday night film block. This documentary follows a unique punk rock band’s role in the vibrant underground music scene in Memphis. Jeffery Dennis’s winning film of the Best Mississippi Feature, “Sharde Thomas: Legacy of Fife”, follows the granddaughter of Blue’s legend, Othar Turner, who works to carry on the tradition of fife and drum music in North Mississippi. This feature will be screened on Saturday as well.
Sunday, Blue Mother Tupelo, of Hendersonville TN will be performing at the Greenhouse for the first time and the perfect band to usher in this final night of the festival. Their Americana sound has been delighting fans all across the country.
Sunday’s features films from coastal Mississippi filmmakers including Adam Grannick’s, “Confederate Pride, White Supremacy, and My State Flag” which dives into the struggles of pride in southern heritage but shame of a racist past from this Biloxi filmmaker. “Aloneliness: A Screendance” by Rachel Searcy, an Ocean Springs filmmaker, will also be shown on Sunday along with Moss Point filmmaker, Don Smith and his film, “Moss Point Mississippi”. “Signs”, the winner of the Reel South Award is a film that follows the ongoing vandalism of signs marking Emmett Till’s murder from filmmakers Matthew Cipollone & Mikey D’Amico. The winner of Best Mississippi Feature will also be screened on Sunday. “Door Ajar: The M.B. Mayfield Story” by director John Reyer Afamasaga is about an African American janitor listening and learning about art in segregated Mississippi from the inside of a broom closet.
