Films by Jean Xiong ’17, Marissa Evans ’17, Lara Johnson ’16 and Emily Heine ’15 have been selected for the 18th Annual Indie Memphis Film Festival. Xiong and Evans’ films were made as part of the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies this summer. Heine and Johnson shot their film for Rhodes’ Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Symposium. The festival is Nov. 3-10 at various local theaters.
Heine and Johnson’s “Glitching” will be shown Nov. 4 at the Orpheum’s Halloran Centre between 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. A love child between “Broad City” and “The Twilight Zone,” this film begins after an out of control house party destroys two roommates’ TV, and they discover that their thrift store replacement has some eerie abilities of its own.
Evans’ “Where Do We Start?” will be shown Nov. 5 at the Orpheum’s Halloran Centre between 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Six LGBT African Americans explore what it means to live with two marginalized identities and describe how they navigate their cultures.
Xiong’s “Somewhere in Between ” will be shown Nov. 7 at Circuit Playhouse between 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. This documentary explores what it means to be Asian American, living in a nation so heavily entrenched in black and white issues and growing up with constant pressures from society and parents to obtain the “American Dream.” According to Xiong, “This brings to light criticisms of different facets in their everyday life such as a commentary of immigrant parents and interactions between different ethnicities in the Mid-South community.”
In addition, Johnson and Heine each have individual shorts that will be shown at the festival Nov. 8 at Malco Studio on the Square between 9 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Heine’s is a short experimental documentary titled “Am I Pretty,” which addresses issues surrounding the rituality of makeup. Heine is a recent Rhodes graduate with a B.A. in religious studies, and she currently works as a media production fellow at Impact America-Tennessee. Johnson “moves to the beat” in her experimental short, “Dancing with Lara.”
Johnson and Xiong are both art majors. Evans is an English major.
For festival ticket information, visit the Indie Memphis Film Festival site.
Pictured in the photo (l-r) are Jean Xiong Marissa Evans, Lara Johnson, and Emily Heine.