Screen gems

By The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

LITTLE ROCK — The T Tauri Film Festival for young filmmakers will hold screenings of selected submissions and present its annual awards from July 30 to Aug. 1. The screenings will take place in Independence Hall on the campus of the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville in the auditorium and the Lecture Hall (Room 103).

A total of 145 entries from 23 states and England, all created by students 18 and under, were submitted to this year's festival, and executive director Judy Pest noted a significant increase in the number of Arkansas entries.

T Tauri awards will be given in the following categories: Comedy, Drama, Long Documentary (10 minutes or longer), Short Documentary (less than 10 minutes), Animation, Experimental, and Public Service Announcement. The festival also gives the ArkanSTAR award to the outstanding Arkansas entry and the "Kid With a Camera" Award to the most outstanding film made by an entrant working without support from a school or after-school program. The original, hand-thrown ceramic T Tauri trophies are created each year by David and Becki Dahlstedt of Mountain View Pottery.

On July 30 at 7 p.m., T Tauri instructor Wes Obrigewitsch will discuss Squish and Squash: Experiments in Hand-Drawn Animation Workshop. A screening of selections in the Animation category will follow.

On July 31, beginning at 7 p.m., the Comedy and Drama entries will be screened.

On Aug. 1, at 2 p.m., the Documentary category films will be screened and at 4 p.m. winners will be announced. A finale screening of competition winners from Arkansas and movies produced in the 2009 Movie Camp and APPLE Project documentary workshops will be held at 7 p.m.

There is no admission fee on Thursday and Friday. Saturday screenings are $3 for adults; $2 for adults 55 and over and Film Society members; $1 for youths 18 and under. Admission to the finale screening is $5 adults; $3 senior citizens and Film Society members; $2 youths. An all day Saturday pass is available for $8 adults; $5 senior citizens and Film Society members; $3youths.

The T Tauri Film Festival and Movie Camp is a division of Ozark Foothills FilmFest Inc. More information is available by calling (870) 251-1189 or by e-mail at ozarkfilm@wildblue.net.

The

Arkansas Underground Film Festival

opens at the Malco Theater, 817 Central Ave., in downtown Hot Springs on July 17. Admission is $10 per day or $20 for the three-day festival.

At 5 p.m. July 17, doors will open on a lobby exhibit of David Nelson's Home Movie Projectors, the largest such collection in the country. From 6 to 11 p.m., "Surrealist" fi lms by 1890s innovator George Melies and painter Salvador Dali will be shown.

The July 18 program, "Pop Cultural and Outsider Film," includes rare films by Andy Warhol on loan from the Museum of Modern Art and the writer William Burroughs. Documentaries on each of the artists will be shown prior to the featured films, as well as outsider films submitted from around the world for the festival. Screenings begin at 2 p.m. and run through 11.

On July 19 the work of 20thcentury experimental filmmaker Stan Brackhage will be screened from 2 to 9 p.m.

For more information on the festival, see www.arkuff.com.

Free documentaries continue every Sunday afternoon through Aug. 30, at Heifer Village on the Heifer International site in downtown Little Rock. Each film begins at 3 p.m. and is followed by a brief, moderated question-and-answer session.

On Sunday, the film is Aaron Woolf's King Corn, a highly entertaining first-person exploration by two college buddies (writers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis) about the immense role corn (and its syrup) play in our food chain.

Other films in the series are War/Dance on July 19; The Story of Trash and Trashed: The Story of Garbage, American Style on July 26; and Food, Inc. on Aug. 2.

For a complete schedule, visit www.heifer.org/heifervillage or call (501) 907-2697.

MovieStyle, Pages 38 on 07/10/2009