LITTLE ROCK — Here’s a short list of some feature-length films to keep an eye out for:
The Dynamiter, a film about “just kind of a rambunctious Southern kid from Mississippi, no job, aimless, during a very hot summer, and he’s kind of into starting fights and stuff, [but] he’s sort of keeping his weird family together,” Agee says. “It’s just this sort of unique coming-of-age film that I’ve really not ever seen before.”
The List, a documentary about an American contractor in Iraq who goes out of his way to help an Iraqi “fixer” - those nationals who work, often covertly, with U.S. soldiers and defense contractors - find asylum from murderous al-Qaida groups in Iraq. Naturally,after he helps one, many more come out of the shadows seeking his intercession. “Everyone who works in a conflict zone has lost fixers - ours from Afghanistan is no longer alive,” Brent Renaud says.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is one of those mystical fictions driven by a painfully real acting turn by Quvenzhane Wallis (then 5 years old) as “Hushpuppy,” who lives with her daddy in a Louisiana bayou town of “Bathtub.” “It won a Sundance film festival award and is generating buzz at Cannes,” Craig Renaud points out.
Teddy Bear, a 38-year-old Danish bodybuilder who has never traveled and never had a real girlfriend must lie to his mother before he visits Thailand to try his connubial luck there. The film is foreign, with English subtitles. “Hey, man, some of the best films I’ve ever seen are subtitled,” Agee says. “This world is just going to have to wake up.”
Journey to Planet X shines a light on two ultra-low-budget filmmakers, Eric Swain and Troy Bernier, who put job and relationships on the line to produce sci-fi action films. Remember American Movie? “For the first time ever, Swain and Bernier will be on hand to answer questions about their work, and screen their sci-fi film Planet X,” Brent Renaud says.
Style, Pages 25 on 05/29/2012