At a visitation the day before the funeral of filmmaker Brent Renaud last month, I talked to several people about the lasting influence of the Little Rock Film Festival he had co-founded. A common theme was how the festival fomented an actual filmmaking community, facilitating connections and bringing in working filmmakers to serve as practical models for aspirants.
The Arkansas Cinema Society is not a direct successor of the Little Rock Film Festival; its goals and strategies are different from those of the LRFF. But it maintains an interest in building (and serving) a statewide filmmaking community, and to that end, it's presenting its first Film Development Conference, which kicks off in Bentonville today.
The two-day conference, held at Thaden School, 800 SE C St. in downtown Bentonville, will feature evening screenings of Clint Bentley's "Jockey" and ACS co-founder Jeff Nichols' "Loving," happy hours, and in-depth discussions and workshops on pre-production best practices with industry professionals.
Aside from Nichols and Bentley, the ACS has brought in Nichols' producing partner Sarah Green -- who has also worked extensively with directors John Sayles, Terrence Malick and David Mamet -- and Greg Kwedar, who co-wrote "Jockey" with Bentley and serves as one of the film's producers.
Tickets and passes are available at arkansascinemasociety.org. Full passes are $100. Workshop passes for April 30 are $75, and individual passes for workshops and screening tickets are available for $25. ACS members receive 50% off tickets and passes, and sponsor perks apply.
"Jockey" was a crowd favorite at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, where its star, Clifton Collins Jr., won a Special Jury Prize for acting. He deserves it, for the character is tailored to Collins' specifications -- the actor is a skilled horseman, the grandson of Western character actor Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, who provided comic relief in several John Wayne movies and the grand-nephew of actor and singer Jose Gonzales-Gonzales (best known today for his role of Mariachi in 1991's "The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear").
Collins has ridden on camera before -- I've never gotten into the HBO series "Westworld" but presumably he's on horseback a lot there and had a small riding role in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" -- and "Jockey' provides him with the opportunity to show how natural he is in the saddle. He's completely believable as a veteran rider who gets one last shot at glory.
It's like a "Rocky" movie -- or at least the first really good "Rocky" movie. There's Molly Parker as a horse trainer who's had Jackson's back for years; and young kid Gabriel (Moises Arias) who looks up to Jackson and might be looking to breaking into the business. Then there's the unforeseen obstacle that rears its head before the big race.
What saves "Jockey" from being hokey is Bentley's deep knowledge of the milieu -- his father was a jockey and he reportedly grew up around racetracks -- and eye for telling detail, like Chloe Zhao did in "Songs My Brother Taught Me," "The Rider" and "Nomadland."
It might be profitable to hear the filmmakers talk about how they made this movie -- especially the scene with the wild mustangs.
As for Nichols' "Loving," the first few minutes should be taught in film schools. And it's actually shot on film, in a stylistically classic, almost formal manner. It would be an interesting undertaking to deconstruct it frame by frame.
Ticket holders to any event during the Arkansas Cinema Society's Film Conference weekend will be eligible to apply for a film development grant up to $2,500 to be awarded after the conference.
Jockey