Pining for those artsy films you read about but can never hope to see in a theater within a day’s drive (maybe two) of Mobile? You know, the kind that got rave reviews at Cannes or Sundance and then were released to one movie house on each coast for a week’s run and then – Poof! – gone from view, or viewing, until maybe someday you find it on DVD – if you can hook up with a source for obscure films almost nobody saw in original release.
Well pine no more and come on over to the South Alabama Baldwin Campus Performance Center, on Fairhope Film Festival nights (actually it’s Film Series, but the alliteration sounds so neat). A different film is shown at 7 p.m. every Friday from Labor Day to the end of November. That’s for the English language flicks. For those aficionados of entertainment of even greater obscurity, foreign films with dialogue in various other languages (including one in Lapp, Finnish and Russian) are shown in the spring, starting just after Mardi Gras. Also on Fridays, same time, same place.
This continuing film series has been an ESho event for the better part of a decade. The operation is run by Mary Riser with help from John Tardieu and financial support from the University of South Alabama (Baldwin County), the M. W. Smith, Jr. Foundation, the Sybil Smith Charitable Trust and (as they say on NPR) viewers like you – for while there is no entrance fee, a donation of five dollars is strongly encouraged (students get in free).
Mary and John are no passive organizers. They select films based on their review of what’s available from art and specialty film distributors, their knowledge of the art film genre and feedback and recommendations from attendees, friends and passers-by. Looking at the lists of what has been, and will be, shown gives an appreciation of the wide variety of films selected, and for the varied tastes being catered to. Definitely includes no smut (a word hardly used anymore), but lots of controversy. And controversy and stimulation of discussion are major selection criteria.
The film series organizers want people to talk about what they have seen, They hope the experience will stick in the viewers’ minds long after the lights have come up. For those who want Hollywood fluff and sex and violence, commercial theaters are available. There you can suck down gallons of sugary beverages, pack in bushels of semi-toxic popcorn and watch something that doesn’t stick in your mind nearly as long as your shoes stuck to the theater’s floor. The Fairhope Film Series: It’s a whole ‘nother experience from attending a mainstream movie.
But I don’t want to leave you with the impression that going to the ESho answer to an art film theater is some sort of serious exercise followed by a quiz. Not all. Maybe a bit surreal, what with the event sometimes including sitting there trying to understand what’s happening on the screen as you watch jerky images projected at odd angles, while listening to actors conversing in three different languages – none spoken by anyone you have ever met (sometimes spoken by hardly anyone in the whole world) – and simultaneously trying to read subtitles that scan like a 1970s Toyota manual written for the French market and subsequently translated into late 19th Century British by a person whose primary language is Farsi. No it’s even more fun than that.
John and Mary add humor and insight (at least the former) by appearing live on stage in little vignettes that relate to the film that will follow. Not for every movie but frequently enough that regular film-series goers look forward to these lagniappes. Those who saw the mustached and hardly svelte John Tardieu, bewigged and in full drag when he introduced “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” will certainly have that image stuck in their minds for a while. More arty, but no less entertaining, was the reenactment by John and Mary of a 1940s Bogie and Bacall cigarette lighting scene. This suggestive moment preceded the recent showing of “Thank You for Smoking.” Fun stuff that adds to an evening at the movies.
So think about setting aside at least one Friday between now and December to see a film that likely is unavailable anywhere outside of New York City or Los Angeles (or maybe even unavailable anywhere but on a single night in Fairhope). If you want a little nudge – some direction for those who don’t want to hit just any old showing at random – mark Sept. 28 as your movie night. The film is “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” (Irish, 2003). It features world-class cinematography as well as an engrossing dramatic story line. The lagniappe that night will be live Celtic music.
Then finish the evening with a pint at McSharry’s, over on Bancroft.
Contact Pete Gleszer at jubilee@lagniappemobile.com.
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