Read the Mercury‘s complete Big Ears 2016 coverage here. Visit the Big Ears website for the full lineup and schedule and ticket information.
Featuring 18 events over four days, Big Ears’ 2016 film lineup ranges from world-class experimental cinema (Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog, Shambhavi Kaul’s Planet) to premiere documentaries (WFMU history Sex and Broadcasting) and beyond. At the helm of this expanded film slate are critic Darren Hughes and filmmaker Paul Harrill, whose Public Cinema project has been bringing similarly rare cinematic treats to Knoxville since early 2015.
Did the potential of a Big Ears/Public Cinema collaboration seem as obvious to you guys as it did to those of us observing from the outside?
Darren Hughes: Paul and I discussed Big Ears as a potential model in our very earliest conversations about the Public Cinema. What we most admire about the fest is its curatorial voice. I’m usually familiar with only about half of the acts at Big Ears, but I trust the programming completely and the main pleasure of the fest for me is the thrill of discovery. As a long-time attendee, I’ve occasionally walked into a show and known immediately that it’s not my thing, but I’m always grateful for the experience and understand instinctively how it fits into the Big Ears voice.
Big Ears has always been a mixed-media festival, and in recent years there has been a greater emphasis on visual art. Having Bill Morrison here last year for a retrospective was a really big deal for the Knoxville art scene. (His latest short, “The Dockworker’s Dream,” will premiere at this year’s fest.) Of course, Paul and I came away from the fest daydreaming about what a full film program might look like, never expecting it might actually happen. This year’s lineup, we think, is a good first step toward something really special. Major figures in the art-cinema world know about Big Ears and are eager to show their work here.
Given the more intuitive pairing of Big Ears with the avant-garde thread of Public Cinema, how did the showcase for the Brooklyn music label/video distributor Factory 25 end up such a big component of it?
Paul Harrill: For starters, the Factory 25 movies we’re screening are, like the music at Big Ears, exciting, unique, and unclassifiable. We think the adventurous audiences that attend Big Ears will really respond to them. Then, on top of the fact that they’re individually worthwhile, we think what Matt Grady’s managed to do with Factory 25 is pretty remarkable. He’s created a label that releases work from distinctive artists and somehow also manages to have a coherent curatorial voice. You see that in the music world with the really special indie record labels—say, 4AD or Merge. But it’s virtually unheard of in the film world. So we wanted to shine a light on that, celebrate it, bring into the Big Ears conversation.
Which screening are you most looking forward to personally?
Darren Hughes: I’ve been aware of Shambhavi Kaul’s work for several years because she’s often programmed in the prestigious Wavelengths experimental program at the Toronto International Film Festival. I met her in Toronto last fall, and she was the first name that came to mind when we began the collaboration with AC Entertainment. She’ll be premiering a new installation at the University of Tennessee’s Downtown Gallery, which is a new Big Ears venue. The gallery will be open to the public throughout the weekend, so I hope Knoxvillians who are curious about Big Ears will check it out.
And which screening would you guess will be the subject of the most “Oh shit, you really missed out” conversations over the course of the weekend?
Darren Hughes: I’ve wanted to bring Jodie Mack to Knoxville for two years now. She’ll be showing a program of five short films called Let Your Light Shine, which is one of the most important and critically acclaimed experimental works of the decade. Maybe the most impressive thing about Jodie is that her work is both formally rigorous—she uses old-school, frame-by-frame stop-motion animation—and delightfully playful. I saw it in Rotterdam in a theater full of hardened avant-garde critics, all of whom loved it, but I’m also hoping to sneak in my 5-year-old daughter.
Paul Harrill: One more I’ve got to add is Frownland, which is part of the Factory 25 retrospective. People should come to the conversation with Matt Grady, which happens immediately before the film. Grady told me he was inspired to start the company when he saw Frownland. This movie—I saw it at its world premiere back in 2007. I’ve never forgotten it. It’s so bleak, grotesque, and funny. I just think it’s one of the key films of American indie cinema of the last 15 years. This is a very rare chance to see it on the big screen. When Roger Ebert reviewed it, he called it a “shriek for help.” That was a rave review, by the way. I think that says it all.
The Big Ears Public Cinema schedule runs throughout the weekend at the Tennessee Theatre, the Square Room, and the Regal Riviera 8. Visit publiccinema.org or bigearsfestival.com for more info.
Nick Huinker is fortunate to have spent the past 15 years living and covering Knoxville’s near-constant DIY music renaissance. Once a year he does his best to return the cultural favor as producer of the Knoxville Horror Film Fest; most of the rest of the time he’s of limited use.
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