The Video Association of Dallas announced today the first 10 films chosen to screen at the 26th edition of the Dallas VideoFest on October 9-13, 2013. Overall, approximately 175 videos including narrative and documentary features, shorts, animation, and experimental videos will be screened during the 5-day Festival.
First 7 Dallas VideoFest Films
Opening Night Film:
Opening Night premiere screening of TRUE TALES, an AMS Pictures original production, centers on Nancy Myers, aka “Tammi True,” with a pre-show performance by Ruby Review, Texas’ Premier Burlesque and Variety Show. Tammi True will do a Q&A after the film. TRUE TALES delves into Myers’ life as a headlining act at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club in the early 1960s. To celebrate, the Video Association of Dallas invites patrons to come dressed in their best early 1960s/“Mad Men” attire. Dallas VideoFest’s opening night documentary feature will now screen at the South Side Music Hall Gilley's Dallas, 1135 S Lamar St, Dallas, TX 75215:
TRUE TALES (USA)
Director: Katie Dunn
Just two days after Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a little-known Dallas strip club operator named Jack Ruby murders Oswald on live television. Why did he do it? Despite decades of theories and speculation, the question has never been satisfactorily answered. Until now. Shunning the press for nearly 50 years, Tammi True—a top-billed stripper in Jack Ruby's Carousel Club—is finally ready to reveal the answers. AMS Pictures presents TRUE TALES, an original docudrama exploring the bizarre world of 1960s Dallas burlesque through the eyes of its preeminent entertainer. Featuring dramatic re-creations shot on actual locations, TRUE TALES immerses you into the events that led to one of the most infamous crimes of the 20th Century.
More Early Selected Films Playing at Alamo Drafthouse – Richardson:
CAMERA/WOMAN (Morocco)
Director: Karima Zoubir
Working as a videographer at weddings in Casablanca, Khadija Harrad is part of the new generation of young, divorced Moroccan women seeking to realize their desires for independence while honoring their families' wishes. Mother of an 11-year-old son and primary breadwinner for her parents and siblings as well, she navigates daily between the elaborate fantasy world of the parties she films and harassment from her traditionally conservative family.
DESTINATION: PLANET NEGRO (USA)
Director: Kevin Willmott
In 1939, a group of African American intellectuals come up with an ingenious and unlikely response to Jim Crow America—leave the planet and populate Mars. Using technology created by George Washington Carver, a three-person crew (plus one rambunctious robot) lift-off in Earth's first working spaceship on a mission that will take them to a world not unlike present-day America. Their spacey adventure illuminates some hard truths about American culture and threatens to undermine the time-line of history along the way.
DUSTY STACKS OF MOM (USA)
Director: Jodie Mack
Interweaving the forms of personal filmmaking, abstract animation, and rock opera, this animated musical documentary examines the rise and fall of a nearly-defunct poster and postcard wholesale business; the changing role of physical objects and virtual data in commerce; and the division (or lack of) between abstraction in fine art and psychedelic kitsch. Using alternate lyrics as voice-over narration, the piece adopts the form of a popular rock album reinterpreted as a cine-performance.
FINDING HILLYWOOD (USA)
Director: Leah Warshawski
Set amongst the hills of Rwanda, FINDING HILLYWOOD chronicles one man's road to forgiveness, his effort to heal his country, and the realization that we all must one day face our past. FINDING HILLYWOOD is a unique and endearing phenomenon film about the pioneers of Rwanda's film industry.
MERCY MERCY: A PORTRAIT OF A TRUE ADOPTION (DENMARK)
Director: Katrine Riis Kjaer
Easily one of the most important documentaries on inter-country adoption, MERCY MERCY gives a rare look at all participants in the adoption process, including the parents who give their children up. Two loving Ethiopians parents, Sinkenesh and Hussen, have just been diagnosed with HIV and told they have only a year to live. They make the painful decision to give their two youngest children up for adoption, handing them over to a Danish family. In an emotional departure, the Danish family promises to stay in touch and the adoption agency agrees to broker the relationship. What seems like the best decision for the children becomes a series of tragic and painful events for all, unveiling that the well being of children is not always the main priority in the adoption process. Greed, selfishness, unrealistic expectations and skewed cultural perspectives idealizing one way of life over another collide in this powerful story
ROBERT WILLIAMS MR BITCHIN’ (USA)
Directors: Mary C Reese and Nancye Ferguson
ROBERT WILLIAMS MR BITCHIN’ delivers insight into multiple American countercultures by following the great American artist and underground legend Robert Williams. From Hot Rods to Punk and Metal, from LSD to the top of the art world, the influential paintings of Robert Williams defied categorization until they became their own art movement.
SHELDON LEONARD’S WONDERFUL LIFE (USA)
Director: Allan Holzman
Hollywood producer Sheldon Leonard looks back on his legacy, creating some of the most influential sitcoms on television, with some of the biggest television stars of all time. The roster of shows Leonard produced and/or directed include “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Danny Thomas Show,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “I Spy,” “Gomer Pyle, USMC,” and “My Favorite Martian,” most of which still air in syndication decades after their initial run.
AN UNREAL DREAM: THE MICHAEL MORTON STORY (USA)
Director: Al Reinert
In 1986, Michael Morton's wife, Christine, is brutally murdered in front of their only child, and Michael is convicted of the crime. Locked away in Texas prisons for a quarter century, he is forgotten by all but his parents and a small team of dedicated attorneys. In this “unreal dream,” the price of a wrongful conviction goes well beyond one man's loss of freedom.
YOU DON’T NEED FEET TO DANCE (USA)
Director: Alan Govenar
An intimate documentary about a man who overcomes his disability one day at a time, Alan Govenar's new film reveals the extraordinary life of African immigrant Sidiki Conde, who balances his career as a performing artist with the almost insurmountable obstacles of life in New York City.
Dallas VideoFest 26 Sponsors
Matthews Southwest, Alford Media Services, Inc., Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas-Richardson, AMS Pictures, Dallas Film Commission, Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, Dallas Producers Association, Double Tree Hotel – Richardson, la Madeleine, Selig Polyscope Company, Sell.com, SullivanPerkins, Texas Commission on the Arts, Texas Film Commission.
