If Starkville residents saw a movie at Hollywood Premier Cinemas this weekend, they might have noticed a setup in the back of the theater for the ninth annual Magnolia Film Festival.
The film festival was placed in theater eight amidst the standard movie theater plethora of upcoming release posters. Big budget action films and romances with A-list celebrities lined the walls on approach to the film festival, but the films in The Mag, as it’s also called, were not about immense budgets and big stars.
The Mag showcases many films from all over the world, but most of the entries this year were submitted by Southern filmmakers. Several of them, including Matthew Cornwell’s comedy “My Redneck Braincell” and Doug Waterfield’s documentary “Carroll Cloar (Arkansas Portrait),” were about Southern topics.
Not every film in the festival was about the South, though. Twenty-eight films were shown, some of which were international. Andy Nguyen’s narrative “A Silent Night” was shot in Vietnam. Catherine Boyle’s documentary “Carry Me Home” is about a group of Nigerian women suffering from a labor-induced affliction known as VVF.
Most of the films at the festival premiered at other festivals around the country before arriving at The Mag. One such experimental short film, “Soliloquy,” was directed by Shannon Moore and has garnered praise and awards from multiple film festivals. The pretentiousness of this piece outweighs the actual subject, though, as evidenced by many audience members raising their hands in confusion after its screening.
The short film is supposed to be about a woman trying to uncover her true self. Almost every shot has some kind of reflection shown, be it a door handle, shower knob or mirror. These reflections are distorted in a way that does not allow the viewer to see the woman’s face, only the shoulders down. Only one sequence does not have a mirror, but instead shows the woman disassembling and later reassembling a Matryoshka doll. The symbolism of “finding the girl inside” is obvious, forced and does not fit with the overall reflection theme that pervades the short film. Shannon Moore has tried to pour every last bit of symbolism she can find into this six-minute film, but small cups cannot hold much water.
Meshakai Wolf’s documentary, “Gussie,” is a well-shot, compelling piece. Wolf has a series of conversations with his great-grandmother, the titular woman. The talks between the two allow the viewer to run the gamut of emotions. Some are funny, such as when Gussie tries to convince Meshakai to stop studying philosophy and become a businessman. Others are morbid, exemplified by a conversation in a graveyard where Gussie, clocking in at age 102, reveals what she thinks happens after death. At the end of the film when Gussie passes away, the correct amount of sadness is invoked. An overly depressing ending would be too much of a punch in the face considering the inclusion of earlier, more light-hearted scenes.
Mag winners
Best Feature Film: “My Suicidal Sweatheart”
Best Feature Documentary: “Gussie”
Best Short Documentary: “Bodies and Souls”
Best Short Drama: “Winter Sea”
Best Comedy: “Ad Man”
Best Animation: “Command Z”
Best Experimental: “Soliloquy”
Best Student Youth: Andy Nguyen
Best Student: Christie Herring
Elena D. Zastwinick Best Written: “Know What You Mean”
Ron Tibbett Award for Advancement of Cinema: “On Oak Island”