Film

Peep these three films at Southern Screen

by Christiaan Mader

In it's fifth year, Southern Screen Film Festival is engaging Lafayette's burgeoning film scene, one conversation at a time.

2014 festival-goers jump for joy
Denny Culbert

All of that homey Netflixing sure is convenient — on demand bathroom breaks, a quart of butter sauce on your popcorn without shame, pantslessness — but so much of what is lost in the home viewing experience is the chance to commiserate en masse. What better time to second guess character choices, to critique the overuse of slow motion and lens flare, to share shock, awe, disapproval and hope for sequels than in the young moments just after credits roll?

That social energy doesn’t exist when you binge watch Friends on your couch, though you may take to Twitter to surrogate it. Southern Screen Film Festival, in its fifth year, aims to salvage that experience by providing a meeting place for group experience and discussion of film in all its varieties: comedic, provocative, artful or banal.

It was the ride home that program coordinator Allison DeHart loved most about her family trips to the movie theater, and she believes this year’s line up, the festival’s largest to date, will give festival-goers plenty to talk about.

“What I loved about watching films growing up is we went as a family,” says DeHart. "We’d share a popcorn and we’d shared a soda, but the magical thing to me was the drive home. It was the conversation that you have about the movie that you just saw and the analysis of what you liked and didn’t like, what you connected with and didn’t connect with. When you watch a film by yourself, in your bed, all you can really do is talk to your partner about it.”

Of the more than 50 documentaries, shorts, and features, this year’s festival has plenty for viewers to discuss. Here’s a list of gab-worthy screenings you won’t be able to shut up about.

EXPERIMENTER (Opening Night Party)

What - Feature Film

When - Nov. 19 at 6 p.m.

Where - LITE Center 537 Cajundome Blvd

How Much - $10 or free with Festival Pass

Get a taste here

Back in the 60s, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram performed a series of tests designed to examine mankind’s proclivity toward following orders. Test subjects were instructed to ask an unseen man a series of questions and to deliver an electric shock for incorrect responses, increasing voltage for each error. The study demonstrated, to the disturbance of an American public reeling from the Holocaust, the moral depravity to which human beings will sink in compliance with authority. The Milgram experiments kept America talking for decades. Hell, the study is a common source of debate in your 100 level psych courses in college.

Experimenter, starring Peter Sarsgaard (Garden State) as Milgram and featuring supporting roles by Jim Gaffigan and Winona Ryder (Beetlejuice), recounts the open wound exposed and poked by the study and reflects an ugliness in humanity still present in our daily news cycle.

Peace Officer

What - Feature Length Documentary

When - Nov. 22 at 11:10 a.m.

Where - Moncus Theater at ACA 101 W. Vermilion Street

How Much - $5 or free with Festival Pass or Day Pass

Get a taste here

Former Sheriff William J. “Dub” Lawrence founded Utah’s first ever SWAT team in the 1970s, only to watch in horror as a later generation of that team shot and killed his son-in-law in a standoff in 2008. Scarred by those events, Lawrence set out to uncover why police departments around the country have come to rely so heavily on the use of lethal force. In collaboration with filmmakers Scott Christopherson and Brad Barber, Lawrence digs into the redacted history of his son-in-law’s death, while exploring how America’s police departments have begun to adopt more aggressive and militaristic suppression tactics. Louisiana has been no stranger to police militarization, and no doubt this provocative documentary of a lawman in search of meaningful answers will give viewers a lot to talk about.

Atchafalaya

What - Short Film

When - Nov. 22 at 6 p.m.

Where - Moncus Theater at ACA 101 W. Vermilion Street

Get a taste here

In the grand tradition of Beasts of the Southern Wild and True Detective, Atchafalaya embraces the eerie topography of Louisiana to create an encounter between man and monster. Written, directed, scored and starring a cadre of Lafayette-raised filmmakers, Atchafalaya follows Henri Judice, a game warden mired in alcoholism and a quicksand marriage, as he investigates a call in the eponymous swamp, hours before a hurricane makes landfall. The short functions as a high-polished demo of sorts for production house Construct Films, as a way of pitching their vision of a full length feature called Animal that picks up where Atchafalaya leaves off. With the ace score by co-writer Nick Lavin, stunning visual effects and immersive world building, nothing about this film says locally produced. Except maybe the swamps and French names.

Southern Screen Film Festival begins Thursday Nov. 19 and ends Sunday Nov. 22 with a wrap party at The Feed and Seed. You can buy festival passes at southernscreen.org or purchase à la carte screening tickets at any festival venue.