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Athens Own Brings His
Award-winning Film Back to the South
efore debuting it over a year ago as one of only 16 official
selections out of about a thousand entries for the 2006
Sundance Film Festival's Independent Film competition,
writer-director-actor and UGA adjunct professor Hadjii Hand (just
Hadjii to most) and his crew did some test-screenings of his film
Somebodies around town. Since then, despite packed houses and
rave reviews at several festival showings, the film has only once
graced screens in the South that figures so prominently into its
narrative—-at the Sarasota Film Festival, from which Hadjii took
home a Special Jury Prize for Screenwriting. Over the course of the
year, Parisians saw it among the half-dozen films chosen for the
French Festival of American Independent Cinema and less-sawy
Angelinos had a few opportunities for redress if they somehow suc
ceeded in missing Hadjii's face on the cover of their daily guides,
famed critic Roger Ebert's sparkling praise, or the constant swirl
of fawning buzz surrounding the cast and crew whilst wintering in
Park City, UT.
I t's been quite a sterling year for the Brunswick, GA, native and
the film he wrote, starred in and shot in Athens. Somebodies
was one of 10 films picked for the American Directions portion
of the American Film Institute's 20th Anniversary Festival, and a
few months later, Hadjii was
named Best First Time Director
at the Pan-African Film Festival.
Perhaps his "most memorable ex
perience," as he recounts it, was
at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film
Festival, directed by one of the
film's producers (and UGA profes
sor) Nate Kohn, outside Chicago.
Ebert had already thrown a
spotlight onto the film with his
review from Sundance. "What
you feel," he wrote, "watch
ing the film, is that moments
of truth are being set free." He
recalled the air of excitement
when Sundance curator John
Cooper personally introduced
the film before a packed house
in Utah: "This wasn't a routine
introduction. Certain moments
at Sundance we remember," he
said, "because they're the start
of something great."
"To have Roger Ebert ac
knowledge your work," says
Hadjii, "that's a dream for any
filmmaker." Actors John Malkovich and Scott Wilson also had
plenty of good things to say about the film at Ebert's film fest.
"Getting respect from people you admire, seeing that they got
what you were trying to say, it's an amazing thing," says Hadjii.
E ven with such broad approval from the wider film community,
Hadjii admits there's something particularly exciting about
finally, officially bringing the film back home to Georgia this week
at the Atlanta Film Festival. "Almost everybody in the cast is from
Georgia, so we're all going to have a lot of friends and family and
people we knew in college who'll have a chance to come see the
movie. That's a new type of excitement. It makes me a little ner
vous, honestly." Moreover, he sees the movie having a particular
resonance with people who got their credits in the same class
rooms, had their beers in the same bars, and rolled their eyes at
the same kinds of madcap friends as Scottie, his character in the
film, has. "There's been a couple of instances when a person in the
crowd who's lived in Athens has come up to me and said, 'God, you
made me feel so nostalgic.'" Those who'll see the movie in Atlanta,
he says, will "have a whole other perspective. They know the place
and the people. They know the feelings and they're looking for an
accuracy, a realness they can relate to."
T hat realness and the commonality of the experiences the main
characters go through have proven to be one of the film's
greatest strengths. The plot of a young college student coming
to grips with the demise of his tail-chasing, five-drink minimum
days is—like the roommates, gesticulating preachers and loveably
embarrassing family members—instantly familiar. Indeed, what
Ebert found most sincere and affecting was that the film is "about
ordinary young people who are very, very funny because they don't
seem to know they're in a movie, and aren't performing for any
imagined audience, black or white." Other reviewers have hummed
a similar tune, always calling attention to the vivid affinity the
characters engender. Unlike the high-contrast sinners, saints and
superstars so often portrayed in African-American cmema, Hadjii
wanted to make a movie about the "guy in the middle."
"I just wanted to tell a story that was a realistic portrayal of
how things really happen. To tell the truth, I do want to deal with
some issues, but [Somebodies] isn't necessarily some sort of politi
cal statement."
E xecutives at BET clearly agreed with Hadjii's investment in
portraying a less stylized side of African-American life; the
Washington, DC-based network purchased the rights to the film
and invited Hadjii to helm what he insists was his intention all
along, a television series shot primarily in Athens and based on
the lives of his characters with almost the entire original cast
(many of whom have, like the movie itself, been on the ascendant
over the past year) intact. "We wanted to do a TV show from the
beginning. An independent film seemed like a good way to intro
duce the characters. The movie's basically a pilot. Some people
have said that Somebodies was too open-ended, that they didn't
see the arc of the characters, but you're not supposed to. It's an
introduction to where they are at this point in their lives. Scottie's
not the man he's going to become. This is a process he's going
through." Hadjii will be directing and writing for the show, which
is set to being filming soon and will likely premiere before the end
of the year. "One of the biggest surprises out of Sundance was that
people actually seemed interested in me as a director. I was taken
aback. I've always been more of a writer. Writing: that's home.
It's funny," he muses, "after a year or so, a movie does tend to
lose some steam. It's been the opposite for us. We're starting to
engage a very large audience who seems to get the point. We're
still gaining momenti m."
Brandon Waddell
Somebodies screens as part of the 2007 Atlanta Film Festival at the Landmark
Midtown Art Cinema in Atlanta on Saturday, Apr. 21 at 9 p.m. and on Tuesday,
Apr. 24 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $8.50. and are available at www.atlantafilmfes-
tival.com or in person at the Landmark box office. Also at the AFF, check out
Darius Goes West: The Roll of his Life, the award-winning documentary about
Athens teenager Darius Weems, which is screening at Landmark on Friday,
Apr. 20 at 7:15 p.m. and Monday, Apr. 23 at 2:30 p.m. Look for a feature on
Darius Goes West in an upcoming issue of Flagpole.
Hadjii
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