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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 . SPECIAL SCREENING WEDNESDAY 4/18 OPENING fRIDAY: 4/20 -4/26 . • 7 MIDNITE FRI/SAT 4/20 • 21 COMING SOON 4/26 MORE INFORMATION ♦ SCREENING TIMES @ I www aTHENSCINE COM J 706 353 3343 234 W. HANCOCK AVENUfe DOWNTOWN ATHENS BARCAFECINEMA ATHENS ENJOY A DIFFERENT MOVIE DOWNTOWN PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT (AUSTRALIA J??4.35mm. 104mm. Dir: Stephan Eliott ] BENEFIT FOR BOYBUTANTE AIDS FOUNDATION CLIMATES f Turkey/Franc* 2006, 35mm, 101 min. Dir: Nuri Bilg* Csylan ] SHORTBUS I USA 2006, 35mm, 101 min, Dir: John Cameron MHchell 1 EARTHDANCE ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL SHORTS PROGRAM Presented in association with the UGA Institute of Ecology Part of ttie Athens 2007 GreenFest Celebration IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS [ USA 2006, 35mm, 94min ] DIRECTOR JAMES LONGIEY WILL BE IN ATTENDANCE THURSDAY 4/19 TO PRESENT L DISCUSS HIS FILM LITTLE CHILDREN (USA 2006, 35mm, 130min. Dir. Todd Reid ] u rum JEWELRY • ART Sp»aiA,0tlncg Bflkvds in* ^oid § PlflUt'vuwL VOTED ATHENS' BEST JEWELER 125 E. CLAYTON ST. • DOWNTOWN 706^546-8826 NEWS & FEATURES I ARTS & EVENTS I MOVIES I MUSIC I COMICS & ADVICE I CLASSIFIEDS APRIL 18, 2007 - FLAGPOLE.COM 17