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NEWS OF ATHENS’ CINEMA SCENE
Baby Talk: The only movie I've seen in the
past two weeks—somehow wedged into an
inexplicably blank 90 minutes in my hilarious
home renovation schedule—is the Rikki Lake-
produced documentary The Business of Being
Born, which I watched on our tiny bedroom
TV (the only operable one on the construc
tion site—er, in the house—at the moment)
with the magnificently pregnant Mrs. Film
Notebook. It's a pretty instructive thing to see
if you're about to enter the childbirth system,
especially if you or your more responsible
spouse or partner haven't been busily reading
up on all the crazy things people in hospitals
sometimes want to do to women they're trying
to get babies out of. Hint: they may be hoping
to do it fairly quickly.
So, the film's pro-midwifery stance, and
even its nearly as strident argument for home
birth, are pretty
easy to buy into.
(In fact, the
Film Notebooks
are all about the
midwives—here's
a shout out to the
ladies at ARMC:
Woot! Woot!) But
without giving
too much away, I
might suggest that
depicting a late-
night New York
taxi ride to the
hospital, however
timely and well-
managed, when
complications make
a home birth risky
is not the best way
to reassure those
who might be on
the fence about
going that route.
You gotta admire
director Abby
Epstein's commit
ment to honesty,
though—especially
considering she
was the lady having a baby in a cab. Yeah, go
ahead and see it.
4
A Everything's AthFest: Once again, Cine is
film central for the summer music festival, and
the lineup for this year's AthFest FilmFest is
pretty diverse and fun, including, as usual,
several well-chosen, music-related feature
documentaries, as well as the short film pro
grams Athens Picture Show and TeenScreen—
plus, an encore presentation of the Sprockets
Music + Video Show (which debuted last week
end at the 40 Watt, and whose winners will be
announced at this Thursday's Flagpole Music
Awards Show at the Morton Theatre).
Two of the music docs are about the
Drive-By Truckers: Barr Weissman's 2009 fea
ture The Secret to a Happy Ending and The
Go-Go Boots Episodes, an eight-segment
video companion to the band's latest album
written by frontman Patterson Hood and
directed by Athens filmmaker and photogra
pher Jason Thrasher. The latter will answer
questions from the audience following the
film's Sunday screening.
Athens Burning, director Andrew Haynes'
tribute to the Georgia Theatre and chronicle
of its rebirth (or the beginnings of it, at
least) after being nearly destroyed by fire in
Wes Freed's DVD cover art for The Secret to a Happy
Ending, the Drive-By Truckers doc playing at Cine during
AthFest.
2009, will also be screened with a filmmaker
Q&A session. And Devin DiMattia, director
of Firewall of Sound, will be present for the
Saturday screening of his 2010 film, a look at
the changing face of the independent music
industry in the digital age, featuring inter
views with Julian Koster, Bertis Downs and
many others. A Saturday matinee screening of
Girls Rock!, the 2007 doc about the original
Rock 'n' Roll Camp for girls, will promote and
benefit the third annual Athens version, Girls'
Rock Camp ATH.
Finally, honorary local status needs to be
awarded to Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, the
guyS behind the long-running (seriously!)
and ever-changing Found Footage Festival.
They've brought their lovingly curated
compendia of unfortunate training videos,
unintentionally surreal cable access shows,
creepily erotic
exercise tapes and
various other video
ephemera from
the trash heap of
semi-recent history
to Athens repeat
edly over the past
several years, and
it's always a good
time. They'll be
back for a Saturday
night screening of
the "best" from
their 20 years of
collecting this
stuff, presented
with their inimi
table in-person
commentary.
Get a full sched
ule and detailed
descriptions at
www.athenscine.
com.
Summer Classics
Set: Last time out,
I mentioned the
Summer Classic
Movie Series at
Cine; the films, dates and presenters have now
been finalized. Presenters will introduce their
films on Friday opening nights, and each film
runs a week. The series begins July 8, when
Tony Eubanks will introduce Chocolat. Next,
Patterson Hood presents one of his favorite
films, The Treasure of the Sierra Mad re. I'll
introduce Ernst Lubitsch's final film, Cluny
Brown, followed by Sanni Baungartner with
Josef von Sternberg's first collaboration with
Marlene Dietrich, The Blue Angel. The series
wraps up with two musicals: Jacques Demy's
lovely The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, presented
by Richard Neupert, and the splendid, ubiq
uitous Grease, introduced by Pam Kohn. I'll
remind you of these in the coming weeks; in
the meantime, you can find out more at Cine's
website.
Extra Credit: A few readers and friends
responded to my challenge to think of west
ern films directed by women, with both Will
Stephenson and Derek Hill mentioning Maggie
Greenwald's 1991 The Ballad of Little Jo, which
I've never seen. Will found a few more, too,
but overall the question seems to have been a
surprisingly tough one. Again: who knew?
Dave Marr film@flagpole.com
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