AUGUST 27, 2022
COOKEVILLE, TN
10 AM Open
10:15AM Leftover Feelings: A Studio B Revival
11:45 AM Sisters: The First Ladies of Bluegrass
12:00 PM Talk Back w/Guests Logan Sebert & Joseph Spence
12:30 PM Break
1:20 PM Talk Back w/Guest Mark Webb & David Crews
1:50 PM Bury Me at Taylor Hollow
2:45 PM Talk Back w/Orion Pahl & John Christian
3:20 PM Carthage House of Beauty
4:50 PM Jasper Mall guest TBD
5:20 PM Close
Two Nashville music icons, John Hiatt and Jerry Douglas, combine their talents during the pandemic to record the album “Leftover Feelings” in Elvis’s favorite studio, RCA’s fabled Studio B. Walking in the footsteps of Elvis, Dolly, and Waylon through the house that Chet Atkins built, John and Jerry attempt to revive and capture the magical sounds of this iconic room where so many early hit songs were made. They set the bar high for their first-ever collaboration, chasing a special album that exceeds their own high expectations after two lifetimes full of musical accomplishment.
Featuring commentary along the journey from their friends Lyle Lovett, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Molly Tuttle, and Jeff Hanna, this film spotlights the legacy of Music City’s most significant studio through the lens of two godfathers of Americana music.
Join us in welcoming Co-Director Lagan Sebert for an audience talk-back following this film!
Was selected out of 1700 films submitted to RiverRun International Film Festival and aired at the 2022 Festival this film is now airing at the WCTE PBS Downtown Film Festival in Cookeville.
Sisters is a music documentary short that follows the all-female, bluegrass super group The First Ladies of Bluegrass to the 46th annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival. They are joined on this weekend by Grammy winner Brandi Carlile, Jewel and Bonnie Payne.
Each lady in the group are the first females to be honored with the IBMA award for instrumentalist of the year on their particular instrument. Banjo, mandolin, fiddle, bass, guitar. A distinction within the group that took 27 years to be achieved.
Join us after the film for an audience talk-back with Joseph T. Spence–a writer, director and cinematographer based in Nashville, Tennessee. A former staff writer for Sony Music Publishing and an original member and co-founder of the power-pop trio The Semantics – Geffen Records. Spence began directing music videos and short films in the early 2000s. In 2014 he wrote and directed his first independent feature Sing The Blues which received an Emmy nomination and multiple festival awards. His 2nd feature The Pea Shooter 2017 toured the festival circuit and won multiple awards. His 3rd film is the short music documentary Sisters: The First Ladies of Bluegrass.
A documentary of the 1899 undefeated Sewanee team.
The documentary is the compelling, historically accurate, insightful, riveting documentary film on the team, the season, and the rare convergence of talent, personalities, and drive that made Sewanee’s 1899 season truly legendary.
Join us in welcoming special guests, Mark Webb and David Crews for a special audience talk-back following this film.
Just outside Nashville, a mortician creates the state’s first natural burial ground.
After spending 15 years working in the conventional funeral industry, a passionate mortician is paving uncharted territory to help create the first natural burial ground of its kind in Tennessee. Bury Me at Taylor Hollow recounts his personal journey from mortuary traditionalist to global-thinking environmentalist, as he seeks a better place for his community to lay to rest.
Premiere in season 7 of PBS’s popular Reel South series tells the story of a mortician who creates the state’s first natural burial ground.
Award Winning filmmaker Orion Pahl and John Christianson the subject in the film
Special Guests: Stay with us after the film to speak with Director and Award-Winning Filmmaker Orion Pahl, & subject of the film John Christian in an audience talk-back!
Orion Pahl is a filmmaker, artist, and poet who is drawn to everyday human stories. He is currently working on film projects focused on grief and loss, the environment, borders, family relationships, and artists.
He graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a BA degree in documentary film and interned at Kartemquin Films (Hoop Dreams, Minding the Gap). While there, he worked on important films like The Interrupters and American Arab. He is an award winning filmmaker who has been producing media locally and internationally for the past 10 years.He made Bury Me at Taylor Hollow with his wife, Rebekah while living in Nashville, TN. They now live in Los Angeles, CA.
Licensed as a funeral director and embalmer, certified end-of-life doula, funeral celebrant, and a home funeral guide, John Christian currently serves as the Executive Director of Larkspur Conservation. He has led Larkspur’s creation of Tennessee’s first conservation burial ground, a nature preserve for natural burial. John Christian is a member of the Tennessee Funeral Directors Association, the National Home Funeral Alliance and a founding member of Conservation Burial Alliance. He received his formal education from John A. Gupton College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he earned a degree in mortuary science and funeral arts. Further studies include home funeral guide training through Final Passages, Sebastopol, CA and end-of-life doula certification through the Conscious Dying Institute, Boulder, CO. Since his professional career began in 1998, he has worked in small town settings and in large metropolitan funeral homes and cemeteries. In the fall of 2012, John Christian embarked on a cross-country journey by train, speaking with Americans about their wishes with regards to death, burial, and commemoration. On this trip he learned what options were most important to Americans at the end-of-life and pledged to create a mindful end-of-life option for ALL. Today, he holds a deep respect for mother nature and works to educate and empower the public by bridging environmental advocacy and end-of-life care.
Styles change, but one generation of women still get their hair done once a week. This poetic documentary portrait is a day in the life of a beauty shop in Carthage, Tennessee, population 2,466.
Premiered at the 2021 Nashville Film Festival and won Best Tennessee Short
This lovely film is a slice of life documentary about a beauty shop in the rural town of Carthage, TN. The salon is an island unto itself, where the hairdressers keep their small group of elderly customers happy and safe. It’s an insular world of hair curlers, hairspray, and tinny early country music television shows that hark back to a bygone era, when neighbors knew and cared about each other. We are taken into this world as if we’re sitting in one of the salon chairs, listening in on everything from casual conversations about favorite soap operas to personal reflections on scripture. The unpretentious and restrained approach by the filmmakers creates an immersive experience – they stay out of the way and let these affectionate people be themselves without comment or prejudice. Through beautiful cinematography and compassionate direction, this ordinary day in the life of a Tennessee beauty salon becomes a contemplation on kindness and being human.
After the film, join us for a livestream talk-back with special guest, Allison Inman. Subjects fo the film, Beverly Goad and Teresa Allen will be in attendance.
A year in the life of a dying shopping mall, its patrons, and its tenants. With nostalgia for retro shopping malls at an all-time high, the film peels back the curtain to show the reality of the American mall and the individuals at the center of a rapidly changing culture.
“Jasper Mall” chronicles a year in the life of a dying shopping mall, its patrons, and its tenants. There’s no denying retro malls are having a moment. Between the setting of the new season of “Stranger Things” and the countless videos of dead mall tours gathering millions of plays on YouTube, the mystique of the “mall” is everywhere.
“Jasper Mall” peels back the curtain on this nostalgic reflection to show the reality of the American mall, complete with shuttering stores, elderly mall-walkers, an optimistic mall manager, a series of community events designed to increase foot traffic, muzak echoing through empty corridors, and the constant threat of impending closure that hovers over so many malls in the 21st century. It’s a community on the brink of disappearance, and yet around every corner, there exists a strange beauty and a new kind of Americana that reflects the unique, touching, and frequently hilarious realities of the shopping mall in the internet age.
