—Arshia Simkin, The Underline
North Carolina is known for its rich and varied musical scene, but what about its filmmaking talent? Bryan Reklis, the director of the Carrboro Film Fest, said, “I think that people are surprised to realize that there are short films, feature films being made in North Carolina and in the South that are these really cool, awesome art projects…The same way we have great music from people who are, like, working right next to you in town, we have people making films right around us.”
The 19th Carrboro Film Fest, which takes place from Friday, January 24 to Sunday, January 26 at the Drakeford Library Complex, will showcase this very talent.
The festival will screen 38 independent films; since 2019, the festival
has been dedicated exclusively to Southern films. The films range from feature length to short films—with a wide variety in both genre and topic: “We got documentaries, we’ve got narratives, we’ve got dramas, comedies, horror—kind of anything you might be interested in, we’ve got a showcase for that,” said Reklis. The topics of the films range from issues as diverse as the body (a professional drag queen, a woman trying out BDSM); systemic issues like health care and affordable housing; to the weird and strange (featuring a mysterious cat or a supernatural telephone booth).
Although defining what makes a film uniquely “Southern” is a difficult task, Reklis said: “We celebrate and interrogate Southern culture—so we want to look around to what’s happening in the South and celebrate the things that need celebrating and interrogate the things that are difficult.” For Reklis, the films they feature are a reflection of the preoccupations of the South; he predicted that next year, they will have film submissions that try to process the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. “The way that good art does—it follows what’s happening in the world and kind of sets the tone for how we’re going to talk about things,” Reklis said.
The festival will kick off with a workshop called “Film School 101: Understanding Cinematography” with UNC-Chapel Hill film studies instructor Nicole Berland, who will provide a crash course on the basics of the craft. “I think if you come to that workshop, you’ll be able to get a lot more out of the festival. And also, [it’s] a way to interact with the other patrons and film lovers around you,” Reklis said.
The screenings are arranged into carefully curated film blocks: “Out on A Limb” which grapples with the challenges and triumphs of striving for something
new; “Systems Failing, Community Rising,” which features seven documentary shorts about social justice topics; “Southern Oddities,” which focuses on the strange, unreal and uncanny; and the “Southern Body Fantastic.” In the “Systems Failing” block, there is a documentary short about a mechanic in Alabama who runs a mutual aid garage in which he provides free car repair to help address the public transportation crisis. Another film in the “Systems Failing” block turns the lens hyperlocal: it examines the housing crisis in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
Ultimately, the Carrboro Film Festival showcases the capaciousness of the Southern identity: “I think the South can easily be pigeonholed into simple ideas—and that’s not what we see in our films. We see that the South is big and broad and has tons of cultures…and that being from the South means a lot of different things to a lot of different people,” Reklis said.
Learn more and get tickets at https://www.carrborofilm.org; follow the festival on Instagram @carrborofilm; and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CarrboroFilm/
