The 2003 Ozark Foothills FilmFest schedule is now available on the festival’s website. The second annual festival has expanded to ten days. The festival opens in Fairfield Bay on Friday, March 28, with a presentation of “Gospel, Biscuits & Gravy,” a documentary film with live music, then returns home to Batesville for nine days of screenings, celebrations, and special guests.
The festival will honor Arkansan Lisa Blount, a versatile film and television actress whose career began at the age of seventeen with her role as Billie Jean, a teen driven to despair at the death of James Dean, in the made-in-Arkansas classic, “September 30, 1955.” Blount also appeared in “An Officer and a Gentleman,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness,” “Box of Moonlight,” and in guest roles on a number of television series, including “Picket Fences,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Moonlighting,” and “Magnum P.I.” Most recently, she appeared in an October 2002 episode of “Judging Amy,” “Every Stranger’s Face I See.”
Blount will be present at screenings of “The Accountant” and “An Officer and a Gentleman” at the Melba Theatre on April 5. She will also be the guest of honor at the festival’s gala celebration, set for that evening at Bradley Manor on the campus of Lyon College.
One noteworthy addition to the 2003 festival is Batesville’s Oaks 7 Cinema, a Carmike Theater. Five screenings will take place at the Oaks 7 during the festival, including the Arkansas premiere of the widely-praised South Korean “coming of age” comedy, Take Care of My Cat and a late night screening of the recently restored and re-released David Bowie masterpiece, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
A major element of this year’s festival is “Earth Notes,” an eclectic selection of recent films on the environment and world culture. “Earth Notes”’ films range from The Fast Runner, an epic Inuit drama and the first feature film made by an Inuit director, to John Sayles’ look at a small Florida town coveted by land developers in Sunshine State.
The 2003 Ozark Foothills FilmFest also presents “The Best of Ottawa 2002,” a compilation of eleven prize-winning animated films from North America’s premier animation festival. The films selected for this touring program represent a total of seven countries and every animation style, including both 2D and 3D computer animation.
Festival venues include the Oaks 7, the historic Melba Theatre in downtown Batesville, Old Independence Regional Museum, Independence Hall on the campus of UACCB, and Lyon College.
For a complete schedule of films, visit the Ozark Foothills FilmFest website.
