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PAUL:

In Hollywood, they say lights, camera, action. But in Jackson, we say lights, camera, community. Hey, it's Paul Wolf with a front-row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call our podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places and events that make the City With Soul shine. On today's show, we're talking with Ryan Parker, the executive director of the Mississippi Film Society, bringing Hollywood to Mississippi's capital city through special screenings and an upcoming film festival, and bringing a passion for creating shared experiences to our local movie screens.

When you came back to Mississippi almost three years ago now, I mean, three years ago, this, this month, you had this vision, this dream to bring Hollywood to Mississippi's capital city. And you have more than done that over the past year or so now, as you've been doing screenings at the Capri and at theaters all across the Metro area, working with big budget studios and Hollywood film producers to get the movies in, in front of us here in Jackson. First of all, thank you for what you do.

RYAN:

Man. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure. And I couldn't do it without folks like yourself and great partners across the community. The City With Soul has been a great partner and I don't know, man, it's just a pleasure to do it. We can do it. Why not? Let's have fun.

PAUL:

For sure.

You came back here after growing up in Brookhaven, Mississippi, going to Mississippi College. You've been away for a while, getting degrees and experience and brought a film PR company back with you. Tell folks who may not understand what a film PR guy does and how that works into you bringing all these films to us.

RYAN:

Yeah. I wear a lot of hats in the film world. And one of those is working for a PR firm that specializes in promoting films to civic, educational, and faith-based communities. Really, that day-to-day work is providing films to press people for review consideration or interview consideration. And then on the interview side, we often spend a lot of time where we set up interviews with filmmakers, actors, writers, with press people to conduct interviews around a film's release, often theatrical release, or sometimes streaming on Netflix or Apple or Amazon. And so what that tends to do is give folks like myself, folks that work in PR, it's just access to distributors, access to films that we might not have otherwise. And on the PR side, one of the other things that we do, every studio, every streamer, more often than not, when they release a film, are gonna conduct a series of word-of-mouth screenings in kind of the top 40 markets across the country. Well, it's no surprise Jackson is not one of those markets. Film events like that, often happen frequently in Chicago, Boston, New York, just to name a few places. Just doesn't happen in Jackson because there's nobody here that is doing that work. And so when I came back, I thought, can I leverage some of those relationships to bring events like that to the Jackson Metro area? Thankfully, because of the generosity of some of these stringers and distributors and also through partnerships here on the ground, thinking through places like the Capri, The Legacy Theaters in Flowood we’re able to pull off some of those events.

PAUL:

TL;DR, you bring movies to audiences who otherwise would never have a chance to see them in advance of their wide theatrical release. Fair to say?

RYAN:

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And also on top of that too, is recognizing that the kind of moment that we're in, in terms of the film industry, more films are being made now than ever before. And what that means for lot of independent producers is it's harder for them to kind of platform their film and to get in front of audience. So independent filmmakers are super excited for and always on the lookout for opportunities to screen their film in front of a theatrical audience. You know, I just told somebody earlier, we all know that it's easier. It requires less effort for us to stay at home and stream a film on Netflix, for example, but it does not measure up to watching that same film with an audience at a theater. I think it's cool to offer early access to upcoming films for free, by the way, that you can screen in a theatrical setting or to screen films from independent producers that aren't going to get a theatrical release. There's not going to because it's the industry. It doesn't mean they're a bad film. In fact, sometimes they're really great films, but just the way the industry functions now, it's hard for young or independent filmmakers to get their films out there.

PAUL:

I love a great movie theater experience. The lights go down, the temperature's a little cool maybe, and you get to escape to somewhere else for just a little while.

RYAN:

Yeah. And hopefully you've turned your phone off or you've put it on silent and you're not staring at it like you would at home. We all do that. I think it's also important. Like those kinds of communal events used to happen all the time and they happen less and less now. And then we wonder why we're, we live in kind of such a divisive culture. we're, losing shared experiences.

PAUL:

Yeah. A lot of your films delve into that subject too, about connecting people, you know, whether they're faith-based or simply just inspirational films. We get to see a different side of life on the screen.

RYAN:

Yeah. Everybody has their opinions on Hollywood, right? And I think a lot of those are a lot of times misguided, if you will, that Hollywood is kind of the straw man for like the big bad. I'm not really interested in bringing films to the community that are polemical or propagandistic or divisive. First off, I hope people just enjoy the film as a film. And if there's opportunity for conversation about culture and life and you know, quote unquote, bigger themes, then I want a film that kind of creates space for that. On the PR work that we do, we don't like working on those kinds of films either. Like it's just, it's, hard to sell those and we want to try to cast a wide net, have a big tent, build a big table. You know, and I think film can do that. And so I want to make sure that for the most part, what we're screening is entertaining. It's not gratuitous. it doesn't mean that they're easy films. mean, we watched “Sing Sing” for example, last year, that's a challenging film. But its static value is high. think it creates space for conversation. So yeah, that's important for me.

PAUL:

And that's been one of my favorite thing about a lot of your screenings is that afterwards you'll have a panel of local experts or thought leaders on the film subject so that we can learn more and hear more. And maybe it challenges us to think more too.

RYAN:

We work on a lot of films where we have told people like, you got to do something after the screening because it's either a “now what” or a “so what.” And I think I want to lean into that “now what,” is, we talk more about the real world implications of this story or how this story intersects with the lives of Mississippians and their lived experiences? And I'll tell you the Mississippi Humanities Council has been indispensable in that work and thinking through like, how do we create these conversations? Who are we bringing to the table? We don't have the same voice across the board, right? mean, Mississippi is diverse and how do we lean into some of that? Diversity to talk about different worldviews and different points of view. It looked, not every film needs that. You know, we screen transformers. Sometimes it's just fun to provide something for families to do, right? For, for free, but where those opportunities are available, I want to make sure that we do that with integrity and kind of like openness.

PAUL:

Let's switch gears a little bit. Now, you've got some thought-provoking films still to come this year and a very special event coming up the weekend of April 10th through 13th at the Capri in Fondren. It's the Stranger Than Fiction Film Festival. A little something for everyone, a very affordable ticket price. Just briefly, can you hit on the movies that we'll see at Stranger Than Fiction?

RYAN:

Thanks for highlighting this. It's always been a goal of mine through the film society to create a space where we can come together and kick back and watch fun films. There are great festivals across the state, even here in Jackson. The folks at JXN Film Festival are doing great work and especially, especially empowering and educating people on like kind of building careers in the industry. think there's always room for more events like this, you know, the more the merrier. And so for me, it was like, can we find fun films that may not get a theatrical release here, or could we lean on some preview screenings? And I think we've got a mix of that. So I think probably one of my favorite films of the year is going to be our opening night film called “Secret Mall Apartment” that is based on true stories, a documentary, it feels like a narrative film. A documentary about a group of friends who built a secret apartment in a mall in the early 2000s and lived in it for four years. I think this film is so good, it's worth the price of admission for the whole weekend. So I'm super excited about that. I had the opportunity yesterday to interview the filmmaker. We'll play that conversation immediately after the screening.

Friday night, “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted.” Another documentary, it's bananas, wild, kooky, crazy film about a famous musician who's recorded with the likes of Eric Clapton and John Prine, but never kind of broke through as a solo artist. And a couple of the screenings we're doing before the feature film, we're going to show a short film. Before Swamp Dogg gets his pool painted, we're going to screen a short. This is about a 14-minute short. We'll roll right into the feature called “Country Punk Black”. And it's a documentary short from Oxford filmmaker, Christopher Fisher about Jackson, Mississippi artist, musician, Twurt Chamberlain. We'll do a Q and a with Christopher and hopefully tort after the screening towards, as many of you know, is going to be performing at Cathead Jam the summer. So I think there's some great synergy there. So that's an exciting opportunity for a Jackson story. And then to roll right into a kind of more nationally known artists, I think after Swamp Dog Gets His Pool Painted, we're going to move over to the Fondren Yard for an after party, which will feature DJ Young Vnom live scoring a silent black and white film.

And then Saturday morning, we're going to do one of these preview screenings of a film that's going to come out later called “The Legend of Ochi,” which based on his trailer, it feels like ET meets the Goonies. We're going to kick that off with free coffee from Northshore Coffee and a breakfast cereal buffet. After that, we'll have a bit of a break. One o'clock is going to be a intro to the film industry workshop. We're going to partner with the film office, the Mississippi Film Office, to host a workshop that's led by Sarah Hennigan from Ole Miss, who's the chair of the film production department there. So that'll be a great afternoon, couple hours workshop there. And then we're gonna have what I think is probably the most difficult film. So if folks aren't scared of big conversations, “23 Mile” is a documentary about kind of where we are as a society and kind of our political divisions and our cultural divisions. But it's told in a way that I think is gonna upset some of our biases.

You're going to watch this film and you're going to see people and you're going to think, I know what they're going to say or what they think. And then they say the complete opposite thing. And so we're going to, in conversation with the humanities council, we're going to build out a panel discussion around that film. That'll be Saturday afternoon and then Saturday night, get right back into the fun. We're going to watch “Kim's Video,” which is a documentary about this really cool VHS rental store in New York back in the day that disappeared. These filmmakers set out on a search to find it and where it went. And then we're going to wrap that up with movie trivia at Fondren Yard. And that'll be around eight o'clock, eight 15 on that Saturday night.

And then oh, Sunday, we got to hit Sunday real quick. I'm really excited and thankful for, grateful to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, the Mississippi Humanities Council, and the Mississippi Film Office, because our Sunday afternoon screening at 1:30 is part of the Sunday Screening series that normally takes place at the Civil Rights Museum. And they've been gracious enough to let us move that over to The Capri for a special screening of “Eudora” directed by Jackson Metro area native Anthony Thaxton. And we're going to have a short film before that one called “Jason Bouldin: Corporeal Nature,” which is an Ole Miss film student’s work about an Oxford artist that we're going to screen that right before. And we're going to have a conversation with those filmmakers after. And then also we're going to lean into another Jackson resident on Sunday afternoon at four. We're going to screen “Cajita,” which is a narrative film that is written by Belhaven Chair and Professor of Film Production, Rick Negrone, wrote that film. So we're going to screen that and have a conversation with him after. And then you've probably seen it online, but you'll hear it here first. I'm so excited. We're going to close the festival out with a film that I saw last August called “Lady Parts,” which is going to potentially be a little controversial for some people, but I can promise you it is one of the funniest, sweetest films you'll ever see about women's health based on a true story. And I'm so excited that we're going to have the writer of that film, Bonnie Gross here to talk about it. It's based on her own experiences in her life. And it is, it really carries through that stranger than fiction theme because you can't make it up. It's a wild story. It's absolutely hilarious, but really, really sweet and thoughtful. And I think a lot of audiences are going to enjoy it.

PAUL:

April 10th through 13th at the Capri Theatere in Fondren, the Stranger Than Fiction Film Festival and, wow, it's just going to be a great weekend. We're going to have a link in our show notes so you can get tickets. You can get more information. You can watch the trailers for the films. I can't wait. I know Ryan, you're excited and gosh, thanks for doing this. Thanks for, for bringing film to Mississippi, for bringing us opportunities to be more enlightened, more engaged, and hopefully more involved.

RYAN:

Look, it's a real privilege to do this work and it's a lot of fun. You know, we joke all the time that we're not. We're not saving lives here. We're helping people play dress up. So we kind of keep the eye on the prize and it's a lot of fun. so I'm, but I'm privileged and thankful for the opportunity. I've talked about some of the partners we've had along the way, but really when I think about this event, you know, you have to add folks like Visit Mississippi, the City With Soul Volunteer Mississippi. And really the Film Society, period, not just this event, but the Film Society period wouldn't exist without the Community Foundation for Mississippi because they're not only, they’re our fiscal sponsor, but their leadership and helping point me in directions for grant and support that make events like this possible, we wouldn't exist without them first and foremost. And then we just wouldn't exist without all those other partners. So it's, I'm super grateful. Filmmaking is a collaborative effort. Nobody makes a film alone and the film society doesn't exist without collaborations like that.

PAUL:

That's a wrap for this episode of Soul Sessions with Ryan Parker. If you're excited about the upcoming Stranger Than Fiction Film Festival happening April 10th through 13th at the Capri in Fondren, mark your calendars now and get your tickets. And maybe consider a donation to the Mississippi Film Society's fund at the Community Foundation for Mississippi? Links to all of this can be found in our show notes at visitjackon.com/soulsessions. This podcast is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization for Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Ricky Thigpen, and I'm our managing editor. Do you want to know more about all the great things going on in Jackson and our work to help promote the city? You can find that at visitjackon.com.

I'm Paul Wolf and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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