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Carrboro Film Festival shares the diversity of Southern culture

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Christopher Everett, project manager at the Southern Documentary Fund speaks to a sold-out crowd at the Carrboro Film Festival while hosting a panel with director John Rash and Reverend William Kearney on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025. Everet and the Southern Documentary Fund focus on helping storytelling get access to the resources they need to fulfill their visions.

The Carrboro Film Festival took place Friday through Sunday in the Carrboro Century Center. The festival was bookended by two feature films, with over 30 short films in between, aiming to serve Southern filmmakers and interrogate Southern culture.

“In my opinion, people that live in the South and do anything, that culture that they’re creating is Southern culture”, Bryan Reklis, director of the festival, said

The festival opened on Friday night with "A Song For Imogene," the first feature film by Erika Arlee, a UNC graduate and co-founder of the film studio, Honey Head Films. It is an authentic, woman-led film about the hardships of rural life, abuse and generational female relationships.

“There was a sense of pride I had from being from the South, and a knowledge of what the real fabric of the South looks like, and really wanting to do that justice on screen," Arlee said.

The festival was broken into blocks which fit the films into themes. For example, the Saturday block titled "Out on a Limb" honored the risks taken by Southerners to create a better world. It included "The Queen Vs. Texas," which showcased a drag queen's fight against the state of Texas trying to take away freedom of artistic expression in drag.

"Luther," created by UNC alum and lifelong filmmaker Denver Dan, told the story of a member of the Chapel Hill community. Luther, the protagonist, was once a severe alcoholic. After turning his life around, he now lives at the UNC Farm at Penny Lane and makes beautiful wooden birds from scratch, working about eight hours on each one. The filmmaker and subject partnered to depict the resiliency it takes to remain sober long term. 

"Systems Failing, Community Rising" was a group of documentaries, including "The Mutual Aid Garage," a portrait of an Alabama car repair shop that operates on a pay what you can system to counterbalance the costs of car ownership. Another short film in the category, "Cashing Out" is a story of the life insurance policy market that developed during the AIDS crisis which allowed many gay men to receive quick cash to pay medical bills or enjoy the last moments of life.

Saturday night brought "Southern Oddities," a hodgepodge of films. "Hunger Pang," a lighthearted film, depicted a starving zombie woman who develops an unlikely bond with a human baby, while "Benediction," a darker film, showed a woman’s search for solace at a Black baptist church in Mississippi.

Group feelings characterized the film festival–  the murmurs after a really good film and the conversations that started once a film block ended. The silence when the film brings such a new perspective that the audience doesn’t yet know how to react, like during "How to Carry Water," a film about a fat, queer and disabled photographer that liberates marginalized bodies on screen. 

Debbie and Mike Stoll attended the "Southern Body Fantastic" block of the festival, to support their daughter, who was interning at the event. Neither had ever been to a film festival before, but they said it is important to watch movies that offer perspectives outside their everyday lives. 

“The films we are showing now are all films that are exposing people, exposing the audience, to different aspects of the world, different aspects of humanity, different ways of experiencing the world, and you’re gonna leave here with an expanded world view,” Bradley Bethel, director emeritus of the festival, said

The festival closed with "Our Movement Starts Here," a documentary that tells the story of Warren County, NC: a predominantly Black community’s fight against the siting of a toxic landfill in 1982. The film explores how this movement gave rise to the concepts of environmental racism and environmental justice. 

“I’m very much about documentary film as a historian, and I feel like that's how much of the stories we understand are going to be saved and told”, Diane Robertson, a civic engager and event attendee, said

Maybe the most important takeaway from the festival, according to Bethel, is this: democracy relies on getting out and meeting people, being exposed to others who may not think the same as you and being exposed to new perspectives and new truths. Doing so is nothing short of saving democracy. 

Film festivals like this bring stories from a broad array of southern niches, which are entertaining, intellectually and socially challenging. These films exemplify and interrogate southern culture, and hope that the audience will too.

@dthlifestyle | lifestyle@dailytarheel.com

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