By Daniel R. Durrett
@FilmDitz
Returning for its 55th year the USA Film Festival was started by L.M. Kit Carson, Father to our “The World According to ReelNewz” series director, to expand and celebrate the world of cinema here in Dallas.
This year’s festival offerings are as wide as the West Texas plains. A retired rodeo legend risks it all to save his grandson. Facing his painful past and the fears of his family, he enters a high-stakes bull-riding competition as the oldest contestant ever. Along the way, he reconciles old wounds with his estranged daughter and proves that true courage is found in the family fight. Directed by Jon Avnet and co-written by Avnet, Neal McDonough and Derek Presley.
A landmark film from acclaimed director Christopher Nolan, Memento is a mind-bending thriller whose mesmerizing power grows with every viewing. Guy Pearce stars as Leonard, a man with a bizarre disorder: the inability to form new memories. Ever since that fateful night when his wife was murdered, anyone Leonard has met, or anything he has done, simply vanishes from his mind. Who are his friends? Who are his enemies? What is the truth? The Anniversary screening will be accompanied by a Q&A with cast member Stephen Tobolowsky.
Presley also has “Tonic” a film he wrote and directed. In Tonic, Sebastian Poe (Billy Blair), a washed-up piano player, spends his days and nights performing low-paying gigs in Jazz Clubs and dive bars. Throughout the night, Sebastian’s plight plunges him into the dark streets of Deep Ellum where he comes across an odd assortment of characters, The film’s cast also includes Lori Petty, Richard Riehle, Ed Westwick, and Vernon Davis.
William Shockley’s feature debut is “Long Shadows” starring Dermot Mulroney, Jacqueline Bisset, Dominic Monaghan, Blaine Maye, Sarah Cortez, Grainger Hines, David St. Louis, Chris Mulkey, Ronnie Gene Blevins, and Mike Markoff. When a young boy’s mother and father are savagely murdered, he ages out of an orphanage intent on revenge, but the love of a young woman and psychological trauma lead him down a mystifying path.
Many documentaries share the screens with the Features and shorts a few that stand out to me are “The World of Nancy Kwan”, “Hunt for the Oldest DNA”, and “Rebel with a Clause”.
When Nancy Kwan burst onto the scene in the early 1960s, Asian characters in the film were portrayed by white actors in makeup playing “yellowface,” and those minor roles were the stuff of cliché: shopkeepers, maids, prostitutes, servants. When — against all odds — Nancy landed the lead role in the much-anticipated 1960 film The World of Suzie Wong, she became an international superstar and was celebrated for her beauty, grace, authenticity, and spunk: a “Chinese Garbo,” the “Asian Bardot.”
Hunt for the Oldest DNA tells the story of a maverick gene hunter, whose single-minded pursuit of an improbable scientific vision would tease and torment him before ending with a stunning triumph: a lost world recovered from a spoonful of dirt. Two decades ago, Eske Willerslev had a radical idea: Could DNA, the fragile chemical code of life, survive intact in frozen sediment for millennia? Fellow scientists called him crazy.
One fall day in 2018, Ellen Jovin set up a folding table on a Manhattan sidewalk with a homemade sign that said “Grammar Table.” Right away, passersby began excitedly asking questions, telling stories, and filing complaints. What happened next is the stuff of grammar legend or just a “Rebel with a Clause”.
Many other films are screening along with several short films, and many film stars and filmmakers will be in attendance.
Find out more information,.. https://www.usafilmfestival.com/
