Southern Fried Saturdays, a short documentary about fun and interesting things for teens to do in and around Batesville on Saturdays, premiered on Monday at the regular meeting of the Batesville Rotary Club at Josie’s Steakhouse. The film is the creation of three area high school students: Rachel Braim of Marcella, Whitney Hembry of Newark, and Hannah McGough of Floral. The students made the film in an academic-year community documentary workshop for Lyon College APPLE students created and sponsored by the T Tauri Film Festival.
Southern Fried Saturdays was made from October 2007 to April of this year. The students met on nine Saturdays spread over that period with coach and advisor Nicki Newburger and advisor Bob Pest, T Tauri co-founder and president. Newburger is a faculty member in the summer T Tauri Movie Camp and teaches in Memphis and West Memphis schools as part of the Opera Memphis Music Video Production program. Students wrote, shot, appear in, and narrate the film; they also assisted in the editing process, selected the music, and chose the title. Southern Fried Saturdays features visits to the White River, Batesville Area Arts Council Gallery, Paper Chase Bookstore, Old Independence Regional Museum, Spinning Wheel Antiques, Desha produce stand, Wendy’s Old Fashioned Soda Fountain and Flea Market in Concord, and Janine Winter’s Café.
The academic-year workshop was developed by the T Tauri Film Festival in cooperation with the APPLE program and with the support of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. Pest sees two very distinct goals for the project, “On one hand, we are extremely committed to our partnership with APPLE and plan to maintain this program as long as there is student interest. On the other hand, we are learning what it will take to create a year-round program open to any interested student. That step is probably a few years away; we’re an organization that has succeeded by taking deliberate steps after considerable research and planning. But this wonderful film is a very auspicious beginning.” A new group of APPLE students will begin work on a second community documentary project in October.
Southern Fried Saturdays will be shown to the entire APPLE student body on June 12 and at the regular meeting of the Batesville Kiwanis Club on June 13. It will have its public premiere at UACCB on Saturday, July 26, as part of the T Tauri Film Festival Awards Ceremony and Finale.
It will be posted for online viewing at the Batesville Area Chamber of Commerce’s MySpace page and on the Ozark Gateway Tourism Council website (www.ozarkgateway.com. The film will also be submitted to a number of youth film festivals.
The 2008 T Tauri Film Festival and Movie Camp takes place July 14-16 in Batesville, with workshops at UACCB and at the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Youth Ranch. Workshops are offered in Animation (The Digital Flipbook), Camcorder Fundamentals, Community Documentary Filmmaking, Acting on Camera, and Script to Screen Basics.
The T Tauri Film Festival is a division of Ozark Foothills FilmFest, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational corporation founded in 2001 and headquartered in Locust Grove. Information is available at www.ttauri.org or 870-251-1189.
