Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Oak Cliff Film Festival has been scratched this year — but not entirely. In its place, festival organizers are staging what they call Not the Oak Cliff Film Festival, a virtual event featuring short films on June 4.
Normally, the four-day festival, which began in 2012, takes place at the Texas Theatre and other Oak Cliff venues and restaurants. This year’s free one-night film program will feature four older works by festival alums, followed by an online Zoom discussion co-moderated by director David Lowery (A Ghost Story, The Green Knight).
Audience members can RSVP to the event online by registering with an email address at notthe.oakclifffilmfestival.com. Starting at 7:30 p.m. on the night of the event, they’ll be able to watch the films on the website. An interactive conversation with the filmmakers will be livestreamed later, at 9 p.m.
“We decided it would just make sense to do our program in a different way,” says Barak Epstein, co-founder of the Oak Cliff Film Festival.
Here’s more about the four shorts being screened:
- Dustin Guy Defa’s 2014 short dramedy Person to Person got a lot of press attention after showing at gatherings including South by Southwest in Austin and the Berlin International Film Festival. In the movie, Benny wakes up after a house party to find a young woman sleeping on his floor who refuses to leave. The film inspired Defa’s 2017 full-length movie of the same name, starring Abbi Jacobson (Broad City, BoJack Horseman) and Michael Cera (Superbad, Juno). After watching the short, watch the full-length ensemble piece for free with a Hulu subscription, or rent it from various streaming services.
- The 2015 short-film predecessor to Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe’s dark comedy Greener Grass is a trip. In this surreal story, which spawned a feature-length film in 2019, suburban soccer moms Jill and Lisa seek the approval of their “friends,” no matter the cost. In this weird suburban town, every adult wears braces, couples coordinate outfits and family members become pawns in a competition for acceptance, according to the film’s IMDb page.
- In Sarah Adina Smith’s 2009 short fantasy The Sirens, “two sisters take their terminally ill younger sister to diepeacefully at a mysterious lake,” according to IMDb. Smith also directed the 2017 thriller Buster’s Mal Heart starring Rami Malek (Mr. Robot, Bohemian Rhapsody), which can berented online. Her 2014 horror movie The Midnight Swim won awards at four film festivals including for best breakthrough film at the American Film Institute Fest. Watch it free on IMDb TV or with a Prime subscription.
- Brett Whitcomb and Bradford Thomason’s 2019 documentary short Lost Weekend is about a 1984 weekend spent partying with Van Halen. In this doc, two friends from small-town Pennsylvania win an MTV contest and the chance to hang with the rock band for 48 hours. Festival organizers are working on adding more shorts to the program.
Festival organizers are working on adding more shorts to the program.
June 4 at 8 p.m.; “doors” open at 7:30 p.m. Freewill donations are welcome. Register at notthe.oakclifffilmfestival.com.
