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January 26, 2006
The Ruthie's On Fire
Folks packed it in at the Hunter for the premiere of Ruthie.
According to the memories of many of those in the audience, last Thursday night’s Hunter Museum premiere of Brian Cagle’s Ruthie might have been the first-ever time a local filmmaker’s work has drawn a standing-room-only crowd. It was also the first time anybody remembered an overflow crowd forcing a second showing of a local film. This is great news for a fledgling local film scene that has made serious strides in the last two years.
In addition to its annual independent film series at The Bijou, The Arts and Education Council is continuing its summer series at the Hunter, this time with the aid of the UTC folks who organized the Firefly Film Fest at Club Fathom in the fall of 2004. The collaboration has since been dubbed Back Row, and will feature at least six events, including a filmmaking workshop for teens starting this week. Caffeine on MLK has started showing films on Sunday nights, local rockers the Sha-Pels are working on a trilogy of horror movie-tinged music videos, and Oak Street Films’ Jarrod Whaley is working on a documentary and showing this film Telesthesia at the Pilot Light in Knoxville on Friday night. The city’s Arts, Culture and Education Department is moving forward with a film commission with hopes of luring filmmakers to shoot (and spend money) here, there is now a Web site devoted to local film (www.ChattanoogaFilm.com) and several other local filmmakers are furiously completing projects they hope to show here and elsewhere later in the year.
Cagle directed, shot and edited the 25-minute Ruthie as his thesis film for Northwestern’s M.F.A. program, getting contributions from a wide array of local cast, crew and sponsors. The film, shot in a local subdivision, deals with love, longing and, well, arson, and features the unexpected yet gorgeous torching of a van by a pair of young pyros—a scene that drew laughs from the Hunter crowd and awe from other filmmakers in attendance. In the entertaining post-premiere Q&A session, Cagle explained that the van had been donated, but joked that he wasn’t sure if the donor knew it had been burned.
Asked if people could buy a copy of the movie, Cagle replied, “No,” as the festivals he’s sending it to for consideration frown upon accepting films that “could be seen anywhere.”
Responses from the cast, crew and director revealed a humble, committed team atmosphere. The crowd offered both much praise and many questions, genuinely enjoying the evening and encouraging more like it. The lack of pretension evident this night is sorely needed around here, if you ask us.
(This article was reprinted from The Pulse.)
News | By colrus | 10:49 PM
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