Cucalorus wraps up today, but there are still lots of chances to catch some independent films from up-and-coming directors and actors.
With dozens of selections running throughout the day and night, deciding what to see can be daunting.
If you’re a fan of non-fiction, consider hitting up these documentaries while you still can. Tickets to each film are $10 apiece.
- “Bedevil” (10:45 a.m., Jengo’s Playhouse)–This documentary focuses on Wiccan High Priestess Darla Wynn, once a celebrated spiritual figure in the pagan community. Within two years of moving to a small town, she becomes known as the “Great Falls Witch” and becomes the target of relentless harassment, threats and brutally violent attacks by many of the Christian residents. Unable to leave her home to work a job, or practice her ministry, she was forced to sever all ties to the community, taking up life as a heavily armed hermit. The film begins nearly a decade after Wynn cut ties to the community, and at a point where she is ready to face her fears and take back her life.
- “The Anthropologist” (1 p.m., Thalian Black)–A look at anthropologists Margaret Mead and Susie Crate, as told through stories from their daughters. When people can’t stop the world from changing, how do they change themselves?
- “Above and Below” (3:45 p.m., Jengo’s Playhouse)–From writer Nicolas Steiner comes a look and five people who work out of sight and are creating life on their own terms. The documentary takes viewers into the depths of the flood channels under Sin City, to a reclaimed military bunker in the middle of the dusty, heated Californian nowhere land to beyond the stratosphere where Mars now lives on earth.
- “Mom and Me” (4:30 p.m., Thalian Black)–Oklahoma has recently been voted the manliest state in the country. On the eve of Mother’s Day coming soon, radio show host Joe Cristiano wants to investigate if the manliest men, in the manliest state in the Union, are willing to call in and discuss their mothers on air. What unfolds are narratives that challenge the traditional relationship between a son and his mother in comedic and often heartbreaking ways.
- “Wilmington on Fire” (7 p.m., Jengo’s Playhouse)–Director Chris Everett delves into the 1898 Wilmington Massacre, a bloody attack on the African-American community by a heavily armed white mob with the support of the North Carolina Democratic Party. It is considered one of the only successful examples of a coup d’état in U.S. history, a coup that left countless numbers of African-American citizens dead and exiled from the city. This historical event was the springboard for the white supremacy movement and Jim Crow segregation throughout the state.
- “T-Rex” (7:15 p.m., Cape Fear Community College’s Union Station)–an intimate story about 17-year-old Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, who fought for gold in the 2012 Olympics, the first time women’s boxing was included in the games. From the streets of Flint, Michigan, Shields is undefeated and fierce in and out of the ring, protecting her family at any cost, even when their instability and addictions threaten to derail her dream. As she gets closer to her dream her, relationships with her coach and family become more complicated. Determined to give her family a better, safer life, she believes winning gold could be her only chance.
