Southern Screen Festival

Southern Screen Festival

Lafayette's annual gathering of storytellers returns this month

By Jordan LaHaye Fontenot

From 2006 to 2010, Julie Bordelon and Jana Godshall’s Acadiana Film Festival brought local creatives together in downtown Lafayette each spring—fostering a vibrant community around the thrill of viewing independent films that couldn’t be seen anywhere else, and around education opportunities for aspiring filmmakers, writers, actors, and more. The two Lafayette locals had been connected by their mutual passion for furthering the film industry in Louisiana, and Acadiana in particular—Bordelon as a location manager and burgeoning producer, and Godshall as a screenwriter. In a 2009 interview, Godshall described the year-round dedication the two of them put into the initiative, “Julie and myself eat, sleep, and drink the film festival. It’s more than a job for us. It’s a mission. It’s something that we want those in the state to take advantage of.”

But in 2010, Godshall—who had been living with one foot in Louisiana and another in California—finally heeded the call of the West Coast. At first, Bordelon felt that the festival, an enormous burden to shoulder alone, had simply run its course. “I was like, ‘well, I’m not gonna do it by myself.’”

It didn’t take long before the prospect of the festival’s absence started to weigh on her, though. “I realized that we really needed this … I’ll just have to do it.” She noted that at the time, Acadiana residents had far fewer opportunities to see great independent films, usually to drive to New Orleans at the very least—and even that selection was limited.

The Southern Screen Festival's official 2022 Poster, created by Makemade.

Courtesy of Southern Screen

Plus, the festival had served an important role for area creatives. Without a central, unified industry, working in film in Louisiana, by nature, can be dissociative—people are working project-by-project, for different production companies and in different sectors, traveling back and forth or working remotely. To have a designated time and place each year to gather as a community, collaborate, share work, and learn was invaluable.

Bordelon started reaching out to her friends throughout the area—people who represented the gamut as far as talent and industry. “Not just film people or even just creatives,” she said. “We were all like, kind of young, coming up in our own—whatever it was we did—our own professions.” Everyone had something to offer, and “we were all having a good time,” she said. They decided to create a new festival altogether, and hosted the inaugural Southern Screen Film Festival in November 2011. That first year, headlining films included Terrence Malick’s critically-acclaimed art film The Tree of Life and Asif Kapadia’s documentary on the Brazilian motor-racing champion Ayrton Senna, along with shorts by several local filmmakers including Alison Bohl, Natalie Kingston, and Benjamin Kutsko.

A little over a decade later, The Southern Screen Festival continues to take place each November—now shorter in name, and expanded in scope. In 2017, as a result of what she calls the “seven-year itch,” Bordelon and her team decided to drop the “Film Festival” qualifier.

Southern Screen had well-earned its reputation as a film festival, but had evolved to incorporate celebrations of creative endeavors in other media, as well. “We started off pretty film heavy, and then we kept going, and started slowly adding in other things—more music, writing. We want to keep it open to just storytelling.”

Live Podcast by Mission to Zyxx at the 2017 Southern Screen Festival.

Courtesy of Southern Screen

While the festival’s impressive slate of independent feature films and shorts— often highlighting local filmmakers and projects set here in Louisiana—remains at its heart, the four-day celebration now includes various live music events, workshops, readings, panels, and more.

In the past, such programming has included Foley expert Michael Lyle demonstrating how to recreate the sound of squelching blood by smashing watermelons on Visqueen, an improv workshop taught by Parks and Recreation’s Alison Becker, and a TV writers’ panel featuring writers from Family Guy, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Saturday Night Live. Bordelon has invited podcast hosts to present live podcasts for the public, and local writers to submit to pitching, short story, and screenwriting competitions. Last year, special sessions included workshops on documentary budgeting and editing for feature films, a lecture on

the biased history of music in advertising, and a special presentation on visual effects by Academy Award-winner Robert Legato—known for his groundbreaking work on major films such as Titanic, Apollo 13, The Lion King, Avatar, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

“It was awesome because he came, and we had a screen set up, and he showed like ‘Here’s what [Titanic] looked like when we filmed it, and then here’s what it looked like when we added this layer of effects,” said Bordelon. “So, you really see like, here’s what it looks like from start to finish. It’s incredible.”

She went on to say that while getting such high-caliber guests as Legato and even, in 2017, the president of Magnolia Pictures Eamonn Boles, is incredible— the festival is also committed to really supporting early-career filmmakers and to avoiding hierarchy in any interactions. “It’s a mixed group of people, and it’s all about keeping everyone very accessible,” she said.

Another aspect of the festival is the opportunity to showcase Acadiana culture to film industry leaders—“We really kind of let them have the Cajun experience,” said Bordelon, allowing creatives from outside of Acadiana to see the possibilities, as far as talent and setting and culture, that the region offers for a wide range of projects.

Performance by Julie Odell at the 2017 Southern Screen Festival.

Courtesy of Southern Screen Festival

“The state is such a hotbed for creativity,” said Bordelon. “Like all of our aunts and uncles play music … it’s like everybody in some way has some sort of creative bone in their body.”

The thing about Louisiana, she said, is that this creative energy—in music and in film—is nurtured so organically. It’s not funneled through an organized industry in the way that places like Nashville or L.A. or New York incubate talent. “We don’t want to take away from that at all,” she said. “It’s what makes this art feel so amazing here. I feel like what this festival is doing is just giving a space for people to go all together at one time and kind of be able to meet each other and talk to each other and get inspired by each other to do more. And it’s also a way to offer people the tools to make their art their business, if they want to.”

Something that has always set Southern Screen apart from other film festivals in the region is its lack of a competition. “When we started, we just kind of decided that we didn’t want it to be that kind of feeling … we wanted it to be a festival for filmmakers to just celebrate their work, without feeling competitive towards each other at all.” Up until last year, films were selected by a panel via an open submission process. 2021 was the first year that Southern Screen presented a totally curated slate of films—a method they’ve replicated this year. Attendees of the 2022 Southern Screen Festival can look forward to screenings of some of this year's most exciting independent films, including: Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb's Butterfly in the Sky—a documentary on the classic PBS children's show Reading Rainbow; Sara Dosa's widely-acclaimed documentary love story on volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, Fire of Love; Ruben Östlund's drama Triangle of Sadness, and Jeremey and Abby Lavoi's much-anticipated documentary on South Louisiana's Cajun music revival, Roots of Fire—which will celebrating its hometown premiere (read more about Roots of Fire on page 45). There will also be a Louisiana Storytellers Panel moderated by Emmy-winning filmmaker, producer, showrunner, and screenwriter Linda Midgett featuring New Orleans-based writer/director Abraham Felix; the award winning reporter and audio documentarian Cheryl Devall, who just recently transplanted to Lafayette from San Fransisco; the director and filmmaker Drake LeBlanc, who helped found the production company Above The Beyond and Télélouisiane. Plus, so, so much more.

Southern Screen will take place November 10–13 in various venues in downtown Lafayette. For a complete schedule of the festival’s sessions, films (which will also be offered virtually!), and parties, visit southernscreen.org.

The audience at a screening at Southern Screen Festival.

Courtesy of Southern Screen