{"id":50363,"date":"2018-12-05T15:47:32","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T21:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=50363"},"modified":"2018-12-05T15:47:57","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T21:47:57","slug":"the-2019-oxford-film-festival-february-6-10-announces-competition-selections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-2019-oxford-film-festival-february-6-10-announces-competition-selections\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2019 Oxford Film Festival (February 6\u201310) Announces Competition Selections"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Stimpson\u2019s <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/em>Ghost Light<\/span><\/span><\/strong> is the Opening Night Gala selection,\u00a0and Jacqueline Olive\u2019s <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/em>Always in Season<\/span><\/span><\/strong> is the Closing Night choice.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

World Premieres include John Reyer Afamasaga\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Door Ajar \u2013 The M.B. Mayfield Story <\/strong>and\u00a0Jeffrey Dennis\u2019s <\/strong><\/em>Sharde Thomas: Legacy of the Fife<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The 2019 Oxford Film Festival<\/strong> (February 6\u201310), the first\u00a0<\/span>major stop on the year\u2019s regional film festival circuit, has announced John Stimpson<\/strong>\u2019s Ghost Light<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>as the Opening Night Gala selection, with Jacqueline Olive<\/strong>\u2019s Always in Season<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/span>tabbed as the fest\u2019s Closing Night Gala selection immediately following its debut at Sundance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another choice hot off of Sundance will be Jon Strong<\/strong>\u2019s documentary, Long Time Coming<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0<\/span>presented as a Special Screening. Oxford Film Festival favorite Malcolm Ingram<\/strong> will present his\u00a0<\/span>latest documentary, Southern Pride<\/strong><\/em> as a Special Screening as well. Also announced were<\/span>
\nthe competition lineups for this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Recognized as one of the most prominent (as well as popular) cultural sign posts in the state, in\u00a0<\/span>addition to taking a leadership role in terms of the representation of female filmmakers and\u00a0<\/span>LGBTQ+ artists, OFF became a signatory of the 505×2020 Pledge this year joining film festivals<\/span>
\naround the country pledging to reach a 50\/50 parity between male and female filmmakers by the\u00a0<\/span>year 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

OFF also received a grant from the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences recently to\u00a0<\/span>assist in the effort to expand the film festival\u2019s LGBTQ+ programming. Those efforts have seen\u00a0<\/span>gains in the representation on both fronts during this year\u2019s edition. In 2019, 43 percent of the films are\u00a0<\/span>female directed or codirected, which has continued a pronounced upward trend over the past\u00a0<\/span>three years (23 percent in 2017, 37 percent in 2018).\u00a0Similarly, the LGBTQ+\u00a0features and shorts\u00a0<\/span>competitions have both nearly doubled in size following the introduction of those dedicated\u00a0<\/span>competitive categories last year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Oxford Film Festival\u2019s Executive Director, Melanie Addington<\/strong>, said, \u201cEach year, it seems as\u00a0<\/span>though our film festival becomes more entrenched not simply as a way for people to see films\u00a0<\/span>here in Oxford and Mississippi, but also as a key place where Mississippians look forward to\u00a0<\/span>meeting filmmakers from different parts of the country and world, different cultures, and different\u00a0<\/span>lifestyles. As always, we seek to entertain, but beyond that we embrace our cultural and social\u00a0<\/span>responsibility and the mission of being one place and one event that Oxford film fans and<\/span>
\nOxford Film Festival filmmakers can count on to help build those bridges between different\u00a0<\/span>people in the best and most enjoyable way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That dedication to provide that forum for film artists in the land of William Faulkner<\/strong> and put\u00a0<\/span>forward the best of Mississippi to outsiders seems to be working as the Oxford Film Festival had\u00a0<\/span>a record year of submissions (1595) from 62 different countries, representing an increase of<\/span>
\n10 percent over the prior year. Those submissions resulted in a lineup that will include 27 world\u00a0<\/span>premieres (including John Reyer Afamasaga<\/strong>\u2019s Door Ajar – The M.B. Mayfield Story<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/span>and Jeffrey Dennis<\/strong>\u2019s Sharde Thomas: Legacy of the Fife<\/strong><\/em>), and 13 US premieres.\u00a0\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Stimpson\u2019s Ghost Light is the Opening Night Gala selection,\u00a0and Jacqueline Olive\u2019s Always in Season is the Closing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":50364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13391],"tags":[13656,13657,13655,13662,13661,13654,13658,13659,6086,3399,137,13660,85],"class_list":["post-50363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oxford-film-festival","tag-always-in-season","tag-ghost-light","tag-jacqueline-olive","tag-jeffrey-dennis","tag-john-reyer-afamasaga","tag-john-stimpson","tag-jon-strong","tag-long-time-coming","tag-malcolm-ingram","tag-melanie-addington","tag-oxford-film-festival","tag-southern-pride","tag-william-faulkner"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/2018-12-05-Film-Fest.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}