Bentonville Film Festival 2020: Welcome Diversity and our First Featured Short!
Welcome to our coverage of the Bentonville Film Festival!
Created six years ago by Geena Davis, Bentonville Film Festival focuses on “promoting underrepresented voices of diverse storytellers”, and aims to “amplify female, LGBTQ+, people of color, and people with disabilities in entertainment and media.”
When I received an invitation to cover this, I had no hesitation to jump on board because, um, WHAT A MATCH! Over this week we will be featuring shorts, features and documentaries within the copious amount of wonderful work accepted to the festival. Without further ado, let’s begin!
Long Time Listener, First Time Caller
Source: Glass Cat Productions
Our first film is from director/writer Nora Kirkpatrick. Already a veteran in TV and Film, she tells a tale of the meaning of life in only 17 minutes.
Nan (Breeda Wool) is a housewife living in the middle of nowhere. She spends her days cleaning up the house pretending that it serves her. Her husband Mick (Dominic Bogart) works outside the home and always comes home to a meal, ignoring Nan for his nightly quiz show.
Nan has an old radio that she listens to that, one night, tunes into a talk show hosted by “Mister Mars” (Demorge Brawn). Nan likes listening to him answer callers deep questions about life, wants to call in herself, but is too shy at first. When she finally gets the nerve to call, she hangs up.
She tries again and this time is successful. She tells him that she got married, but asks ‘how do you know if it’s real?’ After a battery of questions from Mister Mars, Nan’s paradigm begins it’s shift. Mister Mars tells her that “we are floating on a ball in the middle of space” and that “time is precious”.
It irks her enough to change some things but not enough to do what she knows she has to do: detach from her comfort zone. She tries to change herself to “work on” her relationship, but when she realizes that she simply settled, even that becomes not enough.
When she tries to tune in again, she is unable to find anything but static. In a wave of frustration she smashes the radio to bits. The next day, a package arrives from her deceased mother-in-law Rose (Juliet Mills), that she was very close to. In it, is the identical radio she smashed. Shocked, she turns it on, only to hear the voice of her late mother-in-law on the radio talk show.
Source: Glass Cat Productions
Rose talks to Mister Mars about her regrets in life stating that she wished she had figured out that life wasn’t all about working and making the best pies before her body gave out. She also speaks briefly about her hopes for others figuring that out sooner and how her daughter-in-law was soon to join her. This unsettles Nan to tears until she realizes it was a recording from an earlier time.
Will Nan have the courage to make the great change the Universe is calling her to, before it’s too late for her?
In All Honesty…
I loved this.
It’s such a resonate, easily relatable film for most everyone. Who hasn’t felt stuck at some juncture of their lives? What artistic dreamer hasn’t struggled with trying to fit into society with “real jobs”, only to find themselves on the brink of suicide because those jobs crush their souls?
We come into this world as little, perfect beings of light and love, and almost all of us lose our true selves under the tutelage of the broken adults around us. The journey is to find our way back to that light that is within us all. Some take many more lives than others to learn what they need to learn.
It takes a lot of strength and courage to endure the hardships and trial of a broken society and it’s toxic expectations of us, but if we can awaken enough to realize that what we are stuck in is an illusion, we can then take the necessary steps to get ourselves out of it.
Long Time Listener, First Time Caller is a gentle, yet moving call to action. Like lots of humans would, Nan attempts to hold on to what she has known, but when the Universe calls us to action, there’s no stopping it nor nothing for us to do but surrender to its will.
Whether or not we agree with it, it’s always for our best and will always leads us back to our truth.