The Maryland Film Festival returns to the Parkway Theatre starting Wednesday, November 5, with a lineup of 30 feature films, an opening night shorts program, and special screenings galore.
Since it began 26 years ago at the then-newly renovated Charles Theatre, the Maryland Film Festival has drawn directors like Barry Jenkins and even stars like Harry Belafonte to screenings around Station North.
Although the long-running event has been through many iterations over the years (and will be returning to the spring next year to encourage more participation from student filmmakers), it remains an important engine of Baltimore’s often-overlooked film scene.
This year, the five-day festival offers up a sparkling array of narrative features and documentaries, with a special emphasis on work from up-and-coming Black, queer, and female filmmakers.
Below are three of our favorites from this year’s festival, a trio of films with roots in the past that also look toward the future.
“Sun Ra: Do the Impossible”
Directed by Christine Turner
Director/producer Christine Turner’s latest documentary examines the life and career of Sun Ra, high priest of the Sun Ra Arkestra, cosmic jazz visionary, and the godfather of afrofuturism. In his lifetime, Ra released over 100 albums that span genres like ragtime and swing to bebop and experimental jazz fusion.
Turner, who was nominated for an Academy Award last year for the New Yorker documentary “The Barber of Little Rock,” remixes archival footage, contemporary interviews, and even scenes from Ra’s 1974 feature film “Space is the Place” to tell the story of an artist who shrugged off society’s expectations and preconceptions of him at every turn.
As a result, “Do the Impossible” mostly lets Sun Ra’s words and music explain how a man named Herman Poole Blount from Birmingham, Alabama, was reborn as an ever-evolving interstellar prophet who permanently altered our collective understanding of what jazz (and music) could be.
Perhaps it’s because they’re rare, but the documentary’s best moments are when Turner zeroes in on the flesh-and-blood human being behind Ra’s larger-than-life persona. When a former band member recalls Sun Ra having “a mother’s unconditional love” for the Arkestra, it’s contrasted minutes later with another member remembering that he had to beg Ra to be paid after a gig. When we watch Sun Ra march around the Great Sphinx of Giza during a visit to Egypt in 1971, the triumphant glee he feels radiates off him, out of the film, and through the screen.
“Do the Impossible” lays out all the puzzle pieces of an opaque artist’s complex life and tasks the viewer with finding their own answers to the question: “Who was Sun Ra?”
“Sun Ra: Do the Impossible” screens Saturday, November 8 at 5 p.m. with an introduction from Baltimore-based artist and curator Elissa Blount Moorhead. “Do the Impossible” editor Steven Golliday will be in attendance.
“Taste the Revolution”
Directed by Daniel Klein
“Taste the Revolution,” an early 2000s mockumentary about a pair of soda company-sponsored filmmakers attempting to document a populist political movement’s doomed “world summit” at an upstate New York farmhouse, was supposed to be the big screen debut of Mahershala Ali. That did not happen, however, and Ali would not make the jump from network television until David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” in 2008. But the making of “Taste the Revolution” is an interesting story in and of itself.
Filmed in 2001 and finally finished last year, the political comedy was mothballed by its creators after the September 11 terror attacks, presumably because of a subplot about an attempted bombing.
Reminiscent of real documentaries like “Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99” and “Heavy Metal Parking Lot,” Klein’s faux documentary moves briskly thanks to a colorful cast of characters and some Gen X-skewering humor (most of the would-be revolutionaries are too busy getting stoned, playing hacky sack, or peeing everywhere to read manifestos or organize).
But what elevates “Taste the Revolution” from an amusing post-Y2K comedy is Ali’s turn as tormented activist leader Mac Laslow. As a cinematic time capsule, it’s fascinating and a little awe-inspiring to see the raw talent on display from the future two-time Academy Award winner.
As the revolution unravels, Ali revels in the tension between Mac, the guy you genuinely believe could change the world, and Mac, the power-tripping egomaniac who leads an ill-advised protest of a new minimall. It’s an impressively nuanced performance and indicative of the heights the future “Moonlight” star would soar to many years later.
“Taste the Revolution” screens Friday, November 7 at 7:15 p.m.
“Multiple Maniacs”
Directed by John Waters
One of just a few classics screening at this year’s festival, “Multiple Maniacs” is still as wild, transgressive, and gleefully trashy as it was when it was sicced on unsuspecting audiences 55 years ago.
Waters’ second feature-length film is a mostly plotless caper where a criminal queen bee (drag icon Divine) and her gang of misfits rob unsuspecting squares and practice perversion as a religious rite. But it’s also a reminder of the director’s ability to conjure scenes that shock and delight audiences; how many movies can you name that cut between a reenactment of the crucifixion and a lesbian sex scene?
“Multiple Maniacs” is the work of the eternal Baltimore icon before he was a Jeopardy answer, a “Simpsons” guest star, or even Hampden’s cool great-uncle. It’s humbling to watch something Waters made as a hungry 24-year-old artist, shooting on 16mm film in Baltimore backyards with an army of actor friends and zero permits.
If “Pink Flamingos” was the film that finally launched Waters and his muse Divine as counterculture superstars, “Multiple Maniacs” is where the duo honed their trademark vulgarity. The perfect movie for the Maryland Film Festival at a time where queer rebellion and flipping off the status quo are essential.
“Multiple Maniacs” screens Friday, November 7 at 9:30 p.m. with stars Sue Lowe, George Figgs and others in attendance.