Set over a single haunted (perhaps literally) night in Memphis, "Mystery Train" tells a trio of stories, all involving visitors to the city, from Japan, Italy and England. The focus is on down-and-out Memphis — places of grit-and-grind, before the term was coined, but also places of serendipitous magical mystery, as when Rufus Thomas suddenly appears to speak in Japanese to a young pair of rockabilly-loving Yokahama tourists.
A key scene is set in the Arcade, which production manager Kathie Hersch, who came to Memphis from Salem, New York, for the reunion, called "the center of the 'Mystery Train' universe," which made it an appropriate location for the party.
Across the street from another important location, the now-vanished Arcade Hotel (remembered by most as "a flophouse"), the restaurant functioned as "the nexus of the film — the center of the Bermuda Triangle, where Elvis' ghost could appear," Hersch said. She said she and other crew members often spent mornings literally mopping up moisture from the street between the hotel and restaurant with paper towels, because Müller wanted "a dry kind of street — he didn't want the corny neon-reflection look."
Michael Berry, location manager on the film, said Jarmusch's movie preserves an underdog Memphis, before the Grizzlies, the craft breweries, the revitalized Overton Square, the National Civil Rights Museum and the other injections of money and creativity boosted its confidence. "He really captured what it was like back then — the ghostliness."
'Last Day' and a gala day for Kevin Brooks and the Memphis Film Prize
Young Memphis director Kevin Brooks was the winner of the third annual Memphis Film Prize, earning the event's $10,000 cash award for his short "Last Day," which chronicles what might be the final hours of freedom for a father and husband facing a possible jail sentence on the day of his daughter's talent show.
"I made it because I wanted to get the message out there about the injustice of the prison system," said Brooks, 24, a graduate of the film-and-TV production program at the University of Memphis. "I really wanted to show what a person might have to go through, not knowing if they might be about to lose the next 20 years of their life for something they didn't even do."
The film, which stars Ricky D. Smith and Rosalyn R. Ross as the parents of a young girl played by Peighton Cantrell, was voted the best of the 10 Memphis Film Prize finalists screened Friday and Saturday at the Malco Studio on the Square. The votes of moviegoers counted for 50 percent of a film's score, with a panel of jurors determining the rest.
This year, there were a lot of votes: According to Film Prize organizers, a record 1,300 people attended the eight Film Prize screenings, doubling last year's turnout. The winner was announced during a Sunday ceremony at downtown's Arcade restaurant. (The finalists had been selected by the jurors from close to 50 submissions, shot here between January and June.)
A former student participant in a Sundance Film Festival program intended to encourage "emerging filmmakers" with a "clear artistic passion" for cinema, Brooks has, in turn, become a mentor for local teen filmmakers via an Indie Memphis youth program. He had been a finalist in the first two years of the Film Prize, but had not won in the past.
The first offshoot of the well-established Lousiana Film Prize, the Memphis Film Prize is an annual event that attempts to promote the economic impact of local filmmaking by requiring that eligible films be shot in Memphis or Shelby County. The films must be short, between 5 and 15 minutes in length.
Gregory Kallenberg of Shreveport, the founder and director of the Film Prize Foundation, which provides the prize money and oversees the events in Memphis and Louisiana, said this year's Memphis Film Prize fulfilled its mission, which is "to inspire great filmmaking, and then reward it in a very direct and profitable way." He said this year's entries "raised the bar in ambition, vision, and technical skill."
The submissions also were a testimony to the widespread appeal of filmmaking as an expressive art. At a time when Hollywood faces increased criticism for a lack of diversity behind the camera, four of the Memphis Film Prize finalists were the work of black directors, and most of these had sociopolitical themes. For example, "Minority," by Will Robbins, imagines an alternate-world America of majority black rule.