March 2, 2001

Film Festival is prologue to
Delta Blues Symposium VII


As a prologue to Delta Blues Symposium VII: Music and Arts in the Delta, the Department of English and Philosophy at Arkansas State University is sponsoring a film series, which features seven films with Delta settings.

All films will be shown in ASU Museum 182 beginning at 7 p.m. The showings are free and open to the public. The series begins on Tuesday, March 6, with an adaptation of Maya Angelou's acclaimed memoir of her life in Depression-era Arkansas. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (1979) stars Diahann Carroll and Esther Rolle.

Maya Angelou directed the second film in the series, "Down in the Delta" (1998), which will be shown on Wednesday, March 7. This account of a Chicago family's finding stability and a future among relatives down home in the Delta features performances by Alfre Woodard, Esther Rolle, and Wesley Snipes.

"Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored" (1996) is the offering for Friday, March 9. Told from the point of view of a young boy raised by his grandfather and aunt in Glen Allan, Miss., in the 1940s, this film is based on an autobiographic novel by Clifton Taubert. It is directed by Tim Reid and stars Al Freeman and Phylicia Rashad.

An adaptation of William Faulkner's novel "Intruder in the Dust" (1949), to be shown on Wednesday, March 14, includes a cast featuring David Brian and Claude Jarman, with Juano Hernandez as the black man in a small Mississippi town who is about to be lynched for a murder he did not commit.

The series continues with a film version of Ernest Gaines's award-winning novel, "A Lesson Before Dying" (1999) on Thursday, March 15. The film tells the story of a young black man wrongly convicted of the murder of a white man in 1940s Louisiana. The film stars Mekhi Phifer, Irma P. Hall, and Don Cheadle.

"Crimes of the Heart" (1986), which will be shown Tuesday, March 27, is a film treatment of a play by Delta dramatist Beth Henley. Directed by Bruce Beresford, this comic vignette of sisterly life in the sleepy South includes Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Tess Harper, and Sam Shepard in its cast.

The series concludes on Wednesday, March 28, with "Grand Isle" (1991), a film version of Kate Chopin's evocative and startling novel, "The Awakening," which was published in 1899. Kelly McGillis stars as Edna Pontellier, a wife and mother in 1890s New Orleans, who is awakened one summer to her artistic and sensual desires.

For further details about the Delta Film Series and other Delta Blues Symposium events, call 870-972-3043, or check the website at www.clt.astate.edu/blues.

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