The Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs will host the inaugural Fisheye Film Festival June 11-13. James Karlson, the museum’s Program Coordinator, an avowed movie buff, created the festival. We spoke with him about how the festival came to be, its mission, and what festivalgoers can expect to experience. For more information and a complete schedule, visit www.walterandersonmuseum.org/fisheye-film-festival.
What was the genesis of the Fisheye Film Festival?
It developed from National Geographic’s Slingshot Challenge, which is a call for young people 13–18 to create a 60-second video highlighting and proposing a solution to local environmental issues. The Walter Anderson Museum of Art has been a programming partner with National Geographic over the past three years.
Each video has a chance to win funding to support the cause or issue they choose to highlight. Last year, National Geographic asked its partners to consider hosting watch parties and screenings of these student video submissions to celebrate their efforts and support the issues participants chose.
Each year with the Slingshot Challenge, we evaluate how we can make it more robust than the last. This past year, we chose to implement the filming of multiple behind-the-scenes documentaries to be a part of a series of “episodes” to showcase the opportunities and collaborative work we do at the museum as it relates to the Slingshot Challenge.
With the plan to create these documentary-style pieces and the desire from the National Geographic Society to host screenings, we felt it was appropriate to create a new platform for this content to live, and the Fisheye Film Festival was born.
In what ways do you think films can help advance the conversation regarding environmentalism?Â
Film is the most powerful storytelling medium we have available to us. I’d say that a film on any subject allows for a conversation to be had. With the fast-paced nature of the information age, films can hold your attention and allow for an audience to digest an idea that they might have zero knowledge of. Environmentalism is a subject with a wide umbrella and various disciplines, and it’s important to shine a light on everything that is happening or could happen to our planet and our local habitats.
Walter Anderson dismissed the idea of humans having dominion over nature. He believed that we should live in unison with it. And it is our duty to protect this planet, to tell stories, and educate the masses on how that must be done, and that is largely the goal of this festival. We aim to educate our audience and deepen their connection with their home. It is also a goal of ours to provide agency to young people and to reinforce that their ideas and goals are viable.
Mississippi filmmaker Glenn Payne recently worked with the Museum for a filmmaking workshop. Tell us about the film they produced, and how it fits with the museum and festival’s mission.
Glenn worked with the museum and the Pascagoula River Audubon Center to create a documentary piece outside the scope of the Slingshot Challenge and Fisheye Film Festival titled River City Voices. We recruited him as a contract filmmaker to document the program, capture B-roll for students to use in their videos and discuss the filmmaking industry’s challenges and rewards. The workshop was largely Digital Media students from the Mississippi School of the Arts in Brookhaven. His episode was meant to add exposition and context to this year’s cycle of the Slingshot Challenge and to cover the large, multi-school field trip to Buccaneer State Park, located in Waveland. He has also served as a consultant for the film festival, along with our other 4 filmmaking partners. It is hard to explain the depth of experience that occurs on a nature excursion field trip, so his job was to show that to our audiences and spark interest in the program. Â
What are some of the highlights festivalgoers can enjoy?
As far as screenings, the films Chasing Coral and Hollow Tree act as our “bookend” feature-length films to start off and end our festival. Chasing Coral is an investigative documentary that follows a group of filmmakers and researchers set on capturing a time-lapse of coral bleaching. In recent years, the lives of many of the planet’s coral reefs have been dying or becoming “bleached,” and this is not only a hazard to the health of our oceans, but also a hazard to the many industries that provide food to our population. On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the conversation of coral reefs, oysters, and the decline in our fishing industries is a very large one and one of deep concern. There have been numerous efforts by the Department of Marine Resources to offset this damage by creating artificial barrier reefs to promote the health of our waters. I chose this feature due to this close thematic tie to the issues we are currently facing at home, and for the strong sense of filmmaking ingenuity that is on display in this film.
Hollow Tree follows three young individuals from different parts of Louisiana who join filmmaker Kira Akerman in discovering more about the Mississippi River and the numerous ancestral ties to both our cultural and industrial identity. This film does much of the same work that the Slingshot Challenge does – getting young people to be curious about their natural world and providing them a platform to speak on it.
Outside of the feature films and the debut of our WAMA Slingshot Documentary series, the festival includes talks and workshops from Film Mississippi and the Mississippi Film Alliance. There is a student poster showcase from Mississippi State University Graphic Design students available to view online or in person at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art during the run of the festival. On Saturday, we will host an Arts and Science Field Day with various entities and education-based vendors showcasing the strength of filmmaking, environmental science, and community found on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Â
