This past Saturday we had the second of our High Heels and Hoodoo sneak peeks along with the other five Indie Grant winners at the Indie Grits Film Festival in Columbia, SC. Our screening was held at the New Nick – the old Fox theater is being restored into the New Nickelodeon theater, and it’s going to be fantastic when it’s completely done because it’s already pretty amazing just partially restored. The Indie Grant films were screened in the lower level, and it was only the second day the New Nick was open for business, so we were honored to be a part of that.
It’s interesting how every festival has its own ‘vibe.’ The lower level of the New Nick is a lot smaller than the theater where the CIFF was held and therefore the audience was much smaller. In addition, they were a very quiet audience. We did not get the same laughter and other audience cues that we did at CIFF. It made us very nervous while our movie was playing, but it was the same more subdued reaction for all the films. But at the Q&A afterwards, they were just as enthusiastic about wanting to know about the making of the films.
The absolute best part of the Indie Grits screening was that one of our stars, Sandra Lafferty (the ghostly Nanna), came to town for the big event. She lives in Alabama, so we were thrilled she made the drive to attend the festival. We hope we didn’t embarrass her too much when we introduced her to the crowd. Sandra was in a little movie you might have heard of – The Hunger Games aka the movie with the third-biggest opening weekend of all time! She played the woman in the market who gives Katniss the mockingjay pin. We are so happy for her that she got to be part of such a phenomenon, and we’re not above exploiting our tenuous connection to a record-smashing franchise. But, seriously, it was great to see Sandra again, and it meant so much to us that she was there for the screening.
In addition to the film screenings, the Indie Grits Festival included many social events with classic southern food like shrimp and grits and bar-b-que, and we had a great time eating and mingling. Thank you to the Indie Grits Festival for including us!