4:00p - MATINEE SCREENING followed by Q&A with writer-director SCOTT TEEMS
6:00p - FILMMAKER RECEPTION with gourmet soul food by HOMEMADE CATERING
7:00p - INTRODUCTION & DISCUSSION with writer-director SCOTT TEEMS
7:30p - FILM SCREENING followed by PERFORMANCE with PATTERSON HOOD - SOLD OUT -
10:15p - LATE SHOW SCREENING
AWARDS:
WINNER: 2009 Atlanta Film Festival: Jury Award for Best Feature Film
WINNER: 2009 SXSW Film Festival: Audience Award for Best Feature Film and Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast
WINNER: 2009 Newport International Film Festival: Special Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature
WINNER: 2009 Sarasota Film Festival: Audience Award for Best Feature Film
WINNER: 2009 Nashville Film Festival: Audience Award for Best Feature Film
SYNOPSIS:
Cine presents the Athens premiere of the new award-winning independent film THAT EVENING SUN, starring Oscar nominee HAL HOLBROOK as an aging Tennessee farmer who flees the retirement home, and upon returning to his own homestead must confront a family betrayal, the reappearance of an old enemy, and the loss of his farm. The film is based on the short story I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down, by acclaimed Southern author WILLIAM GAY, originally published in the Fall 1998 issue of The Georgia Review, and was adapted for the screen by writer-director and Georgia native SCOTT TEEMS, who will be in attendance for this Saturday's screenings.
Produced by Oscar winners Raymond McKinnon and Walton Goggins, (THE ACCOUNTANT, RANDY AND THE MOB), the film features original songs by PATTERSON HOOD of Drive By Truckers, including Depression Era, one of the songs currently among the contenders for nomination in the Best Original Song Category for this year's Academy Award, as well as a performance of Jimmie Rodgers' Blue Yodel #3 (I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down), the song that inspired the title for the original short story.
REVIEW:
In THAT EVENING SUN, the story of a feisty Tennessee farmer who flees a nursing home to return to his rural homestead, where he discovers that another family has taken up residence, Hal Holbrook strips the stereotype of the grumpy old man of sentimental shtick and cutesy old-codger mannerisms.
His hard, steady glare conveys a bone-deep understanding of his thorny character, Abner Meecham, a lonely widower and self-described “80-year-old man with a bum hip and a weak heart.” Mr. Holbrook’s fierce, contained performance matches in depth and truthfulness his portrayal of a weary Army retiree who briefly becomes a surrogate father to Emile Hirsch’s survivalist in INTO THE WILD.
Abner’s life at his age revolves around the struggle between decrepitude and the determination of someone who feels free to shoot off his mouth because he has nothing left to lose; his quarrel with the world may in fact be his best survival strategy. Foolishly or not, Abner intends to spend his remaining days on the farm, which his son, Paul (Walton Goggins), a harried trial lawyer, leased to Lonzo Choat (Raymond McKinnon), a no-account 30-something local, after dispatching Abner to the nursing home.
Hard-bitten and judgmental, Abner isn’t especially likable. He has always loathed the Choat clan, which he denounces to Lonzo’s face as “white trash,” once he arrives to find his farm occupied. During Abner’s confrontations with his son, who urges him to return to the nursing home, we learn that Abner was a stern, withholding father and a difficult husband to his wife, Ellen (Mr. Holbrook’s real-life wife, Dixie Carter, shown in flashback sharing loving glances with him).
Even though Abner is too enfeebled to manage the farm, he takes up residence in a sharecropper shack on the property, hoping that Lonzo, who subsists on disability payments from an accident involving falling lumber, won’t make enough money from the farm to exercise the purchase option in the lease agreement. Scenes of Lonzo and his wife, Ludie (Carrie Preston), arguing about money reveal the desperation of Lonzo’s circumstances.
If the film, based on William Gay’s short story “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down,” has many of the earmarks of Southern Gothic melodrama, its writer and director, Scott Teems, making his feature-film debut, uses the story to explore character. Even Lonzo has a human side. Mr. McKinnon underplays the role so that you glimpse the frightened little boy under his surly, macho exterior. And as the venomous confrontations and threats between Abner and Lonzo build to a conflagration, you see every side of the story.nytimes.com
