Festival News

2022 EarthX Film Festival finds perfect new home: Dallas Arts District

The festival will take place over four days in May.

Photo by Nigel Young / Nigel Young/Foster + Partners

The annual EarthX Film Festival returns for 2022 in May for an exciting four days and more than 75 films, including an opening night world premiere of Deep In The Heart, a film by Ben Masters (The River and The Wall) on wildlife in Texas narrated by Matthew McConaughey.

The festival runs May 12-15 and for the first time will be held in the Dallas Arts District, providing easy accessibility to five theater venues. Each night will feature a musical act performing before a showcase screening.

With the theme "A Celebration of the Outdoors," the festival continues its mission to highlight films and emerging media that celebrate nature, outdoor adventure, environment, conservation, climate change, and science. The lineup includes 24 features, 54 shorts, plus music, art installations, and panel discussions.

They're also welcoming a new sponsor, says EarthX CEO Michael Fletcher in a statement: Curiosity, a media company whose streaming service, Curiosity Stream, delivers films, series, and shows on space, history, nature, tech, and lifestyle on demand. The film lineup will include Curiosity's original film Going Circular, exploring circularity.

"We're thrilled to present films this year that showcase our amazing planet and the people dedicated to making a difference," Fletcher says. "It's always been our vision to create a world-class event that celebrates the spirit of Texas and welcomes global citizens to experience the rich arts culture in Dallas."

For more information and tickets, go to earthxfilmfestival.org or download the app available on iOS and Android.

Opening screening
Opening night will be the world premiere of Ben Masters' film Deep In The Heart, narrated by Matthew McConaughey and the first feature-length wildlife film ever produced about Texas. Filmed over two years, it showcases Texas' species and wild places, the connectivity of water and wildlife, and recognizes Texas' conservation importance on a continental scale.

Masters calls it "a love letter to the diverse and vibrant state that we call home."

Festival favorites
Several festival darlings are also in the lineup, including Fire of Love by Sara Dosa; We Feed People by Ron Howard; The Territory, a Sundance Audience Award winner; Bring Your Own Brigade by Lucy Walker; and To The End by Rachel Lears.

A wide range of filmmakers including award winners Jeff Orlowsky (Chasing Ice), Raj Patel & Zak Piper (The Ants and The Grasshopper), young superstar Lindsey Hagen (California Natural), and several newcomers, including two second-grade brothers making their first film with their father called Life In The Slow Lane.

The films cover a variety of important topics, from the healing experience for veterans through nature (Eric and The Bees, Bastards' Road), to female big-wave surfing (Big vs Small), to tiger poaching (Tigre Gente).

Texas stories
This year's Texas films include Battle For The Heart of Texas about property rights in energy production; When It's Good, It's Good, about oil-drilling communities in West Texas; and REI's Slim Pickins about diversity in outdoor culture.

Short Films
Many of the shorts are associated with brands and film companies including Patagonia’s Raised From the Earth about living off the land, and The Monster In Our Closet, which focuses on plastic in our fashion. The Redford Center is presenting two short films on mass transit: Community Power Arizona: En Nuestrxs Manos (In Our Hands) and Community Power Nevada: Unidxs En Accion (United In Action).

The full list of feature films includes:

Bastards’ Road, Director Brian Morrison
Battle for the Heart of Texas, Director John Brown
Before They Fall, Director Cam MacArthur
Big vs Small, Director Minna Dufton
Reel Rock: Black Ice, Director Peter Mortimer, Zachary Barr
Bring Your Own Brigade, Director Lucy Walker
Chasing Ice, Director Jeff Orlowski
Coextinction, Director Gloria Pancrazi, Elena Jean
Deep in the Heart, Director Ben Masters
Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Director Bill Kroyer
Fire of Love, Director Sara Dosa
Godspeed, Los Polacos!, Director Adam Nawrot
Going Circular, Director Ricard Dale, Nigel Walk
Inhabitants, Director Costas Boutsikaris, Anna Palmer
Learning to Drown, Director Ben Knight
Mountain Revelations, Director Justin Fann
Newtok, Director Michael Kirby, Andrew Burton
Spirit of the Peaks, Director Connor Ryan, Tim Kressin
The Ants and the Grasshopper, Director Raj Patel, Zak Piper
The Territory, Director Alex Pritz
Tigre Gente, Director Elizabeth Unger
To the End, Director Rachel Lears
We Feed People, Director Ron Howard
Zero Gravity, Director Thomas Verrette

Short films are as follows:

80° North, Director Brandon Holmes
All Bodies on Bikes, Director Zeppelin Zeerip
American Scar, Director Daniel Lombroso
An Eye for Detail, Director Matthew Harmer
Bad Boy of Bonsai, Director Juan A. Moreno
Breaking Trail, Director Jesse Roesler
California Natural, Director Lindsey Hagen
Camp Yoshi, Director Faith E. Briggs
Chasing the Sublime, Director Amanda Bluglass
Community Power Arizona: En Nuestrxs Manos (In Our Hands), Director Pita Juarez
Community Power Nevada: Unidxs En Acción (United In Action), Director Nico Cadena
Eric and the Bees, Director Erin Brethauer, Tim Hussin
Finding Gulo, Director Colin Arisman
From My Window, Director Frank Pickell
Humanity Has Not Yet Failed, Director Norma V. Toraya, Jared P. Scott
I am One of the People, Director Cameron Woodle
If I Tell Them, Director Oliver Sutro
Kāhuli, Director Chris Jones
Life in the Slow Lane, Director Sol de Glanville, Ben de Glanville
Like a River, Director Jim Aikman
Listen to the Beat of our Images, Director Audrey Jean-Baptiste, Maxime Jean-Baptiste
Loon, Director Jason Whalen, Chris Zuker
Mission Mountain, Director Kody Kohlman, Andrew Bydlon
Mother of the Sea, Director Nicholas Brown
Mylo, Director Chris Bukard
No Soy Oscar, Director Jon Ayon
Nuisance Bear, Director Jack Weisman, Gabriela Osio Vanden
One Star Reviews: National Parks, Director Alex Massey
Patagonia Provisions: The Ocean Solution Film, Director Darcy Hennessey Turenne
Raised from the Earth, Director Forest Woodard
Rebirth of a Reef, Director Shaun Wolfe
Return to Earth, Director Darcy Wittenburg, Darren McCoullough, Colin Jones
Rockies Repeat, Director Caroline Hedin
Slim Pickins, Director Justin Jeffers
The Captain, Director Gregory Kohs
The Diamond, Director Caitlyn Greene
The Endless Wave, Director Tom Attwater
The Interconnectedness of all Living Things, Director Jenn den Broeder
The Land of Griffons, Director Riccardo Soriano
The Last Last Hike, Director Celene Francois
The Monster in Our Closet, Director Kathryn Bays, Nicole Gormley
The Seeds We Keep, Director Gabriel E.W. Carter
The Seeker, Director Lance Edmands
The Wilderness Within, Director Jason van Bruggen
They Carry Us With Them: Gabriel Frey, Director Jeremy Seifert
Thomas Deininger. Trash Artist., Director Gnarly Bay
To Live Here (sống ở đây), Director Melanie Dang Ho
Wastewater: The Tale of Two Cities, Director Sarah Franke
We Decided to Become Farmers, Director Rob Herring, Ryan Wirick
What Remains, Director Paavo Hanninen
When It Comes from the Earth, Director Katalin Egely
When it's Good it's Good, Director Alejandra Vasquez

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Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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