This past weekend Oxford played host to the 2011 Oxford Film Festival, which was a huge success. Be sure to check out the film fest website here.
As a sidebar to the film festival schedule Square Books hosted four of the University of Mississippi's best scholars and professors for a panel discussion on their new book American Cinema and the Southern Imaginary (University of Georgia Press). After a brief introduction by Richard Howorth, the panelist--Katie McKee, Deborah Barker, Leigh Anne Duck and Jay Watson--signed books and discussed several topics covered in the book.
The book "examines aspects of the southern imaginary in American cinema and offers fresh insight into the evolving field of southern film studies. In their introduction, Deborah Barker and Kathryn McKee argue that the southern imaginary in film is not contained by the boundaries of geography and genre; it is not an offshoot or subgenre of mainstream American film but is integral to the history and the development of American cinema."
Be sure to check out the book and all the films shown this weekend.
Click through for photos from the event.
photos by Ivo Kamps (seated from left: Deborah Barker, Katie McKee, Jay Watson and Leigh Anne Duck)