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For generations, people have come to Hot Springs, Arkansas to enjoy its thermal springs and elegant bathhouses. But around this time of year, they’re drawn to the historic spa town for another attraction – the longest running documentary film festival in North America.
The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival wraps up its 33rd edition this weekend with a screening of Luther: Never Too Much, Dawn Porter’s film about the late singer-songwriter Luther Vandross (earlier this week, Porter received the National Medal of Arts and Humanities from President Biden at the White House, joined by fellow medalists Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Aaron Sorkin, Queen Latifah, among others).
Over the course of nine days, HSDFF, a program of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute, has screened world premieres, works in progress, Oscar-contending films, and more – a slate from as far away as Bhutan and Ethiopia, and as close as Arkansas itself.
“It’s really been amazing,” Ken Jacobson, executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute, says of this year’s event. “In the planning stage you have these ideas, but not until you get to the festival do you know if these things are going to come to fruition and if people are going to show up. And both things have happened. We’ve got some amazing audiences and we’ve had great guests and just a terrific level of excitement and energy. It’s really just blown me away.”
The 33rd edition of HSDFF featured two world premieres rooted in the South.
“This year we had American Coup: Wilmington 1898 by Brad Lichtenstein and Yoruba Richen. That’s an incredibly powerful film about the Wilmington [North Carolina] massacre of 1898 in which there was basically a coup against the elected [multi-racial] government. It’s a story that people just don’t know — I didn’t know it. Even the filmmakers talked about how they really didn’t know much about it until they started making the film,” Jacobson notes. A descendant of some of the white people who staged the violent coup and a descendant of Black people victimized by the terror appeared at the festival.
“We had a really amazing and emotional Q&A with everyone,” says Jacobson. “We also had Cameo George, who’s the executive producer of American Experience, which is going to be showing the feature soon. It was really a very emotional evening and an enlightening one as well.”
The other world premiere: Louder Than Guns, directed by Doug Pray, a film spurred by a school shooting in Nashville, Tenn. last year that claimed six lives. The documentary features musician Ketch Secor, a Nashville resident and founding member of the band Old Crow Medicine Show.
“Ketch basically decided after that [shooting] that he needed to try to do something to bring people together around this country to discuss this issue because things have just gone so far out of control that it’s time ordinary citizens meet and try to go beyond their normal talking points around gun issues and find some common ground,” Jacobson explains. “And so Ketch teamed up with his good friend David Greene from National Public Radio, and they started having these amazing conversations with people at various tour stops of the band. Doug Pray filmed many of these incredible conversations and then created a film that really just has a tremendous impact.”
HSDFF provided a platform for a number of documentaries with Oscar ambitions, including R.J. Cutler’s Martha, about domestic doyenne Martha Stewart; The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, directed by Benjamin Ree; Agent of Happiness, the film from Bhutan directed by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó; Mati Diop’s Dahomey, winner of the Golden Bear, the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival; No Other Land, a film set in the West Bank directed by a coalition of Palestinian and Israeli directors, and Mistress Dispeller, Elizabeth Lo’s documentary that shines a light on a recent trend in China – the emergence of mistress dispellers who offer to break up extramarital trysts when a cheating spouse steps out on their partner.
Made in Ethiopia, a highly accomplished documentary directed by Max Duncan and Xinyan Yu, examines China’s economic investment in the country in Northeast Africa – an effort that has brought jobs but displaced farmers.
“I love that film and what I love about it is it’s a story that I knew nothing about. I think most people knew nothing about that,” Jacobson tells Deadline. “It’s told from these fascinating, different points of view — the Chinese factory owner, the workers in the factory, you really get all sides. And I think it’s brilliantly made, and I consider it one of the gems of the festival.”
Jacobson also highlighted the Oscar potential for another film that played at HSDFF – Zurawski v Texas, directed by Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault and executive produced by a team including Jennifer Lawrence, Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton.
“The two filmmakers, Maisie Crow and Abby Perrault, were our Impact Award winners. And that film had a tremendous audience response,” Jacobson notes. “It’s executive produced by Chelsea and Hillary Clinton, so there is an Arkansas connection. We had Abby here to receive the award in person, and she brought with her Amanda Zurawski. And I think that film is really going to hit Academy voters in their hearts, and they’re definitely going to give that one a serious look.”
The film centers on Texas women, including Amanda Zurawski, who sued their state after Texas’s strict anti-abortion laws almost cost them their lives. (The filmmakers and the Center for Reproductive Rights are offering the film for free online this weekend only. Details here).
Zurawski v Texas isn’t the only film with a political dimension to screen at the 33rd Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.
“This year, we’re so close to the election that we decided let’s have a day where we kind of focus on some of the great films that have been coming out in the last few months about elections and the repercussions of elections,” Jacobson comments, citing Petra Costa’s Apocalypse in the Tropics, about the rise of Christian Nationalism in Brazil, and a retrospective screening of the 1963 classic Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, from Robert Drew and Gregory Shuker. Crisis was presented with the Clinton Presidential Center and included a post-screening conversation with William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum Director Jay Barth and filmmaker Paul Stekler (George Wallace: Settin’ the Woods on Fire).
“We also featured Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid by Matt Tyrnauer and The Last Republican directed by Steve Pink. And I can tell you that the audience response to The Last Republican was really tremendous,” Jacobson says of the film about former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who turned against Pres. Trump after the January 6 insurrection. “Steve Pink came here to do the Q&A, and I got so many comments at the party afterward, about the film and the storytelling and the rapport and the joking that exists on camera between Kinzinger and Steve Pink.”
The 2024 edition of HSDFF also hosted a three-day Filmmaker Forum, offering “dynamic programming focused on the business, art and craft of documentary storytelling,” as the festival website puts it. “With a focus on public media, as well as a wider lens on the nonfiction ecosystem as a whole, the Forum is a unique and essential professional development opportunity for filmmakers and a major regional convening of filmmakers and industry leaders.”
This is Jacobson’s second year in charge of the institute; before coming to Arkansas, he held leadership positions with the American Film Institute and the International Documentary Association. His goals for the festival going forward include attracting a certain presidential couple back to the place where Bill Clinton spent his formative years, in the state he served as governor.
“I think if this hadn’t been an election year, we would’ve had a Clinton here, but they’re busy hitting the campaign stump,” Jacobson says. “As far as other [goals], I want to continue to build the relationship between the local, the regional, and the national, and hopefully continue to strengthen the kinds of supports that we provide for Southern filmmakers through the Filmmaker Forum and the partnerships that are involved in the Forum. That’s another goal of mine.”
