Traditionally, October is known best as a month of frightening thrills, chills and mayhem — a witch’s brew of monsters, ghosts and the macabre tied to the grand finale of Halloween.
In Tucson, October also offers an opportunity to travel the world, laugh, cry and think about new and different perspectives through the power of film.
Four film festivals are slated to take place in October, including one dealing in the horror genre, all returning to a completely in-person format for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
“Róise and Frank,” an Irish comedy, will be screened at Film Fest Tucson Oct. 15.
Here are your options:
Tucson Film & Music Festival
facebook.com/TucsonFilmFestival
The Tucson Film & Music Festival lives up to its name with this year’s opening film, “It Came From Aquarius Records,” premiering at The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress, Oct. 7.
The documentary follows the iconic Bay Area record shop’s 47-year run, starting in the Castro District of San Francisco in 1970.
Directed by Kenneth Thomas, “It Came From” talks to more than 50 Bay Area residents, from local radio DJs to Aquarius super fans (including “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening), to former managers and employees, about the importance of Aquarius Records and its role in bringing hard-to-find music and oft-overlooked genres to the city.
“It felt like a tourist attraction for weirdos,” one customer says in the doc’s trailer about the shop, which shut its doors in 2016.
The film will be one of several premieres at the Tucson Film & Music Festival, taking place at The Screening Room Oct. 7-9.
Among some of the other big premieres: The queer identity memoir, “In the Middle of Everywhere” by non-binary director Panda Landa on Oct. 8; and a thriller set to close out the fest called “The Mistress” by director Greg Pritikin on Oct. 9.
The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress, will host a horror-themed film fest.
All three filmmakers will be participating in Q&A sessions after the screenings.
The Tucson Film & Music Festival was started by Michael Toubassi after the independent release of his 2005 music documentary, “High and Dry,” about Tucson’s wildly diverse and creative music scene. The festival still strives to serve as an important Tucson staple of independent filmmaking and an outlet for local filmmakers and musicians.
“Something I try to tell people is that we support our festival alumni and we support our University of Arizona alumni as much as possible,” Toubassi said during a phone interview. “The festival kind of started by being supported by the (UA). I’m an alumni and the people who worked on it for years are all alumni.”
Two local filmmakers celebrating premieres at the fest are University of Arizona graduate Jordan Fuller Vera and faculty member Leslie Ann Epperson. Vera will be showing his film, “Afterlife of Memory” and Epperson will be screening her documentary, “Prayer Run for the Santa Ritas.”
The festival will also be showing the music documentary about jazz pianist Omar Sosa called, “Omar Sosa’s 88 Well-Tuned Drums.”
Tickets for each screening will be $8.
“Good Night Oppy” is about the life and times of Opportunity, the Mars rover that was sent to the Red Planet for a 90-day mission and ended up lasting 15 years.
Loft Film Fest
loftcinema.org/series/loft-film-fest
The Loft Film Festival will have you feeling all the feels during its nine-day run, Oct. 12-20.
Its Oct. 15 screening of the New Zealand comedy, “Nude Tuesday,” starring Jemaine Clement of “Flight of the Conchords” fame as a sex guru, will have you laughing out loud.
“The Return of Tanya Tucker“ (Oct. 16), documenting the classic country singer’s return to the studio at the behest of musician Brandi Carlile, is likely to fill you with joy.
Even “Good Night Oppy” (Oct. 16), about the life and times of Opportunity, the Mars rover that was sent to the Red Planet for a 90-day mission that ended up lasting 15 years, has the potential to make you misty, maybe even shed a tear or two.
“It is a crowd-pleaser, very emotional” said Jeff Yanc, program director for The Loft. “It has been compared a lot to ‘Wall-E.’ They anthropomorphize the robot. It becomes a character that you are rooting for and respecting.”
The list goes on as The Loft brings back its festival full-force this year.
More than 50 films and shorts are slated to be screened at the venue, located at 3233 E. Speedway.
The fest is one of the last big events that The Loft has phased back into its regular programming during the year. It held a festival in 2021, but that was scaled back, Yanc said.
“We really feel the audience is there this year,” Yanc said. “It was tentative in 2021. Younger audiences were coming back, but older audiences were still not comfortable.”
The return to normalcy for the fest also means, among other positives, having guest actors and filmmakers attend.
This year’s lineup includes American Indian actors Gary Farmer and Wes Studi.
Farmer
Farmer will be on-hand for a screening of his 1988 film, “Powwow Highway” on Oct. 13. Farmer is also featured at the festival in the off-the-wall, time traveling animated film, “Quantum Cowboys” (Oct. 12). The film was created in Arizona and stars a long-list of musicians and actors, including Neko Case, Howe Gelb, John Doe and David Arquette.
“The movie is very kind of mind-blowing,” Yanc said. “At festivals, that is what you want. You want something that you are not going to see every day.”
Studi will be on-hand for a screening of "The Last of the Mohicans" (Oct. 14), a film that helped bring his acting career to the next level.
Yanc was particularly thrilled to welcome Jacqueline Bisset to the festival, the British actress whose career reaches back more than five decades.
The Loft will be screening two of her films, Francois Truffaut’s 1973 comedy-drama, “Day for Night,” and her most recent film about a friendship formed between a young director and veteran actress, called “Loren & Rose.”
“I love it when we get Hollywood royalty,” Yanc said, “She has so many amazing films that are really iconic.”
A full schedule of Loft Film Festival films can be found on The Loft website. General admission to most screenings is $12. An all-access badge is $200 through the site.
The free outdoor screening of “The Pez Outlaw” at Film Fest Tucson will feature free Pez dispensers for the first 150 guests.
Film Fest Tucson
filmfesttucson.org
Phil Rosenthal, famed television producer and avid foodie, whose Netflix series “Somebody Feed Phil“ about his culinary travels has a massive following on the streaming service, is a special guest at this year’s Film Fest Tucson.
Rosenthal will be screening an episode from Season 6 of the series on Oct. 15. The show debuts on Netflix on Oct. 18. He’ll participate in a conversation after the screening. The festival itself runs from Oct. 13-15.
Herb Stratford, co-director and co-founder of Film Fest Tucson, said having Rosenthal at this year’s event is a win for the festival and a win for Tucson.
“Phil is a high-profile food ambassador,” Stratford said. “We think this is a chance for us to show Phil what Tucson has to offer. We are a city of gastronomy. He will see that on his visit, then maybe come back and film an episode here.”
Rosenthal aside, the annual fest has a little something for everyone this year, the first year it will be returning to a completely in-person format since the pandemic’s start in 2020.
Nearly 30 films, full-length features and shorts, will be screened at several venues in and near downtown, including at the Tucson Scottish Rite, 160 S. Scott Ave.; AC Hotel by Marriott Tucson Downtown, 151 E. Broadway; the north lawn of the Children’s Museum, 200 S. Sixth Ave.; and an outdoor screening area at Main Gate Square, just north of the Chipotle, 905 E. University Blvd.
The fest’s lineup includes a showing of the the 1928 Carl Theodor Dreyer silent film, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” on Oct. 15, with live musical accompaniment from a string quartet and four-person choir.
The Irish comedy, “Róise and Frank,” about a woman who believes her dearly departed husband has been reincarnated as a dog, will be screened in Gaelic with English subtitles the same day.
There will also be a conversation with Academy Award-nominated animator Bill Plympton, who will be attending a series of animated shorts on Oct. 14 and a screening of his latest feature film, “Slide” on Oct. 15.
“He is such an amazing artist and great human,” Stratford said. “We have been showing his shorts here almost every year.”
One of Stratford’s hot picks for this year’s fest is “Gods of Mexico” (Oct. 14), director Helmut Dosantos’ look at the rural, Indigenous people of Mexico who continue to work the land in old fashioned ways amid an increasingly industrialized world.
Dosantos will be participating in a Q&A after the screening.
The "Gods of Mexico" screening will feature a Q&A with the director at Film Fest Tucson.
“(‘Gods of Mexico’) is a sonic and visual experience,” Stratford said. “Very little spoken word, but there is a lot of sort of atmospheric sonic things happening; hearing the thunder, insects, people in the mines.”
Stratford said part of the fun of bringing back an all in-person film festival is creating experiences that can’t be had anywhere else.
The free screening of “The Pez Outlaw,” being shown at Main Gate Square on Oct. 14, for example, comes with a free Pez dispenser for the first 150 people.
“You can watch ‘Joan of Arc’ at home on your television,” Stratford said. “But you are not going to have a string quartet playing or live voices. If you love ‘Somebody Feed Phil,’ this is an opportunity to say hello to Phil. That is pretty cool.”
A full schedule for Film Fest Tucson can be found on its website. Advance tickets can also be purchased through the website for $10 per screening. Festival passes, granting access to all screenings, are $35. VIP passes, giving access to the VIP lounge and opening and closing night parties, is $250.
Tucson Terrorfest Horror-Con and Film Festival
Just in time for Halloween, Tucson Terrorfest returns to The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress, downtown, Oct. 20-23.
The 12th annual Terrorfest Film Festival and Horror Con combines a jump-scare-in-your-seat, horror-themed film festival and full-fledged scream-worthy convention.
The film festival will feature classic horror films shown alongside brand new independent flicks, submitted by local filmmakers, and a variety of scary shorts and frightening featurettes.
Attendees can expect “Q&As with horror filmmakers, actors and special guests” and freaky screenings of “banned and edgy late-night horror films,” according to the film fest’s website, tucsonterrorfest.com.
The horror convention will offer a two-day, skin-crawling symposium showcasing vendors of the macabre from all over Arizona. It will take place at 191 E. Toole, October 22-23.
David Pike, who runs The Screening Room and founded the fest, likened the convention experience to any comic convention, including Tucson Comic-Con.
“Same thing, except it is horror,” he said.
Pike said that the film festival and horror con concept has been gaining in popularity since the film festival’s inception in 2010.
“The convention got bigger,” Pike said. “We were in a smaller space last year and this year, we have more vendors. There are a lot more things going on and it’s going to be a very, very different fest compared to last year.”
The official schedule for this year’s film festival has yet to be released, but it will feature more movies than last year, Pike said; more cult classics, and also more independent horror films that have been on “the horror film festival circuit.” Some of the pictures were filmed right here in Tucson.
Among this year’s options: Sam Raimi’s cult classic “Army of Darkness” and Herschell Gordon Lewis’ “The Gore Gore Girls.”
Admission is $8 per screening at Terrorfest. Screening times vary. Admission to the convention is $5. Details for both will soon be available on the website (tucsonterrorfest.com) and at facebook.com/tucsonterrorfest.
