A new documentary film festival focused on the American South is taking root in Durham this fall.

Southern Doc Fest will make its debut at the Durham Arts Council on October 10 with a lineup that includes six screenings, filmmaker Q&As, and a live performance from Mike “Mike G” Smalls, a Durham rapper who is the subject of one of the films.

While the festival will broaden its lens to the broader South in years to come, this inaugural event is devoted entirely to films with a Durham connection.

Two of the six films being screened are feature-length: Humble in the Jungle, which follows Smalls as he balances his music career with his day job as a plumber, and Always Looking: Titus Brooks Heagins, which profiles Heagins, a photographer known for his portraits of people living on the margins.

The rest of the films are shorts. There’s particular buzz around Becoming Yamazushi, a 14-minute short narrated by hip-hop artist G Yamazawa that traces how Yamazawa’s family grew a small Durham sushi counter into a kaiseki fine-dining house. Other shorts include Once Upon a Wetland, a look at Durham’s offbeat, queer-affirming Beaver Queen Pageant; As In Death, a story of a memorial quilt that gains a name for every Durhamite lost to homicide; and CB: Power to the Player, a tribute to Duke’s first Black basketball player.

Yamazawa will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A. Ricky Kelly and Olympia Stone, the filmmakers behind Humble in the Jungle and Always Looking, respectively, will also take questions. And Heagins and a group of his students will be on-site at the Durham Arts Council throughout the day to offer free portraits to festival attendees.

A still from CB: Power to the Player. Image courtesy of The Southern Documentary Fund.
A still from CB: Power to the Player. Image courtesy of The Southern Documentary Fund.

Southern Doc Fest is the first foray into festival programming for the Southern Documentary Fund, a Durham-based nonprofit that subsidizes and mentors up-and-coming filmmakers in the South.

Christopher Everett, the artistic director of Southern Documentary Fund, told the INDY that the Fund has wanted to put on a festival for years and is finally able to make it happen, thanks to a grant from the City of Durham’s Cultural and Public Art Program.

In curating this inaugural festival, Everett said organizers assembled a lineup that felt both wide-ranging and of a piece, moving across subjects and moods while keeping things rooted in Durham.

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“We want to have a good balance: some stuff that’s going to uplift, some that makes you laugh, some that makes you cry. Because that’s the South. We’re built up on so many stories and experiences.”

Some of the films being screened were released some time ago; others aren’t yet available to the general public. 

Southern Doc Fest joins the ranks of a well-established film festival scene in Durham. The city is home to Full Frame, a heavyweight showcase that draws filmmakers from across the globe; OUTSOUTH, a long-running queer film festival hosted by The Carolina Theatre; and the Hayti Heritage Film Festival, one of the nation’s foremost celebrations of Black filmmaking.

Full-day passes for Southern Doc Fest are on sale now for $45. Tickets to individual screenings go on sale September 4.

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Lena Geller is a reporter for INDY, covering food, housing, and politics. She joined the staff in 2018 and previously ran a custom cake business.