Garland Film Festival Highlights True Texas Tales
Some of the biggest names in Texas history will take center stage at Garland's "It Came From Texas" film festival
Garland may be better known as a rapidly growing city in Dallas County and its affiliation with the animated TV series King of the Hill.
But it’s also where the It Came from Texas Film Festival has taken place for the past three years. And it’s back, running Friday, September 12 through Sunday, September 14 at the Plaza Theatre.
This year’s theme True Texas Tales examines how history is remembered and told with movies like The Great Debaters (2007), John Wayne’s take on The Alamo (1960) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967) as headliners. Additional screenings include Bernie (2011), Viva Max! (1969), documentaries The Real Great Debaters (2008) and JFK: Breaking The News (2003) with a secret screening of a Larry Buchanan film with live commentary from the Mocky Horror Picture Show comedy troupe.
“The disclosure ‘based on a true story’… leaves a lot of wiggle room for Hollywood to tell the story,” said veteran movie public relations representative and festival organizer Kelly Kitchens Wickersham. “Words like ‘legends’, ‘myths’, reports’, ‘accounts’, ‘records’, ‘memoirs’, ‘allegories’, ‘epics’, and ‘sagas’ are often used interchangeably, but they are frequently far from the truth of what really happened.”
Historian Gordon K. Smith, who worked with Kitchens on the selection, has seen plenty of movies about the state that skew history. Yet even if they take generous liberties, he said, “these movies played a big part in turning those stories into Texas and American legends.”
The small festival stands out from others, such as mega festivals like South by Southwest or the Dallas International Film Festival, because it's more intimate. It also isn't designed to sell a product. The festival is also unique for promoting intellectual inquiry too. Panels featuring scholars, actors, directors and even family members will accompany the movies.
Among the notable attendees are Rhea Leen Linder, Bonnie Parker’s niece, and Buddy Barrow Williams, Clyde Barrow's nephew, who will join Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and Emmy and Peabody award winner Farris Rookstool III for a discussion before the movie on Friday.
Sean Griffin, a professor in the SMU Division of Film and Media Arts, will speak on a panel accompanying JFK: Breaking the News, with Rookstool III and Stephen Fagin, curator at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, where Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Griffin has some additional insight. He told the LGBTQ+ newspaper The Dallas Voice that looking at a movie through a queer lens fills in gaps left out of history. Griffin, author of books such as Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out, cites Bonnie and Clyde as an example.
In the initial draft of the screenplay, Clyde Barrow was bisexual and had a three-way with Bonnie and their crime partner. “While the final film eliminated that, it does deal with Clyde having difficulty getting sexually aroused by Bonnie, so the ghost of that original idea lurks,” Griffin noted.
Those kinds of tidbits show why the festival is necessary. And over three days, attendees will recall the past while absorbing a more accurate story of Texas.
It Came From Texas runs from September 12-14 and is presented by Garland Cultural Arts.
