The 4th annual Louisiana International Film Festival is bringing celebrity guests, special events, gala parties and more than 50 films to Baton Rouge. It runs April 13 through April 17 at Cinemark Perkins Rowe.
This year’s special guests include Kelsey Grammer and Christy Turlington Burns. Films include “Born to be Blue,” an impressionistic biopic about singer-trumpeter Chet Baker (“the James Dean of jazz”), and Oscar-winner Barbara Kopple’s “Miss Sharon Jones!”, a documentary about neo-soul singer Sharon Jones.
“We have so many films,” Chelsey Heymsfield, the film festival’s executive director, says. “We have documentary films, narrative features, short films, animation. Really, there’s something for everyone.”
Louisiana-made movies at the festival include “Bogalusa Charm,” a feature about the erosion of small-town culture. There’s also “After the Spill.” It’s a hard-hitting documentary which chronicles the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill and its aftermath. Baton Rouge filmmaker Cyril Vetter is one of the film’s co-executive producers.
“‘After the Spill’ is about the BP oil spill, in a sense,” Vetter says. “But it also is a narrative of a much larger story, and that’s our tremendous coastal land loss.”
As important as movies are to film festivals, Heymsfield says, “Special events, believe it not, are really the core of any film festival.”
LIFF isn’t lacking in attendant festivities, with gala receptions every night and a performance by the LSU marching band and the Golden Girls at 6:00 p.m. Thursday, April 14.
For more information about the Louisiana International Film Festival, see the festival’s website at lifilmfest.org.