LITTLE ROCK — There’s a big change at one of the biggest players in the Arkansas film industry. Josh Miller is leaving Category One Entertainment Group to start his own production company called Broke Down South with his brother and film making partner Miles Miller.

Tim Jackson and Miller founded Category One Entertainment in 2004, producing films such as Looking for Lurch (2010), Etienne! (2009), and most recently the Hank Williams bio-pic The Last Ride, which is scheduled to be re-released in theaters later this year. Miller and Jackson also began another company, Fried Green Media - to handle commercial video projects for retail, corporate and nonprofit clients - of which Jackson will remain the principal creative officer.

The Miller brothers’ first major project under the Broke Down South banner was the “Southern Gothic” short Pillow that played in festivals all over the country and took home several awards including the “Made in Arkansas: Best Director” award at last year’s Little Rock Film Festival. As for future projects, Josh Miller says they are scheduled to shoot their feature, All the Birds Have Flown South, in January in central Arkansas.

According the news release, the split is amicable and that Jackson and Miller are still friends who will support each other’s creative efforts.

The next film in the monthly Argenta Film Series, presented by the Little Rock Film Festival and the Argenta Arts Foundation, will be the documentary Just Like Us. The screening is 7 p.m. April 26 at the Argenta Community Theater in North Little Rock, with the film’s producer, Russellville native Taylor Feltner, in attendance.

The film is “a celebration of culture and comedy” and highlights comedian Ahmed Ahmed (also the film’s director) and other international comedians. Ahmed was born in Egypt and is a U.S. citizen.

Feltner studied film making at Florida State University and started his film career in Los Angeles at the documentary film company Allentown Productions. The film has screened at 26 national and international film festivals and won Best Documentary Feature at Tallahassee (Fla.) Film Festival and Tallgrass International Film Festival and the audience award at North Country Film Festival as well as at Tallgrass.

Tickets are $8 and can be bought at ticketleap.com or the day of the screening at the box office. For more information go to littlerockfilmfestival.org.

Arkansas filmmakers Warren McCullough and Justin Nickels have begun pre-production on a new short film titled Strangers. The film is about two estranged brothers, “one a preacher and one an ex-con, and their strained relationship in the face of violence, in the past and the present.” McCullough is directing as well as starring in the film while Nickels is producing and writing and Bryan Stafford will be director of photography.

They plan to film in late May or mid-June. Nickels says the shooting location will be unique in that “it’s being shot in southwest Arkansas, which is a more atypical region for Arkansas shorts since it’s not the Ozarks nor the Delta.”

Presently McCullough and Nickels are shooting a video for the film’s Indiegogo (an online fundraising site) campaign that they hope to launch soon. In the meantime you can follow the film’s news and updates on their Facebook page at facebook.com/StrangersMovie.

Levi Agee is a programmer for the Little Rock Film Festival. E-mail him at:

[email protected]

MovieStyle, Pages 33 on 04/13/2012