That's The Ticket!

Movies set in motion at Crystal Bridges

Movie buffs in Arkansas have a growing number of options to see the big screen.

The long-established Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival has since been joined by the Ozark Foothills Film Fest, the Little Rock Film Festival, the Offshoot Film Festival, the Eureka Springs Indie Film Festival and the Crystal Bridges Short Film Festival.

The Bentonville Film Festival will join their ranks this May, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is offering a variety of events to get film watchers in movie mode.

"We have three film-related events happening ... and the first we're using to put in context of exhibition, 'Fish Stories: Early Images of American Game Fish,'" says Beth Bobbitt, public relations manager at Crystal Bridges. "It's just another way to engage the film community. There's an overall growing film scene with the university so close [to us] and such a good program there."

Bobbitt says there are more people searching for events of this kind, which has shaped the sort of choices that the museum makes available.

"It's something we've been doing for a couple of years, and we ramped up programming this month ... for the [coming] Bentonville Film Festival, which focuses on women in film," she says. "Crystal Bridges will be involved with it as a venue and be engaged."

All three film-related events take place in April in the Great Hall in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

A free showing of the film "Okie Noodling" and post-screening discussion with its creator, Bradley Beesley, will take place from 7:30 to 9 p.m. on April 10. The documentary reveals the Midwestern culture of handfishing set to a musical score by The Flaming Lips.

Host of the PBS show "Your Inner Fish," Neil Shubin, will give a keynote lecture from 7 to 8 p.m. on April 17. The show is based on an award-winning popular science book Shubin wrote, which was based on his experiences discovering some of the earth's earliest mammals, dinosaurs and reptiles through fossils. The lecture is $10 or $8 for members.

"Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden" is a dramatic, true-crime documentary about a physician and his mistress in the 1930s who set off to create their own paradise on an uninhabited island in the Galapagos. They're joined by unwelcome guests, who begin disappearing. The film will be shown free of charge at 6:30 p.m. April 24 and will be followed by a discussion with filmmakers Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller.

-- April Robertson

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NAN What's Up on 03/27/2015

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