A rose to organizers and filmmakers of the Magnolia Independent Film Festival, which concludes Saturday at UEC Starkville Hollywood Premiere Cinemas. This year’s edition of “the Mag ‘’ began Thursday and Friday with nine films on each day, but Saturday is the big day of the festival, with 13 film screenings beginning at 11 a.m. and concluding at 10:15 with the award ceremony featuring work in 13 categories. The three-day event includes not only films, but music videos and question-and-answer sessions with selected filmmakers. As Mississippi’s first and longest running film festival, The Mag is known for being an intimate, filmmaker-friendly festival that consistently brings unique, edgy, diverse and inspiring cinema to small-town Mississippi while also supporting home-grown filmmakers and storytellers.
A rose to Mona Vance-Ali and the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library for preserving journal entries that tell an important part of the area’s history between 1924-1937. The library has digitized nine ledgers belonging to plantation owners George Young Banks and Cary Hartwell Cocke. The journals are a revealing look at the plantation operations as it shifted from slave labor to sharecropping. The ledgers list tenant and sharecropping farmers along with their commissary accounts listing purchases, items on credit and seed provided to the renters. They also record any labor performed on the farm by said individuals. In addition, workers are classified as either being a “renter,” receiving “wages” or under “contract.” The books also contain information on plantation expenses, rations, livestock, merchandise, repairs, milk and cream production and bills payable. In addition, they list any visits by physicians to treat the tenants and their families. These ledgers are important because they are considered primary sources by historians. The digital ledgers are now available to the public online at msdiglib.org/columbus. We thank the library for this important work.
A rose to an anonymous Good Samaritan, Lindsey Pierce, her staff at Best Friends Animal Hospital and a hen now known as “82” for providing a real-life version of “Chicken Run.” In the animated film, a hen named “Ginger” plots escapes from her owner, who has plans to slaughter the chickens she had previously kept as layers. After numerous failed attempts, Ginger makes her escape with the aid of some allies. Earlier this month, Pierce reported a woman was driving on Highway 82 when she saw a hen escape/fall from a crowded poultry truck, smash into the windshield of a car and tumble off the roadway. The woman scooped up the hen and took her to Pierce’s clinic, where the hen was treated for her various wounds. Pierce took her to her 20-acre home property where 82 will live out her remaining days in peace. We can only speculate where the poultry truck was headed with 82, but it likely wasn’t any place a chicken wants to go. She may have fallen, but we prefer to think she made a dramatic escape. We cannot speculate the motives of the Good Samaritan, either, but we imagine her to be a part of the Chicken Resistance. We thank Pierce and her staff for a good ending to the tale. We’re happy that 82 wasn’t 86ed.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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