Awards Contenders ‘Sugarcane’ & ‘Look Into My Eyes’ To Screen At Inaugural Tulsa Hot Doks Festival In Oklahoma

Matthew Carey
·3 min read
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Two films expected to be in the awards hunt as the year progresses will screen in tandem at a special one-night only film festival in Tulsa, OK.

Sugarcane, directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, and Look Into My Eyes, directed by Lana Wilson, will play back to back on Saturday at the inaugural Tulsa Hot Doks. The film festival is a joint undertaking by the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas and the Circle Cinema in Tulsa.

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Sugarcane, winner of the directing prize for U.S. documentary at Sundance, “explores the investigation of unmarked graves at an Indian residential school in Canada, unearthing secrets above and below the ground and igniting a reckoning in the lives of survivors and their descendants.” Among those descendants is NoiseCat himself.

The critically acclaimed Look Into My Eyes held its U.S. premiere at Sundance and international premiere at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen.

“It’s about a group of New York City psychics who conduct deeply intimate readings with their clients,” Wilson told Deadline at Sundance. “At the beginning of the film, we’re plunged into the sessions, but over the course of the film, we get to know the psychics. We learn about their shared backgrounds in the performing arts in many cases; their shared experiences with loss and loneliness. Ultimately, it’s a film about how we as humans need witnesses in order to better see ourselves.”

Tulsa Hot Doks logo
Tulsa Hot Doks logo

Reflecting on Saturday’s event, Brent Ortolani, executive director of the Circle Cinema, said, “The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival is the longest-running documentary film festival in North America. The Circle is proud to partner with this highly regarded festival and bring a preview of the amazing collection of films to Tulsa.”

Ken Jacobson, executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute, commented, “For years, Tulsans have been coming to Hot Springs to attend the annual Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. We are thrilled to be bringing a little bit of the flavor of Hot Springs to Tulsa. It makes perfect sense to strike up a partnership with the Circle Cinema, which has long been a haven for documentary film lovers. Presenting these two incredible films, fresh after their Sundance premieres, is the perfect way to launch the inaugural Tulsa Hot Doks.”

Special guests are expected at the event, Tulsa Hot Doks promises. The festival will include a reception between the screenings (Sugarcane opens the twin bill, with Look Into My Eyes following).

One of the famed historic spas on Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs, Ark.
One of the famed historic spas on Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs, Ark.

Planning is underway for the 33rd edition of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, which will unfold from October 18-26 in the historic resort town located in the Ouachita Mountains of central Arkansas. Natural hot springs have drawn people to the area for hundreds of years, if not millennia. An act of Congress in 1832 designated the hot springs as a protected reserve; it formally became a national park a century later.

Circle Cinema in Tulsa, OK
Circle Cinema in Tulsa, OK

Tulsa’s Circle Cinema originally opened in 1928 and is city’s oldest and only nonprofit movie theater. “We believe deeply in our mission of fostering community consciousness through film,” Circle Cinema says, noting that it “enlightens, and entertains guests 365 days a year through selected features and programs that expose and connect our community to global issues, environments, and cultures.”

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