City of Refuge, Missouri River Relief among Ragtag's new partners for Show Me Series

Aarik Danielsen, Columbia Daily Tribune
·3 min read

Ragtag Film Society is ready to show the community more.

After an initial two-year run of its Show Me Series, a sequence of screenings curated with community partners around the issues that drive them forward, the force behind Columbia's indie moviehouse, Ragtag Cinema, and the True/False Film Fest announced its collaborators through 2025.

Ragtag's five new partners are:

  • The Cambio Center, which "leads research and outreach on Latines, immigrant integration, and communities undergoing demographic change," according to its website.

  • City of Refuge, a leading organization serving refugee and resettled residents of Columbia.

  • The Michael A. Middleton Center for Race, Citizenship, and Justice, which draws together the University of Missouri's School of Law and College of Arts and Science to encourage fruitful conversation around its namesake interests.

  • Missouri River Relief, a longstanding organization promoting "stewardship" of the Missouri River.

  • Mixed at Mizzou, billed as "the first on-campus community for students who identify as Mixed: those having two or more racial, ethnic, and/or cultural backgrounds."

Ragtag will work with one partner per month to select and screen a film; "every screening is followed by a community conversation, taking the discourse beyond content to interrogate form, intention, and reaction," Ragtag Film Society noted in a news release.

The series is driven by the notion that art can crack open tough conversations in ways other community events just can't.

"We’re actually all immersed in this communal experience of watching a film together, and that just takes a lot of work out of opening that conversation," former Ragtag staffer Stacie Pottinger told the Tribune in 2021.

Partners for the series' first edition were The Asian Affairs Center at the University of Missouri, Boone County Community Against Violence, Four Directions at MU, ROCK The Community and The Center Project. Show Me Series ran its opening credits in May 2021 with a True/False screening of eventual Oscar winner "Summer of Soul," the stunning music documentary from director Questlove.

The new iteration of Show Me Series kicks off Aug. 31 with a screening of "Passing" in collaboration with Mixed at Mizzou. Starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, writer-director Rebecca Hall's 2021 film is adapted from Nella Larsen's brilliant 1929 novel of the same name.

Set in the era of the book, "Passing" explores the dynamic between two Black women who grew up together, one of whom "passes" for white, and the very different ways they navigate society.

Ruth Nega and Tessa Thompson star in "Passing."
Ruth Nega and Tessa Thompson star in "Passing."

"Hall’s touch is unerring, deceptively delicate, quiet and immaculate, like that final fall of snow," Jessica Kiang wrote in a review for Variety.

Ragtag raised funds to boost the first edition of the series from donors and through A Community Thrives, an initiative from the Gannett Foundation which provides a crowdfunding platform for community organizations as well as the opportunity to receive larger grants. Gannett is the parent company of the Columbia Daily Tribune, Springfield News-Leader and USA Today, among about 200 other newspapers.

Keep up with the Show Me Series and other community screenings via Ragtag's website at https://ragtagcinema.org/.

Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: These 5 community organizations will team with Ragtag on Show Me Series