25th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival Starts Oct. 7

The 25th Annual Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival will open on Oct. 7 with “Command and Control,” a documentary chronicling the nine hours following the 1980 missile explosion at a Titan II launch complex near Damascus.

The film’s Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning director Robert Kenner, best-selling author Eric Schlosser, producer Melissa Robledo and PBS American Experience Producer Mark Samels are expected to attend.

Greg Devlin, a survivor of the explosion who is featured in the film, and Skip Rutherford, dean of the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service, will join a question and answer session after the screening, along with others who were in Damascus that day.

Festival organizers said the film retells through eyewitness accounts and new footage the effort to stop an explosion in central Arkansas that would have been 600 times more powerful than Hiroshima.

The trailer can be viewed here. 

The lineup also includes Ron Howard’s “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years,” Adam Nimoy’s “For the Love of Spock,” “Maya Angelou: and Still I Rise,” “Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds,” and “Midnight Return: The Story of Billy Hayes and Turkey.”

An early tradition for the festival, a late-night screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” will be revived with a special guest, actor Barry Bostwick, who played Brad in the cult classic. The event is sponsored by Club Sway of Little Rock.

Actor Ed Asner will host a closing night screening of Sharon Baker’s “My Friend Ed” on Oct. 15. Organizers said the film is about Asner’s life, career and activism. It’s sponsored by Heifer International of Little Rock.

The closing night will also feature live Delta blues from three-time Grammy and Country Music Award winner Chris Thomas King, and the last of the original Delta Bluesmen Cedell Davis, with Zak and Big Papa Binns.

The festival, sponsored for the second year by Deltic Timber Corp. of El Dorado, will again feature the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences-sponsored “Women Behind the Lens” series, which highlights the work of diverse female documentary filmmakers.

Deltic Timber will also showcase a series of environmental films.

New to the festival will be film series “Stories of the South” and the Entergy Corp.-sponsored “Being Human.”

The “Spa City Sports” series and AARP’s “Films for Grownups” will return, as will the festival’s family day and opportunities for students.

For more information, click here to visit the festival’s website.