Oxford Film Festival is taking extra steps to ensure a weekend of affordable, accessible arts for everyone by offering various free events and screenings throughout the festival.
There will be 300 free tickets available for the screening of “Chasing Amy,” a film festival first.
“The reason was that it’s being held on campus, so [students] don’t have to worry about if they don’t have transportation,” Melanie Addington, festival director, said. “Anybody can have access. It’s free, and they don’t have to find transportation.”
Oxford Film Festival will be partnering with the University of Mississippi for the first time in many years, according to Addington, and the sponsorship allows for numerous film festival events to be held on the Ole Miss campus, making it easy for students to attend the film festival.
“This new chancellor is really great at promoting the arts,” Addington said. “I was really appreciative of Chancellor Vitter doing this. Because they helped support it, we were basically able to use all that money to pay for the tickets that would be spent.”
Student discounts for tickets are available on the Oxford Film Festival website, but there are free events for students and community members every day.
“If a student really has no money, there’s something they can do at the festival,” she said.
Among other free film festival events are the Community Film Block including “FireMax” at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 15 and 11 a.m. Feb. 17 at the Powerhouse, Virtual Reality films Feb. 15 through Feb. 19 at the Powerhouse, Documentary Short encores at 3:45 p.m. Feb. 17 at Newk’s Community Room, “Midnight Express” at 6 p.m. Feb. 17 at Newk’s Community Room, Experimental Block encore at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 18 at Newk’s Community Room, “Beyond the Rocks” at 3 p.m. Feb. 18 at The Library and “Gun Crazy” at 3 p.m. Feb. 19 at The Library.
There will also be various free panels and workshops, including an acting workshop at 11 a.m. Feb. 17 and a Seed and Spark panel at noon Feb. 17 at Malco Commons, female filmmaker coffee hour at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 17 at Newk’s Conference Room, Chasing Amy live table read with Theatre Oxford at 1 p.m. Feb. 18 at Newk’s Conference Room, an animation panel at 10 a.m. Feb. 19 at Malco and an LGBTQ panel at 2:30 p.m. Feb. 19 at Malco Commons.
More information on free events and discounted tickets can be found on the Oxford Film Festival website.
