About
The Big Ears Festival is a dynamic, interactive experience that explores connections between musicians and artists, crossing all musical genres while interfacing with film, performance and the visual arts. In 2016, AC Entertainment partnered with The Public Cinema to expand the film program at Big Ears.
A complete list of films and events we programmed at Big Ears.
2022 Installation
In 2022, we again curated a program of films for a month-long installation at the UT Downtown Gallery. “Memory Leave a Mark” screened four dance films by and about legendary women artists, including Martha Graham, Chantal Akerman, Nina Pina Bausch, Meredith Monk (a musical guest at the fest), Claire Denis, and Mathilde Monnier.
2020 Installation
The 2020 Big Ears Festival was cancelled due to COVID just weeks after we announced our full film program. Instead, we installed “The Society at Black Pond” by Jessica Sarah Rinland, who was to have been one of our visiting artists.
2019 Installation
The 2019 program was an installation of new work by Jodie Mack, Johann Lurf, Beatrice Gibson, and Wang Bing.
2018 Film Highlights
- A Sense of Place: A Retrospective of American Regional Cinema, 1960-1989
- Stereo Visions: A Survey of 3D Cinema
- Visiting Artist: Lewis Klahr
- Canyon Cinema at 50
2017 Film Highlights
- Jonathan Demme: Life is Performance/Performance is Life
- Visiting Artist: Kevin Jerome Everson
- Visiting Artist: Janie Geiser
- Visiting Artist: Jem Cohen
- Visiting Artist: Roger Beebe
2016 Film Highlights
Film Press Roundup
“Taking over cozy nightclubs, state-of-the-art concert halls, a centuries-old cathedral, the city’s modern art museum and a recently renovated 90-year-old movie palace, Big Ears casts Knoxville as a world-class entertainment town — accommodating to any and every scale of performance or projection, as well as our demands that art be challenging and immersive. In only its second year, the film line-up already feels like a vital complement to the tenor of the festival as a whole.” — Filmmaker Magazine (Summer 2017, print only)
Festival Reports
- “Big Ears Opens Its Eyes: The Public Cinema at Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival” – Filmmaker Magazine
- “Big Ears 2018” – The Daily at The Criterion Collection
- “Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival, the Avant-Garde SXSW, Adds a Film Program” – Brooklyn Magazine
- “Learning to Let Go: The Beauty of the Big Ears Festival” – RogerEbert.com
- “This Must Be the Place” – Fandor
- “Notes from Big Ears 2018” – Nashville Scene
- “Big Ears Stereo Visions, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Third Dimension” – Cinematary
- “The Eclectic Film Selections of Big Ears Festival 2018” – Talk Film Society
- “Big Ears 2018 Review – Film Program Embraces Abstraction” – Arts Knoxville
Interviews with Visiting Filmmakers
- “Stereo Visions” at Big Ears Festival: A Three-Dimensional Interview with Blake Williams” – The Notebook
- “Filmmaker Blake Williams wants to change the way people think about 3-D” – The Globe and Mail
- “Kevin Jerome Everson” – Bomb Magazine
- “Roger Beebe” – The Brooklyn Rail
- “Shambhavi Kaul” – The Brooklyn Rail
Quarry
Dir. by Amram Nowak and Meredith Monk
A typically difficult-to-classify multimedia piece by Monk.UT Downtown Gallery
Toward Mathilde
Dir. by Claire Denis
A documentary portrait of choreographer Mathilde Monnier.UT Downtown Gallery
One Day Pina Asked…
Dir. by Chantal Akerman
A remarkable collaboration between two of the finest artists of the late-20th century at their creative peaks.UT Downtown Gallery
A Dancer’s World
Dir. by Peter Glushanok
Historian John Mueller has called it “one of the most beautiful dance films ever made.”UT Downtown Gallery
The Society at Black Pond
Dir. by Jessica Rinland
Three films that explore the activity within a common land in the south of England.UT Downtown Gallery
