Beifuss on the coming week of local indies

Here's John Beifuss' story on the Li'l Film Festival, "Divine Manipulation of the Threads" and Christopher Reyes' "My Memphis", all coming up within the next week.

Excerpts:

Is it evidence of a thriving local film community or just coincidence? Either way, supporters of independent cinema have plenty of choices to make this week.

Want to watch Baptist Hospital implode, again and again? Who doesn't? That's the idea behind the extremely entertaining "Lil' Film Fest," a theme-based mini-festival presented by Live from Memphis, a Web site (livefrommemphis.com) that offers extraordinary locally produced shorts and music videos. The hourlong mini-fest will showcase 13 short films -- ranging from 57 seconds to a few minutes in length -- that each incorporate footage from the Nov. 6 early-morning demolition of Union Avenue's Baptist Memorial Hospital.

Produced by Rusted Sun Films, the new made-in-Memphis feature "Divine Manipulation of the Threads" gets a four-day booking Monday through Thursday at the Studio on the Square (filling the no-budget indie void left by the International Film Festival, which ends Sunday).

A sort of combination of "Ocean's Eleven" and "Reservoir Dogs," "Divine Manipulation" -- named for a phrase in Sun-Tzu's "The Art of War" -- represents a Hulk-length leap in quality over Rusted Sun's previous films "The Visitor" and "A Cowboy's Silver Lining," both of which achieved some success on the local festival circuit.

Filmmaker Christopher Reyes -- the mastermind behind Live from Memphis -- debuts his 45-minute film "My Memphis" at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Malco's Paradiso.