Watching a movie about the South is sometimes the best way to experience a Southern summer. In its air-conditioned auditorium, the Georgia Museum of Art will host a Southern film series, comprised of four films that complement the Southern photography of John Baeder, now on exhibit through July 22.Â
Baeder is a photo-realist painter famous for his depictions of aging buildings that have an air of neglect or Southernness, or both. Some of the buildings in the stark photographs (which he uses as source material for his paintings) are in disrepair, standing uncertain as their past glory recedes in the face of current neglect. Baeder is also fascinated by commercial signage and the facades of old American diners, or as his website states, that “unique and rapidly disappearing icon of American roadside culture.”
The rapidly disappearing aspect of many Southern culinary traditions is what Maryann Byrd, director of the first film in the series, The Rise of the Southern Biscuit, chronicles in her 30-minute documentary about biscuit-makers in the South.Â
Maryann Bird, director of “The Rise of the Southern Biscuit.”
She says, “When I would interview people about the biscuit, their eyes would light up and they would start talking about their mother or their grandmother, or someone in their family that used to make biscuits, and I realized, ‘Well, now this is a powerful thing, this memory of biscuits,’ and we’re losing it in the South as people go to frozen biscuits.”Â
A biscuit-making contest will take place before the film at 6 p.m., with the efforts of five local restaurants (Five Star Day Café, Strickland’s Restaurant, Heirloom Café, Mama’s Boy and Peaches Fine Foods) up to the discrimination of Charles Doyle, a UGA associate English professor and fodway expert.
“In my judgment, a biscuit should be slightly crispy on the outside and slightly soft on the inside—flaky, of course, or subtly layered, at least for rolled-out biscuits,” Doyle says.
The three other films in the series are Waitress (June 14), Junebug (June 21) and Diner (June 28); all films start at 7 p.m. The first film screening and the biscuit-tasting take place at 6 p.m. on June 7 in the M. Smith Griffith Auditorium in the museum. The event and films are free and open to the public.
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