New Orleans Film Festival: Top 5 Picks For Thursday, October 20

The New Orleans Film Festival concludes today after a week of many excellent films and even some music. Knowing how hard it is to catch all the films one wants to, the festival is showing a trio of encore screenings.

Flood Streets second line. Photo by Kim Welsh.

Second line filmed for Flood Streets. Photo by Kim Welsh.

First is the “Best of the Shorts” at 6 p.m. at the Contemporary Arts Center, where you can see the short film winners at Sunday’s festival jury awards: Benny, Best Narrative Short; Broken Doors, Best Documentary Short; The Lady ParaNormal, Best Animated Short; The Voyagers, Best Experimental Short; Chasing Dreams: A Leah Chase Story, Best Louisiana Documentary Short; and Destiny Lives Down the Road, Best Louisiana Narrative Short.

The excellent local film Flood Streets, about life, struggle, and hustle in downtown New Orleans a year after Katrina, is being shown at the Contemporary Arts Center at 8 p.m. for those who missed its sold-out screening Sunday. The third encore screening—Vigilante, Vigilante: The Battle for Expression—has some local flavor as well. The documentary about the fight between graffiti artists and the anti-graffiti activists who paint over their work in plain white or grey features interviews with New Orleans’ infamous Grey Ghost, who has painted over Banksy works in the Marigny and has been arrested for painting over sanctioned, legal graffiti in New Orleans. It plays at the Prytania Theatre at 10:15 p.m.

Here are all of our 5 picks for the final evening of the New Orleans Film Festival.