The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival is wrapping up its America250 Screening Series tonight with eight short documentary films to be shown at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, 200 Whittington Ave., at 7 p.m.
The films will be shown on the second floor of the school’s Creativity and Innovation Complex, and there will be free popcorn and sweet tea for attendees.
“This is the fourth and final one,” Ken Jacobson, the executive director of the festival, said. “So we actually just did the third one on Saturday in Fayetteville, and now we’re doing the final one (today) back here at home. The goal was to complete the series before the Fourth (of July).”
The first three screenings, held in Pine Bluff, Little Rock and Fayetteville, were of feature-length films, but Jacobson said he and the programmers wanted to showcase the short films that are so important to the festival.
“I think it’s a nice mix of films, and because they’re shorts, it’s just easier on the attention span,” he said. “That’s the other thing, the other three were feature docs, and we really wanted — because shorts are such an important part of what we do — to showcase our shorts over the years. … I’ll just also say it has gave me the opportunity, and our team, to go back over all the program guides from the last 35 years and just learn about all the programs over the years and some of the cool films that they showed.”
A man stands at the bar at Club Bahaia in this still from “Stud Country,” one of eight documentary shorts to be shown at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts tonight at the final stop on the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival’s America250 Screening Series. (Courtesy HSDFF)
Today’s screening will open with “A Long Season,” the longest of the eight films at 25 minutes that was shown at the 1996 festival. The other shorts include “49?” (2004), “Solo, Piano” (2012), “Gnarly in Pink” (2014), “Zain’s Summer” (2016), “Quilted Education” (2023), “Stud Country” (2024) and “The Changebaker” (2025).
“It’s about a Little League season for a league in Jacksonville, Arkansas, and it’s primarily from the point of view of one of the boys on the team and also his relationship with his coach, who’s also his dad,” Jacobson said of the first film, which was directed by Dale Carpenter. “So it’s a really lovely film, and I thought it was just a perfect fit for the series, because it’s baseball, America’s game. And it fits perfectly with a long, lazy summer is kind of the tone of it, and it’s a nice father-son story.”
Jacobson said the screening is expected to be the last event before this year’s festival, which is celebrating its 35th year.
“We’ve invited a few films, so that process has begun,” he said. “And our programmers are meeting regularly and watching a lot of films, as is our screening committee, and me, too. We’ve got some irons in the fire as far as potential gala screenings and honorees and guests.”
This year’s festival is set for Oct. 9-17.
Manolo Betancur, a Columbian native and owner of Manolo’s Bakery in Charlotte, North Carolina, is shown in this still from “The Changebaker,” one of eight documentary shorts to be shown at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts tonight at the final stop on the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival’s America250 Screening Series. (Courtesy HSDFF)