“Ain’t No Place,” a music video which Clarksdale’s Coop Cooper filmed, will be in the upcoming Oxford Film Festival scheduled for Feb. 6 to 10.
The video is with Lightnin Malcolm playing the song “Ain’t No Place” and was made in the spring of 2016 and aired in the 2018 Clarksdale Film Festival. Lightnin Malcolm does hill country blues music, is with the North Mississippi Allstars, which is an American southern rock/blues band from Hernando and currently resides in Holly Springs.
“Ain’t No Place” will be part of a movie with a block of videos Mississippi filmmakers put together from 10:30 to midnight at the Malco Oxford Commons Cinema Grill on Friday, Feb. 8.
“We shot most of it at Shack Up Inn, here and there around town,” Cooper said. “Really, Malcolm was the one who directed it. He had a really clear vision for what he wanted. I really just ran around with the camera, did what he said. It turned out alright. All I did was shoot it. I didn’t direct it necessarily. I didn’t edit it, but he wanted it in the festival, so I was able to get it in that one.”
“Ain’t No Place” is a little more than five minutes and Cooper did not know at what point in the movie the film would be shown during the hour and a half block at the Oxford Film Festival and other videos that are expected to be included.
“It just depends. This is a block that they created specifically for Mississippi music filmmakers,” Cooper said. “They do it every year and it’s usually late at night during the party. It’s just convenient. You usually see the same suspects in there every year with a new video.”
Cooper’s cousin, John Hearne, who was attending Ole Miss in the spring of 2016, helped him film the video. Someone else edited it after the filming.
Cooper won a special “jury prize” for his film “Prisma” at the 2017 Oxford Film Festival. “Prisma” is an animated horror film.
“Thrasher Road,” partially filmed in Clarksdale, will also be playing at the Oxford Film Festival earlier in the night on Friday, Feb. 8 at the Malco Oxford Commons Cinema Grill. Former mayor Bill Luckett had a small part where he picked up one of the main characters while hitchhiking and talked to him for a few minutes before dropping him off at Ground Zero Blues Club.
The Clarksdale Film Festival is scheduled for Jan. 25-26. Cooper is heavily involved in the Clarksdale and Oxford film festivals and does not have a preference between the two.
“You can’t compare them,” Cooper said. “They’re two totally different festivals. Clarksdale Film Festival is more of a Mississippi blues-oriented festival. Oxford Film Festival is more of a broader generalized film festival, but it seems to be focusing a little more on social justice these years, Civil Rights and things like that.”
