Fledgling film festival aims to bring Hollywood money to Eastern N.C.

By Bill Holmes, NC Rural Center Sr. Director of Communications

Beyond a red carpet lined with posters for Hollywood movies big and small, tuxedoed men and women in beaded ball gowns slipped through a metal door in the corner of a shell building near downtown Windsor at dusk.

Inside they joined about 80 others for the opening event of the inaugural Pecan Pickling Film Festival. Patricia Ferguson, a former Bertie County commissioner and a former NC Rural Center board member, drove the festival to life over the past year, pushed by the belief that film and arts draw jobs and money. The Rural Center was among the sponsors of the three-day event on September 8-10, hoping to support Ferguson’s interest in building the film economy of northeastern North Carolina.

“Filmmakers are the creators,” Ferguson told the opening night crowd. “Investors need to invest.”

Ferguson made up the name of the festival to honor her family – delicious pecan pies were a favorite of her late sister and her grandmother was a master pickler. Several members of her family – including her two sons who left North Carolina to work in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles – surrounded her at the festival. Together with local politicians, artists, and other supporters, they watched films such as “Freedom Hill” – a documentary by Resita Cox, a Kinston native and UNC-Chapel Hill graduate – that explores how environmental racism is erasing the historic town of Princeville. Other films included: “Run,” an examination of untreated mental illness; “Parallel,” a film about teen sexual abuse: and a short comedy called “I Mustache You” about a woman with mental health challenges.?

As the credits rolled on one film, Ferguson pointed at the screen: “Look at all the jobs. Look at all the jobs.”

The film festival received nearly 70 entries, more than Ferguson said she could hope for in its initial year. Many of them screened at Bertie High School to an estimated 300-400 people who attended the weekend festival. Most were local, but a few people trickled in from outside of the community, including one in a ten-gallon cowboy hat and suspenders showing off pictures of him working as a stand-in for movie star Sam Elliott.?

Ferguson’s son, Joshua “J” Ferguson, taught an impromptu class on improvisational acting that drew dozens of people. J Ferguson works as an actor, filmmaker and director, but this weekend he was just here to support his mother. He was thrilled with what she had pulled together.

“I think it’s going to grow, not only the energy for it, but it’s like planting a seed,” he said.

North Carolina already has a history of filmmaking with 74 productions spending more than $258 million and creating an estimated 16,000 jobs in 2022, according to the N.C. Department of Commerce. Northeastern North Carolina has had a taste of success also in recent years with films such as “Raising Bertie” and the work of filmmaker James Jones, who filmed most of his movie “Freedom North Carolina” at Hope Plantation in Bertie County.

D’Aja Fulmore of Pollocksville, who has a master’s degree in social work and says she still works her day job, has also gained attention in the past few years after she was inspired to film a story she had developed. The result was the film “Crossover,” a hit on the entertainment platform Tubi. She went on to win a deal for a sequel, “Crossover: The Revenge,” that is set to premiere soon.

“If you don’t have money, it’s OK,” Fulmore said during a coaching session Ferguson arranged for aspiring filmmakers looking for tips. “If you have a roadmap, they will invest.”

Ferguson is planning her own sequel now – the next iteration of the film festival in fall 2024. She seems to have won the support of her community for the idea, too.

“Every successful event starts somewhere,” Bertie County Commissioner Ron Wesson told the black-tie crowd Friday night. “This is just the beginning.”