From Sundance to Spa City: Hot Springs 2023

“Everything old is new again” was the phrase that kept coming to mind during this year’s 32nd edition of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival (October 6–14). The first time I attended the Arkansas festival was for the 22nd edition, a much smaller affair. Southern hospitality and charm, it seems, cannot be outgrown in Hot Springs. That sentiment applied to the inaugural two-day Filmmaker Forum, a refreshingly laidback series of panels and one-on-one meetings that took place at the Arlington Hotel, a nearly 150-year-old structure that has long hosted the “longest-running all-documentary film festival in North America.” The Arlington has also hosted everyone from Al Capone to Hot Springs homeboy Bill Clinton, who ensconced himself and his entourage in a private suite to catch a Razorbacks game the sole year I took the role of Hot Spring’s director of programming, causing a wave of autograph hounds to clear out that afternoon’s screening.

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