Independent Film Curation Pioneer Honored With Namesake Award

Mary Jane Coleman launched the Sinking Creek Film Celebration in 1969 on her farm in East Tennessee, naming it after a stream on the property.

The event moved the following year to Tusculum College and, in 1973, Vanderbilt University. In 1998, her celebration was renamed the Nashville Independent Film Festival, which was later shortened in 2003 to the Nashville Film Festival.

At this year's edition of the Nashville Film Festival, which runs September 24th through the 30th, a new award will be presented to one of the participating female filmmakers. The Mary Jane Coleman Award is designed to recognize the maker of an officially selected short or feature that "demonstrates innovation, a distinctive creative perspective and a collaborative spirit within the filmmaking process."

There will also be a companion exhibit about Coleman's early film festival efforts put on by the 2026 NashFilm Creators Conference, which runs concurrently with the festival. The "Sinking Creek Exhibition" has tapped Vanderbilt University's Special Collections and University Archives to showcase historic artifacts and photographs from the spark for what remains the longest continuously running film festival in the U.S. South.

Coleman, who died in 2010 at the age of 86, was no stranger to awards herself. In 2004, Tusculum College bestowed her with a "Woman of Courage" Award. In another full circle moment, among those praising her at the event was Rich Boyd, executive director of the Tennessee Arts Commission. Coleman was appointed to that organization at the very outset, when it was launched in 1967.

"She was always inviting you in," Boyd said. "She was 'Southern hospitality' at its very best. She was also ahead of her time. The more avant-garde a film was, the better she liked it."

"Mary Jane was so accepting of everyone," he added. "She was sort of a messiah for independent filmmaking when we didn't know what she was talking about. She was passionate about it, even before Sundance and other major film festivals."

It will all kick off on Thursday September 24th when the festival hosts a "Celebration of Female Filmmakers" at Hooky Entertainment beginning at 4 p.m. The jurors for the first annual Mary Jane Coleman prize are Jessica Driver, Mariah Kramer and Karen Shane.

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any specific list of the individual films shown at the inaugural Sinking Creek Film Celebration in 1969. It would be such a trip to mull the titles Coleman highlighted that launch year.

[2026 Nashville Film Festival]

Update:

The winner of the inaugural Mary Jane Coleman Award is Liz Sargent for her film Take Me Home. The drama, about a 38-year-old Korean woman taking care of her parents in Florida, is an expansion of Sargent's 2023 Sundance Film Festival short.