Leslie Ann Epperson is happy but matter-of-fact about her documentary “Many Bones, One Heart” launching the Arizona International Film Festival.
“I’m very pleased, but I think it should because it’s a story about Tucsonans,” says Epperson.
“It’s a story about Tucson and the culture and the place.”
The documentary traces the history of the All Souls Procession. This year marks the 26th for the grassroots event. Epperson began the project about four years ago. Initially, it was going to cover several years.
“After research and development, I decided I needed to focus on one season. It’s different from year to year.”
She zeroed in on the 2012 festival, though bits and pieces from earlier processions are in it. As are extensive interviews with the founders, participants, city officials and others. Epperson’s film covers the preparations, which start in September, to the day after the festival.
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“We have an unusually generous and active and creative culture in Tucson,” she says. “I think people will like seeing it. It’s from different points of view; it’s Tucson in different times of day. I didn’t realize it when I started that what it is is a story about place.”
The original score for the movie was created and played by the local band, Missing Parts.
Epperson can’t even estimate how much footage she had to whittle down to end up with the 80-minute film — “Hours and hours and hours,” she says — and laughs when asked her budget. “This is a DYI film about a DYI event.”
Helping her finance it were funds from the Tucson Pima Arts Council and the Southwestern Foundation for Education and Historical Preservation.
“It’s a story about using art to process grief, which attracted me (to the event) in the first place,” says Epperson.
“The heart of it is the very human need to celebrate and grieve and share how much we love and how that heals us.”
Epperson is hoping filmgoers will dress festively — in the spirit of the All Souls Procession — for the opening. Missing Parts will provide live music.
The film is 7 p.m. Thursday at The Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress St., and is shown again at noon on Saturday at The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress.
