"The Grace Card," a faith-based film with Oscar-winner Louis Gossett Jr. that begins production in the Memphis area next week, is seeking African-American extras for a pair of big church scenes to be shot Oct. 17 and 24.

Interested parties should e-mail their contact information to thegracecard@ memphiscalvary.org or call 386-8988. The producers stress that extras should be willing to be on set for six to eight hours.

"The Grace Card" will be directed by David Evans, a veteran writer-director of "Passion Play" productions at Cordova's Calvary Church of the Nazarene, the congregation that helped form Graceworks Pictures. The movie stars actor/comedian Michael Joiner as a bitter Memphis police officer forced to confront his racism when he's brought together with an African-American pastor-cop.

OMG/DVD

Jokingly dubbed the "Titanic" of the 2008 Indie Memphis Film Festival after it captured most of the event's major awards, Memphis moviemaker Morgan Jon Fox's feature "OMG/HaHaHa" arrives on DVD on Tuesday from Water Bearer Films.

The movie's title is Internet slang for the phrase "Oh my God," followed by laughter.

A tender and impressionistic film structured as a series of video blog entries and stream-of-consciousness vignettes about families, friends, lovers and loners in Midtown Memphis, "OMG/HaHaHa" was named best "Hometowner" feature (devoted to films produced by residents of Memphis and Shelby County), and also earned four other competitive and special awards at the 2008 festival.

The 2009 Indie Memphis Film Festival is underway, and ends on Thursday at Malco's Studio on the Square.

Water Bearer is a company that specializes in art and foreign films, with an emphasis on films with gay themes. Significant directors in the Water Bearer catalogue include Britain's Mike Leigh and Italy's Pier Paolo Pasolini.

A pioneer in local digital filmmaking who has served as a mentor to many younger artists, Fox in July was named one of "25 New Faces in Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine, which called Fox "the voice of the YouTube generation."

-- John Beifuss: 529-2394