This special screening will be a night celebrating Jim Herbert’s first masterpiece film, Carnival. Herbert would go on to produce iconic videos for R.E.M. and the B-52s. The original 16mm master tapes were spotlessly digitized by UGA Special Collections. The audio, originally recorded by Mitch Easter at his soon-to-be-famous Drive-In studio in Winston-Salem, has been remixed by David Barbe and mastered by Jason Nesmith at Chase Park Transduction. Video edited by Henry Owings. A special Q&A with Owings will be hosted by Lars Gotrich from NPR.

The landmark movie Athens GA: Inside/Out was the first to aggressively announce the town’s unmatched musical presence to a wider audience. Pylon. Love Tractor. The B-52s. R.E.M. The names that were tossed around in the movie have endured, but the most glaring missing piece of the Athens puzzle is the band that’s featured for less than 30 seconds in the movie: Limbo District.

The brief clip of Limbo District from Inside/Out was taken from the 1982 short film Carnival, which was itself the filming of a photo shoot. The original premise, a 1920s-era German Expressionist Circus on respite during their travels across the European countryside, was hatched between the band and Atlanta photographer Marlys Lenz Cox, as the premise for her final M.F.A. project at Georgia State University. Cox’s theatrical and romantic photographic style shows in the photos from that day’s shoot, and she chose five photographs to hand-color for public display. Invited along for the day by band member Jeremy “Jerry” Ayers was then-UGA professor James “Jim” Herbert, who brought his camera to film and offer additional direction to the fit, sensual, and malleable musical cast. Filmed at a countryside lake outside of Athens, Carnival was the debut music video of then-UGA professor James Herbert, who would go on to produce iconic videos for R.E.M. and the B-52s—just a small part of his illustrious career.