Kentucky Show! is a 32-minute long film that is shown in a 100-seat theater at the Kentucky Center for the Arts. The film is both entertaining and informational, a must-see for visitors to Louisville and residents of Kentucky alike.
Review
When I was in fourth grade, I was given an assignment to write a report about the state of Kentucky. My report was as much as you'd expect from a 10-year-old: encyclopedic passages featuring bland facts about the official state bird and flower. Still, I became fascinated with learning about my home state, and even today I spend at least an hour every day reading about both Kentucky and Louisville.
So, when I decided to head out to the Kentucky Center for the Arts one afternoon to watch KentuckyShow!, I was skeptical that it would provide me with any new information about the state. In addition to that, I hate watching PBS and the History Channel for the most part, so I was sure I'd be bored to tears. Still, I'd been hearing whispers about it all over town and thought that there must be something good about it in order to create so much hype.
KentuckyShow! plays in what was the Kentucky Center's smoking lounge pre-Louisville smoking ban. When you first walk into the room, the rows of chairs and wall of windows facing a screen about half the size of a traditional movie theater screen give the appearance more of a conference hall than a movie theater. However, after a few minutes you hear a rumbling that you soon realize is blinds lowering over the windows in the rear of the room. When the blinds all hit the floor, the movie begins. The room is pitch black, and the screen is all you can see.
KentuckyShow! is a 32-minute long movie about Kentucky. It covers every aspect of the state, everything from its history to its present, what it's known for and what secrets it holds. The most striking aspect of the film is the way so many beautiful images of the state are sewn together to illustrate the narrative. Paintings, photographs, drawings, and film clips flash across the screen presenting breathtaking shots of Kentucky landscapes.
What I enjoyed most about the film, however, is the way it so accurately depicts Kentucky's many different cultures. Kentucky is a state that is so often stereotyped as having nothing more than coal mines and horse farms. Yes, we do have those things, but there's also the Midwestern-city feel of Louisville, the historical ambiance of Lexington, the traditional southern tone of the swamplands. KentuckyShow! so accurately presents the diversity of Kentucky life that even visitors should leave the show with a good idea of what it means to live in Kentucky.
Near the end of the film, the screen widens, showing three and four distinct pictures at once. There's a 3-D effect when horses race toward the seats, growing larger and larger until even those in the back row feel as though they're going to be trampled. And I was, in a way, trampled with emotion while watching the crowd at Churchill Downs sing "My Old Kentucky Home." I remembered back in fourth grade after we all turned in our reports we created a play based on what we learned. The end of the play featured the entire fourth-grade class belting "My Old Kentucky Home" at the top of our lungs. As I heard it sang again on the film, I felt proud and happy that I never left home.
