aGLIFF

AGLIFF rolls on at the Regal Arbor theater this week and through Saturday, with a couple of can't-miss screenings (at least from my perspective on the closing afternoon/evening).

First up at noon on Saturday it's the "My Gay Movie" program, the results of a competition that challenged filmmakers to create a 10-minute short with a "queer sensibility." The top ten shorts are on display here and several of the directors are in attendance. Particularly curiosity-piquing titles include Potato/Potata (Jude Potato is a 2-year-old's toy, but dreams of being a celebrated Austin DRAG KING) and Gaydar (a man with "gaydar" contemplates the benefits for him, if everyone had it, to the obvious degree he has it).

At 6:30 pm the festival presents Poltergay, a horror comedy that actually promises a few laughs. As a rule horror comedies tend to flub one half of the equation or the other, and from the looks of the trailer I'd have to say that Poltergay is probably a little light on the creepy, but one can probably trust the French to make jokes about homosexual ghosts from the '70s without pulling any punches.

View the entire aGLIFF schedule for the rest of the week here.

If you're a film geek, September and October are pretty great months to live in Austin. Within the space of five weeks there will be nearly five hundred different features and shorts on display, many of them well outside the mainstream and which won't be screening again in Austin for months -- if ever. Here's a quick guide to the three big festivals of the Fall in the capital of Texas.

Fantastic Fest (Sept. 20-27)

In their words: "Fantastic Fest is a week-long festival featuring the best in new science-fiction, fantasy, horror, animation, crime, Asian, and all around badass cinema."

What they play: Fantastic Fest has tighter focus than its cousins and (potentially) more bang for the buck if you're into genre film. Fantastic Fest is the place to see the weird, the wonderful, the what-the-eff-was-that movies of the yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Claim to fame: Organized by Tim and Karrie League of the Alamo Drafthouse and programmed by such guiding lights as Matt Dentler (SxSW), Lars Nilsen (Weird Wednesday), and Harry Knowles (Ain't It Cool News), Fantastic Fest has geek cred coming out the wazoo. The Leagues pull out all the stops to get the festival's filmmakers into town for the show. If the names Bruce Campbell and Shusuke Kaneko aren't familiar, however, you might not care about the celebrity-types wandering the Alamo halls during this festival. Though I guess Mel Gibson did pull a surprise appearance last year, so who knows?

Visit the Fantastic Fest website.

The Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) is offering filmmakers a chance to get some work seen by a whole lot of people in town. You can enter the festival's Movie Trailer Competition by submitting a short of three minutes or less that embodies this year's festival theme: "We Speak Film." The deadline for submitting trailers to aGLIFF for the competition is August 15.

If you've been to aGLIFF or any other film festival, you know the type of short film needed -- the "in-house" trailer that promotes the festival as a whole. There's always one shown before every film, although aGLIFF rotates several in-house trailers so you don't get sick of seeing that same one over and over (just typing this has stuck an annoying tune used by a repetitive trailer at a certain local film fest in my head ... arrrrgh). If your trailer is selected, aGLIFF will show it in rotation before festival films this year, and you also get a film festival pass. 

Finally, a quick congrats to the brand-new staff at aGLIFF this year: Lucas Schaefer is the festival's Executive Director, and Lisa Kaselak is the new Programming Director. aGLIFF takes place this year from Sept. 28 through Oct. 6.

Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) is in need of a new Executive Director and a Programming Director. I'm not sure how they're going to find anyone as good as Lonny and Mo, but the festival board is certainly trying. I've seen ads posted for both these positions on Craigslist multiple times. Paid film festival positions in Austin? I'm surprised there isn't a stampede. If you're interested in either position, full job descriptions are available on the aGLIFF website.

I did some volunteer work for aGLIFF last year while I was between full-time jobs, and enjoyed the overall atmosphere as well as the board members and other volunteers I worked with. It's the most social film festival I've attended in Austin -- you've got to love a festival where before every movie, someone stands up in front to tell you about all the after-parties. The deadlines aren't posted for these jobs, so apply now if you're thinking about it.

Coupla news bites from the Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival . . .

First up, aGLIFF presents the documentary Tupperware! at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown on December 10th, complete with a demo of the latest and greatest from Tupperware presented by a local T-ware rep. For a synopsis and more info check the Tupperware page on AGLIFF's site.

aGLIFF also presents the "My Gay Movie" (MGM) challenge, which not only throws down the gauntlet to filmmakers with a "queer sensibility," but also provides inexpensive "filmmaking workshops and access to cameras, computers, and editing software" in order to do so. There's no word (yet) on their site about what they're offering in the way of prizes, but even just the bragging rights are worth entering, especially if you already have a short produced. See the MGM Challenge page.

If anyone ever asks you what's so special about the Austin film community, take them to one of the free midnight screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown. Terror Thursday is a good choice for horror fans, though Weird Wednesday is usually a better choice for those looking for the cinematically absurd as a form of entertainment. This week's Terror Thursday, however, was pure gold: Raw Force is a tour de force that combines cannibalism, the undead, kung-fu, and the '80s sex comedy in a way that can't help but delight. You can read my full review over at Blue Glow.

Fantastic Fest ended on Thursday night. aGLIFF (Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival) started on Friday night. I'm simply thankful they didn't overlap, as I have covered/am covering both for Cinematical. None of my aGLIFF reviews have gone live yet -- expect to see one or two on Tuesday, and a few more throughout the week. Hopefully I'll have time to post a few notes and observations here as well.

I promised you Fantastic Fest photos, and then the Cinematical editors asked if I would publish the photos there. They pay me, so check out my Fantastic Fest photoblog entry for the best pictures I took. There are still a few left that I'll probably post to Flickr soon -- I'll be sure to let you know.

All my Fantastic Fest reviews for Cinematical are published, so here's the list:

• Gamerz
• Frostbite
• Tideland
• The Hamster Cage
• Bug
• Starfish Hotel
• Blood Tea and Red String
• The Woods
  

I'm reviewing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Fantastic Fest's opening-night film, but that review won't go live until the movie releases in theaters this Friday.

I also saw Pan's Labyrinth, Shiva, The Host, Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, and Severance, all of which I'd like to review either here or at Celluloid Eyes. And who knows? Perhaps someday I will.

Ameliorating somewhat my lingering feelings of selfish bitterness at having to forgo Funky Forest in favor of Apocalypto, tonight's super-secret screening at Fantastic Fest at least had the advantage of being an actual genre movie: Pan's Labyrinth. Everyone in the audience seemed to know that we'd be seeing P.L. before they walked into the theater, and emcee Harry Knowles acknowledged that fact by calling it the worst-kept secret of the Fest. Knowles also delivered an amusing in-character version of an e-mail message from director Guillermo Del Toro who was unable to attend.

I'm posting the link to this week's News from Slackerwood entry on Cinematical pretty late, I know. I spent the weekend in New Orleans and just plain forgot about Slackerwood. Looking at the Lower Ninth Ward in person will do that to you. Many of the screenings and events in the entry haven't occurred yet, so there's still time to check them out.

Of all the film events scheduled this week, the one I would particularly recommend is aGLIFF's Filmmaker Series on Wednesday night at the Arbor, which is spotlighting local filmmaker Alpha. I know Alpha personally so I am a little biased. The feature film being shown is Chronicles of Halcyon (shown above), which I reviewed for Celluloid Eyes last year. I haven't seen either of the two shorts, and I wish I could go on Wednesday night so I could have a look. (A friend of mine plays Jesus in one of the shorts, I think Drive.)