AFF Announces First 10 Films in 2009 Lineup

Austin Film Festival is gearing up for the 2009 fest and screenwriters' conference, which takes place October 22-29 this year. They've just announced 10 films for the lineup, including Austin filmmaker Bob Byington's film Harmony and Me.

The comedy (pictured at right) has played a number of film fests this year, including CineVegas, LAFF and Traverse City Film Festival ... but not Austin yet. The cast includes Justin Rice (in the title role), Kevin Corrigan, now-local filmmaker Alex Karpovsky, musician Bob Schneider, and other Austin-area actors and filmmakers.

Robert Townsend's documentary Why We Laugh will also play the fest -- I caught a glimpse of Townsend at AFF last year and am glad to hear he's returning. (I'd share my photo of him but it's essentially a blur; he's a fast walker.) The documentary Tales from the Script, about screenwriting, is most appropriate for a film fest that has always had a focus on screenwriters.

My interest is also caught by the world premiere of The Scenesters, from writer/director Todd Berger. Berger's documentary Don't Eat the Baby, about Mardi Gras in post-Katrina New Orleans, played AFF in 2007. I reviewed the doc for Cinematical and am curious to see what Berger does with a comedy-mystery feature. The cast includes Berger, Sherilyn Fenn and John Landis.

Other films announced include Calvin Marshall, the feature-film debut for writer/director Gary Lundgren, whose short Wow and Flutter played AFF 2004; the drama La Mission; The Messenger, a war drama starring Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Samantha Morton and Jena Malone; Barry Levinson's doc PoliWood, about the 2008 national political conventions; Punching the Clown, an expansion of the Gregori Viens short On the Air that played AFF 2007, and which my Cinematical editor Erik Davis thinks is one of the funniest films this year; and the world premiere of Simmons on Vinyl, co-written and directed by Mark Potts (The Stanton Family Grave Robbery).

For more details on these films, check out the Austin Chronicle film blog Picture in Picture, where I found the news. We'll post more announcements about the lineup as info becomes available, and plan to cover the AFF conference and film-fest this year.