Awards

I'll write more about the Texas Film Hall of Fame awards ceremony later, and my baptism by fire into the world of professional photography. But I'm short on time this morning -- gotta get to the Paramount -- so I'll whet your appetite with one of my favorite photos from last night. Somehow, Morgan Fairchild ended up on the red carpet at the same time as ZZ Top, and they all gathered together happily for group shots. I worried my lens wasn't wide-angle enough, but I just managed to get everyone in the photo. Woo-hoo! Now let SXSW begin.

Everyone's been running around this week predicting Oscars and planning Oscar parties and wondering if Jon Stewart is going to be very funny as this year's host. But that's not the only award show taking place this weekend.

Film Independent's Spirit Awards (which I always call the Indie Spirit awards because I'm lazy) will be held Saturday afternoon, the day before the Oscar broadcast. You can watch the ceremony on IFC starting at 4 pm our time, or tune in early for a red-carpet event beforehand that's televised beginning at 1:30. If you're a Matt Dentler groupie, you're in luck because the SXSW film-fest head is one of this year's red-carpet hosts.

If you don't have cable (like me) or enjoy watching awards with a big group, head over to the Austin Studios screening room on Saturday afternoon for Austin Film Society's viewing party, starting at 4 pm. AFS will have snacks, drinks, and a lot of love for the local filmmakers who are up for awards. A list of Austinites whose films are in the running is on the AFS page. Best of luck!

The Indie Spirit Award nominations were announced today. I found one Austin-related surprise: Chalk is nominated for the John Cassavetes award, which is given to the best feature made for under $500K. Chalk, a feature film about an average school year from the point of view of the teachers, was shot in Austin. The movie was directed by Mike Akel and co-written by Akel and Chris Mass. It's been winning awards left and right at film festivals this year, including the narrative feature audience award at Austin Film Festival. I saw Chalk at AFF this year (review here) and thought it was a lot of fun to watch, especially in an audience full of teachers. Let's hope this nomination helps the film secure distribution.

If you've been to the Austin Film Festival, you're familiar with the little ballots they hand out after each screening. Those ballots get counted up by hand when the Festival's done, and the result is the AFF Audience Awards. (Sponsored this year by Time Warner/IFC, yo. I worked for the Festival this year so I feel obligated to shout out to the sponsors.)

I'll list them after the jump, but you can also click straight over to the AFF site to see a nice list with links to the individual film pages.

The Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund (TFPF) 2006 winners were announced this week. TFPF annually awards grants and materials to filmmakers who need the money to shoot, complete, or distribute their films: mostly short narratives and documentaries, but often feature-length films too.

If you're not a filmmaker, you may not feel very interested in the list. However, it's a helpful sneak peek at the films that you might hear about in the next year or two, whether they're shown in local venues or manage to make the leap to Sundance or other big festivals.

Many of the names are familiar to me: prolific cinematographer P.J. Raval (Gretchen, The Cassidy Kids) received a grant to finish his documentary Best Kept Secret, Jenn Garrison (Prizewhores) was awarded money for her short doc Greg, and Austin Chronicle film writer Toddy Burton got a grant to film a short The Aviatrix. I went to grad school with Sandra Guardado, although I haven't seen her since, so it was nice to see she received a grant for the documentary Two Trinities.

Local filmmaker Bryan Poyser (Dear Pillow, The Cassidy Kids) knows more about the Austin film scene than I do, so he provided even more details about the grant winners on his blog. Unfortunately, Poyser didn't get a grant for his short Best Birthday Ever, but I'm hoping he's able to finish and publicize it anyway ... and that it'll screen in Austin eventually. The short film stars local actor/filmmaker Rusty Kelley (who was one of the TFPF winners) and Chicago filmmaker Joe Swanberg (Kissing on the Mouth, LOL).

Congratulations to Austin filmmaker Steve Collins, who won the Target Filmmaker Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival for his feature Gretchen. IndieWIRE has the details on the award, including a photo of Collins accepting from Virginia Madsen.

Collins' response to the win? "Thank you very much. I'll go shop at Target now!"

I saw Gretchen during its premiere at SXSW earlier this year, and reviewed it for Cinematical. I hope the movie plays in Austin again soon. A few people have asked me how it compares to Welcome to the Dollhouse, which is also about a teenage loser girl, and my embarrassed reply is that I haven't yet seen Welcome to the Dollhouse. I know, I know.