Austin Film Society

Every year, Austin Film Society awards grants to emerging film and video artists in the Lone Star State through the Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund (TFPF). Since its inception in 1996, the AFS has awarded over 300 grants, totaling over $1 million in cash and over $100,000 in goods and services to almost 300 projects. In addition to grants for production, post-production and distribution, the TFPF has provided approximately $21,000 in stipends to Texas filmmakers traveling to prestigious film festivals.

Past TFPF grant recipients have screened their films at renowned festivals around the world including Sundance, Cannes, and Toronto as well as right here in Austin at SXSW. One such project is Katrina's Son (pictured right), which was awarded a TFPF grant in 2008, then premiered at AFF last year and at the Cannes International Festival's Short Film Corner this year. Several TFPF-funded movies have been released theatrically and in the cable and home video markets. 

This year AFS received 208 applications, and at least $90,000 will be awarded in cash, goods and services to emerging filmmakers in Texas. AFS invites three distinguishd filmmakers from outside of Texas to participate in grant applications review. Members of this year's panel were recently announced, and include Independent Spirit Award nominee Barry Jenkins (Medicine for Melancholy), Sundance Institute producer-in-residence Anne Lai, and Independent Spirit Award-winner Ian Olds (Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi). During the panelists' visit to Austin for the review process, special screenings will be presented by Austin Film Society. Find out more and watch one of the featured short films after the jump.

One of my favorite movies from 2009 was St. Nick, a film from Dallas filmmaker David Lowery that I saw at SXSW that year. It is lovely and slow and rewarding and has very little dialogue, a description that I realize will cause some people to run away, but may intrigue others. A brother and sister run away from home and find a new place to live in an abandoned house -- and that's about it for story. The characters and their setting are the focus of the film.

St. Nick has had made a long and successful film-fest tour, but has not played in Austin since its festival screenings more than two years ago. Now, however, the Texas Independent Film Network is taking Lowery's feature on tour around the state. You can see it here in Austin on Saturday night, May 21, at 7:30 pm in the Austin Film Society screening room. (Lowery tells me that the first screening of St. Nick, in a rough cut, was at the AFS screening room, so this is quite fitting.) Tickets are available online through AFS.

Last week, Austin Film Society held a sneak preview of the movie Everything Must Go with a special guest: the film's star, Will Ferrell. You may remember he was here a couple of years ago for a screening of Semi-Pro in which everyone emulated the movie's keen fashion sense. This time, no terrycloth sweatbands were present.

Slackerwood wasn't there, but AFS and Roadside Attractions have graciously shared the above photo as well as some video from the event, which we've embedded after the jump. If you've got photos of your own, feel free to share a link in the comments. And if you missed the preview too, Everything Must Go opens tomorrow here in Austin. We'll have a review for you in the morning.

Of all the movies undergoing remakes, sequels, "reboots" and so forth, the last one I ever expected to get such treatment was the 1991 Richard Linklater film Slacker. But here we are, two decades after the movie premiered in Austin, and Austin Film Society and Alamo Drafthouse have teamed up to organize a remake ... sort of. Surprisingly, I'm not making the usual squinchy face of distaste that I do when I hear about remakes, which may have to do with the talent involved.

Slacker 2011 is not just a potential film, it's a project to raise money for the Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund (TFPF). Nearly two dozen local (or formerly local) filmmakers have signed up to re-create scenes from Slacker -- perhaps showing us how much Austin has changed in the last 20 years. Each filmmaker will re-shoot a scene in its original location, and the scenes will be edited together for Slacker 2011. The film will premiere on August 31 ... obviously not at the same theater where Slacker premiered, though (the now-defunct Dobie).

How does fundraising tie into this? You can donate money to the Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund and different levels give you different premiums, like the fundraising campaigns for indie films through Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. $50 gets you a ticket to the Slacker 2011 premiere and a thank-you on the AFS website; other levels offer autographed DVDs of both films, the chance to be an extra or have a speaking role in one of the Slacker 2011 scenes, and for $25K, Executive Producer credit.

The list of filmmakers is impressive if you know something about the Austin film community. However, I think it's unfair to make that assumption, or to leave you with nothing but a handful of IMDb links. Therefore, the bulleted list below provides a little more info about who these filmmaker are, what they've worked on, and if they themselves have benefitted from the TFPF program. It's a nice little tour of local filmmaking with some fascinating interconnections. I know more about some filmmakers than others, so if I've missed something notable, let me know in the comments.

If you share my interest in Austin film history, don't miss this week's screening of Eggshells, the first feature by Texas Chain Saw Massacre writer/director Tobe Hooper (pictured at right).

Made in Austin in 1969 with a cast of Hooper's friends, Eggshells is every bit a late 1960s film, a psychedelic drama about a group of students sharing a commune-like Austin house. Much of the film follows the students' typical activities -- this being 1969, many of them involve nudity and drug-fueled sociopolitical discussions -- but there also is an oddly mystical twist. In the basement is what Hooper describes as a "crypto-embryonic hyper-electric presence" that grows into a bulb-like form and manipulates the characters' lives.

Confused? So was I before I saw Eggshells last year, but fear not: It all makes sense -- sort of -- when you see the movie. While Eggshells is often quite bizarre, it's an intriguing film that shares many stylistic and thematic elements with Hooper's later work. It's also a dreamily nostalgic time capsule, a gloriously colorful document of life in late 1960s Austin. Fans of Austin-made independent cinema will find it fascinating.

Sponsored by Screen Door Film, the Austin Film Society and the Texas Independent Film Network, the Eggshells screening is on Friday, March 25 at 7:30 pm at the Austin Film Society Screening Room, 1901 East 51st St. Seating is very limited, so buy your tickets soon.

[Photo credit: "Tobe Hooper, Texas Film Hall of Fame 2009 Awards," by Jette Kernion]

I was going to do this big write-up about Austin films at SXSW, and Austin Film Society beat me to it on the Persistence of Vision blog. Thanks, Bryan, you did my work for me. Mosey on over there to see a comprehensive list of the Austin-connected films at SXSW this year.

Trying to pick which films to see from that list is hard, and I'm going to try to see them all, although I have to admit my personal favorite on that list is My Sucky Teen Romance, by Emily Hagins, which has such good buzz it's premiering at the Paramount. Watch this space for my interview with Emily over lunch at Olivia in South Austin this weekend. I unashamedly admit I’m not entirely objective, since I know Emily and quite a few people who worked on the film (not bragging, honest!) but when the SXSW film team chose the Paramount for very good reasons. It's Austin, indie, sending up pop culture, it's all good.

But wait! There's more! AFS announced the Austin Film Society ShortCase 2011, featuring AFS member shorts. If you aren't a festival veteran, you know that the shorts reels at Austin festivals are outstanding and SXSW is certainly no exception, and AFS isn't just a film appreciation society but an active association of filmmakers of all levels. This year's ShortCase includes The Man Who Never Cried, which you may remember Slackerwood's Debbie Cerda reviewed earlier this year. As I was researching this, I saw that Jackson worked on Script Cops, which played as bumpers for Austin Film Festival a few years ago. Hilarious stuff. Just remember that the shorts reels are very popular, so don't wait til the last minute to get to the venues when they play.

I mentioned this as my Movies This Week pick, but it's too good not to repeat. Tomorrow night, I hope you'll head over to Alamo Drafthouse at the Village for a special screening of Dig, a suspenseful and fascinating drama shot in Austin and South Texas. The screening is part of Austin Film Society's new Best of the Fests series -- Dig won the audience award at Austin Film Festival last year. It also screened at AFS in 2009 as a narrative in progress.

I will be moderating the Q&A after the movie with local filmmaker/instructor Stephen Belyeu. I hear that some other cast and crew members will be at the screening too, so it should be pretty lively.

You can buy tickets online through Austin Film Society for the Wednesday night screening and Q&A. I hope you'll come out ... and not heckle. Or ask what Belyeu's budget was. I know Slackerwood readers are highly intelligent people so I'd like you to see the movie and ask thoughtful questions. Check out the trailer after the jump, visit the official movie website, and I'll see you tomorrow evening.

An unsettling aspect of Gerald Peary's 2009 documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism is that so many of the critics interviewed are identified as "ex-critics" of print media such as The New York Times.

Yeah, things aren't so rosy for film critics these days, at least for critics seeking paychecks from traditional newspapers and magazines. Film criticism jobs are disappearing as fast as the classified advertising that once funded them. In the face of falling revenues and online competition, periodicals are jettisoning everything from foreign news bureaus to op-ed columnists to local arts coverage.

But all is not hopeless, as For the Love of Movies tells us. Film critics are adapting to the brave new media world, and as long they remain passionate about movies, the century-old tradition of reviewing them will continue.

The future of film criticism was no doubt on everyone's mind at a February 10 screening of For the Love of Movies presented by the Austin Film Society at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. Peary was in attendance for a brief post-screening Q&A, followed by a panel discussion moderated by UT professor Thomas Schatz and featuring local critics Marjorie Baumgarten of the Austin Chronicle, Charles Ealy of the Austin American Statesman, Slackerwood's own Jette Kernion, and Austin Film Critics Association founder and president Cole Dabney.

Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez and other famed Texas filmmakers may be household names now. But like most filmmakers, they launched their careers with low-budget, largely unseen short films.

Despite the later success of these Texas cinematic giants, their early works remain relatively obscure and are rarely screened. So, if you're a Texas movie buff like me, you won't want to miss the upcoming "Texas Legends, Before They Were Legends" program, which presents a collection of first short films from some of Texas' most successful and cherished filmmakers. Presented by the Texas Independent Film Network, Austin Film Society and Screen Door Film, the program includes the following films:

• Bottle Rocket (1992), by Wes Anderson. This short (pictured at right) is the basis for the full-length feature version of Bottle Rocket, released four years later.
• Styx (1976), by Jan Krawitz. This documentary is an impressionistic view of the Philadelphia subway system.
• Woodshock (1985), by Richard Linklater. This documentary captures the mayhem of the 1985 Woodshock Music Festival in Dripping Springs.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Austin Film Society is hosting a special screening of Gerald Peary's documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism with a panel of local film critics to discuss the film with Peary afterward. At the time, I didn't know who was on the panel, although I made a couple of guesses both publicly and privately. Interestingly enough, I was almost entirely wrong.

The panel, moderated by UT professor Tom Schatz, will include Marjorie Baumgarten from the Austin Chronicle; Korey Coleman from Spill; Cole Dabney, president of the Austin Film Critics Association; Charles Ealy from the Austin American-Statesman; and Jette Kernion from Slackerwood. Yes, I am on the panel. You can't possibly be more surprised than I was when I got the invitation. I'm pleased that AFS has put together such a varied group for the panel and I hope we'll have a lively time and that I won't say anything dumb.

The screening and panel will take place next Thursday, February 10, at 7 pm at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. You can buy tickets through AFS. You're all going to buy tickets, right? I can tell you're about to click that link and get some tickets right now.

I haven't seen For the Love of Movies since 2008, when Peary showed a rough cut to the Moving Image Institute in Film Criticism, which I was lucky enough to attend. So I'm looking forward to seeing the final version of this documentary. Some of it was shot at SXSW (I think in 2006?), so there's a bit of Austin in it. I can't wait for next Thursday.