Local Film Fests

By Jeremy Simon

With its most recent festival, which ran from March 24 to 30 this year, the Austin Jewish Film Festival celebrated its 10th anniversary. Now that its one-decade milestone has been reached, AJFF founder David Goldblatt and his co-chair Cindy Pinto took a look back to refresh their memories and ours about just how far the festival has come.

Slackerwood: Describe the origins of the AJFF. When was the festival initially created and why?

David Goldblatt: Since I came to Austin in 1988, I had many discussions with people in the Jewish community about how we needed to have a Jewish film festival here. But it never happened. I got involved with the arts committee of my Synagogue, Agudas Achim, and [they] encouraged me to go to Jackson, Mississippi, to find out about starting a film festival.

In 2002, I went to Jackson to the Jewish Cinema South program of the Goldring Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life to learn how to do a Jewish Film Festival. When I got back, our committee -- Susan Broockman, Sandy Sack, and Elizabeth Fleschler -- got together to plan our first festival. It took place at the original Alamo Drafthouse on Colorado. We showed five films on four weeknights. We had to turn folks away on the opening night when we showed Shalom Y'all, a really fun history of the Jewish South along with contemporary stories. Brian Bain, the director, came and did our first Q&A. We had people sitting on the railing and in the aisles. It was an auspicious beginning. The following year Cindy Pinto came on as my co-chair.

Ongoing this week is the Austin Jewish Film Festival, which is taking place at the Regal Arbor Cinema (9828 Great Hills Trail).

The mission of AJFF is to "provide Central Texans with a collection of the best current Jewish films from around the world." Operating since 2001, the film festival offers Austin audiences a view into the vitality and variety of the Jewish experience.

Tonight -- Wednesday, March 28 -- is Polish Heritage Night, featuring the short HAMSA: The Pointed Question and the feature Joanna at 7 pm. Joanna (2010) details the story of a waitress in Krakow who brings home a seven-year-old girl to hide her from the Germans until her secret is discovered by an officer inspecting her apartment.

At 9 pm, AJFF presents Little Rose, a story of intrigue and a love triangle between a Polish policeman, his girlfriend, and the professor he has been assigned to investigate for collusion with western anti-communist groups.

The festival runs through Friday, March 30. Tickets are available at the theater. For more details about this year's AJFF selections, read Chale's preview.

The 10th annual Austin Jewish Film Festival starts this Saturday, March 24, and runs through March 30. In addition, the fest is hosting a special festival kickoff celebration: David Amram in concert on Thursday, March 22.

The fest includes 25 international feature films and shorts from Denmark, France, Israel, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, UK, and the U.S., which will be shown at Regal Arbor.

The AJFF Kickoff Celebration is a David Amram concert on March 22, presented at Congregation Agudas Achim on the Dell Jewish Community Campus (7300 Hart Lane) at 7:30 pm. Thanks to underwriting by the Austin Jewish Film Festival, concert tickets are only $10. This is a rare opportunity to see/hear this amazing musician.

Amram is also the subject of a documentary that will screen on opening night: David Amram, The First 80 Years. Amram and the documentary director will be present for a Q&A after the film.

The 81-year-old composer, musician, conductor and writer has explored and combined classical music, jazz, folk music, and world music. He has performed with other musical giants such as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hamton, Charles Mingus, Mary Lou Williams, Miles David, Nina Simone, Arturo Sandoval, and Stan Getz; with authors Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, Gregory Korso, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac; with film director Elia Kazan; and with actors Dustin Hoffman and Johnny Depp. There seems to be no limits to his musical abilities, and this concert promises to be a major event in Austin cultural history.

Many film fans in Austin care as much about activism as they do about movies. If you're passionate about both, you won't want to miss the Lights. Camera. Help. Film Festival.

The third annual installment of the festival, happening July 28-30, gives non-profit and cause-driven films well deserved attention by screening them in a theater setting. The festival is a non-profit event; all films are submitted for free, and all ticket sale proceeds go directly to the organizations that produce the winning films.

Lights. Camera. Help., the first festival of its kind, is the brainchild of Austinites David J. Neff, Aaron Bramley and Rich Vasquez.

As a craft beer enthusiast, my favorite show on the Discovery Channel this season is Brew Masters, which follows innovative and always entertaining Dogfish Head Brewery founder Sam Calagione as he travels across America and around the globe, exploring new ingredients and techniques for the next great brews often based on ancient traditions.

Calagione is no stranger to Austin -- he annually teams up with the the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema to host the Off-Centered Film Fest short film competition in Austin every April. This year is no exception and promises to be bigger than ever, with submissions for the festival currently being accepted. The early bird deadline is January 29, with a final deadline of March 1 to enter.

You do need a stinking badge, but do you need a stinking lanyard?

We're about to get back into local film festival season: aGLIFF and Fantastic Fest in September, Austin Film Festival in October, and Austin Asian American Film Festival in November (not to mention Lights. Camera. Help. last week as well as other fests around Central Texas). So lanyards -- which every festival badgeholder needs -- are on my mind, especially after throwing out so many of them before my recent move. 

Festival and conference badges come in all shapes and sizes, and you can find many, many lanyard styles out there to go with them, from cheap elastic strings to classic thin cords to fancy flat ribbons. But not all lanyards are created equal. This isn't apparent for people who don't attend a lot of conferences and festivals, but for those of us who do, that rope around your neck that grants you access can be as annoying as a noose.

I don't envy the judges of this year's second annual Lights. Camera. Help. Film Festival, which ran from last Thursday through Saturday. After viewing so many great non-profit and cause-driven films and PSAs representing worthy causes, I would have had a difficult time picking the best. Three winners for feature-length, short-form, and PSA films were selected from the pool of 33 finalists. The winners will receive the proceeds from this year's festival, which includes any donations made on the website during the festival season.

The feature winner, Including Samuel, portrays a family’s hopes and struggles as they engage their child Samuel (seen above with his brother Isaiah), who suffers from cerebral palsy. Although Samuel is the main subject, his father, filmmaker Dan Habib, delivers a well-balanced film by also documenting the experiences of four other individuals with disabilities. Alana Malfy, a high-school student, is part of Beyond Access, a University of New Hampshire pilot project working with public schools to fully include students who experience the most significant disabilities. Malfy benefits from the program but she also faces social challenges that daily test the patience and understanding of classmates and teachers.

The Lights. Camera. Help. Film Festival, which starts Thursday night, returns for its second year to spotlight films for a cause, and this year promises to be even more successful than last year's event. The number of cause-driven short film, videos, and PSAs jumped from last year's 140 to 235 entries in 2010. This festival has also expanded to a third day with new venues, including the Mexican American Culture Center, The Millenium Youth Center and Space 12.

LCH Film Festival attendees have the opportunity to see as many as 33 films and PSAs, and can also meet the filmmakers and representatives from the nonprofits involved. All proceeds from the festival go to the nonprofit associated with the winning film. Some of the diverse causes and topics spotlighted in thie year's films include public transportation, education, diseases, disaster relief in Peru and hunger in Texas.

One interesting theme I've noticed at the LCH Film Festival this year is bikes. Adventures For the Cure is about raising awareness and funds for diabetes as well as helping disabled children in Kenya through a 6,500-mile bicycle trek across the U.S. made by three young men, one of whom has Type I diabetes. Sweet Ride is a PSA focusing on the efforts of Transform to encourage San Francisco Bay Area residents to consider cycling as an alternate transportation option. Together We Can Make It focuses on the efforts of Bicycles for Humanity - Colorado to provide bicycles as distribution vehicles for improved healthcare to people too remote from formalized healthcare facilities in Namibia, Africa.  

Several Austin nonprofit organizations will be represented at LCH Film Festival this year:

The Coalition of Texans with Disabilities has expanded this year's1 Cinema Touching Disability (CTD) Film Festival, which takes place in Austin in October. For the festival's seventh year, it's adding a Thursday evening screening at the Goodwill Community Center, as well as art exhibits from Imagine Art and VSA arts of Texas. These local nonprofit organizations support people with disabilities with learning, participating in, and enjoying the arts. As always, the short film competition for grades 6-12 and college categories will take place, with finalists' entries screening at the festival. Competition registration is open until August 31.

The CTD Film Festival takes place from Thursday night, October 14, through Saturday, October 16. I'm excited to see the SXSW award-winning documentary Marwencol as the opening-night film on Thursday, although I would prefer to see it for the first time on a real theater screen at the festival's main venue, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar. It will be interesting to see how the Goodwill Community Center works as a film venue. The documentary's subject, Mark Hogencamp, definitely fits in with the Goodwill's program of rehabilitation. Hogencamp suffered traumatic brain injuries after an attack outside a bar. His self-created unorthodox therapy is quite fascinating -- in his backyard, Hongencamp has created Marwencol, a 1/6th scale World War II-era town populated with dolls representing friends, family and even his attackers. Through his photographic images, Hogencamp documents the town’s miniature battles and dramas. Check out Jette's review to find out what she thought about this film.

Local film nonprofit organization Lights. Camera. Help. is currently accepting submissions for their 2010 film festival, which will take place from July 29 to August 2. Filmmakers and nonprofits still have plenty of time to participate. The film festival does not charge a fee to submit a film, and all proceeds from ticket sales go directly to the prize winners.

Any film that heavily features a cause is eligible to submit to the Lights. Camera. Help. Nonprofit Film Festival, including films by or about nonprofit, non-governmental and/or grassroots organizations. Dramatic, documentary, experimental, and animation films are all welcome. Details on the submission process are available on the Lights. Camera. Help. Nonprofit Film Festival web page. All films must be received in the Lights. Camera. Help. office by June 30, 2010. The fest awards cash prizes for best feature film, best short film and the best public service announcement (PSA). 

If you want to attend the fest, film passes will go on sale starting on May 24. Early submissions include works from Global Voice Productions, Best Friends Animal Society, One Story Productions, ChannelAustin, Scottish Rite Learning Center and others. One of the feature-length films submitted is The Ancient Astronomers of Timbuktu, supporting history preservation in that region -- see the promo video here.