Local Film Fests

Range Life and the Onion's AV Club are bringing a week's worth of special engagement screenings to Austin starting on the 14th.  All are independent comedies, with the first film, White on Rice, is screening as part of the Austin Asian American Film Festival at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar. With the exception of White on Rice, all films are at 9:30pm at the Dobie.  Check out the list below, as three films will include Q&A, and one will be followed by a live band performance. 

• 11/14 2:00pm White On Rice  (Screens at Alamo Lamar as part of AAAFF)
• 11/16 9:30pm Visioneers
• 11/17 9:30pm On The Road With Judas (Director Q&A included)
• 11/18 9:30pm Box Elder (Director and Cast Q&A included)
• 11/19 9:30pm Last Cup: Road to the World Series of Beer Pong
• 11/20 9:30pm Assassination of a High School President (followed by a performance by Capybara)
• 11/21 9:30pm Impolex (Director Q&A included)

For more information about the Range Life Fall Tour '09, or to view trailers, go to their website. 

Love movies and want to make a short road trip this weekend? Head to Fort Worth for the Lone Star International Film Festival (LSIFF), which runs from Wednesday, November 11 through Sunday, November 14. LSIFF kicks off on Sunday night with The Scenesters, which played Austin Film Festival last month. The noir-ish comedy is about a group of mumblecore-ish filmmakers trying to find a serial killer who's been murdering L.A. hipsters. Writer/director Todd Berger and actor Kevin Brennan both attended UT in Austin.

Other films with an Austin connection scheduled for LSIFF include the quirky comedy Artois the Goat, which was shot in Austin and played SXSW this year (Jenn Brown's review); local filmmaker Kat Candler's short Love Bug, which won the Narrative Short Audience Award at AFF; and the Coen brothers' first feature, Blood Simple, which was shot in Austin, Hutto and Houston. LSIFF is also screening Tender Mercies, which was shot in Waxahachie.

In addition, musician/actor Kris Kristofferson will be on hand to receive the first Stephen Bruton Award on Friday night. The award will honor musicians who also have done work in film. LSIFF has named Horton Foote for its Lifetime Achievement Award; Horton Foote, Jr. will receive the award for his late father.

If it's a weekend in the fall, that must mean there's a film festival going on in Austin. This weekend, we have the Austin Polish Film Festival, which runs from Thursday, November 5 through Sunday, Nov. 8. Sponsored by the Austin Polish Society, the movies and festivities will take place at the Texas Spirit Theater in the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum.

The opening-night film this year will be God's Little Village (U Pana Boga za miedza), a 2009 comedy from writer/director Jacek Bromski. This is the third movie in a series of comedies she's made that focus on a small Polish town, Krolowy Most. Bromski will attend the screening, along with composer Ludek Drizhal and actress Agnieszka Kotlarska.

You can buy tickets for individual films or for the whole Austin Polish Film Festival online through the fest website. You also can buy the fest posters, which as you can see on the right, are very striking and lovely.

I thought we were having a slow news week, but the local film news really added up. Here are some of the highlights:

• The Statesman's Out and About blog released the results of the newspaper's "Best Austin Movie Theater" poll. No surprise: All four Austin-area Alamo theaters were in the top four slots, although we're a bit disappointed that Village and its snazzy 4K digital didn't rate a bit higher. Bigger surprise: Tinseltown Pflugerville tied for fifth place with the Bob Bullock IMAX theater. Jette saw a movie at the Pflugerville theater in June and found the picture and sound quality atrocious -- some of the speakers weren't working at all. Readers, what charms of Tinseltown Pflugerville are we missing?
• Richard Linklater's latest film, Me and Orson Welles (pictured at right), now has an Austin release date of December 4. If you want to see it sooner, the movie will play the Houston Cinema Arts Festival on Nov. 11, as the opening-night film, with Linklater attending.
• The first speakers for the SXSW 2010 Film Conference were announced this week: Argentine musician/composer Gustavo Santaolalla (Brokeback Mountain, Babel) and comic-book artist Gilbert Shelton, a former Austinite who is currently involved in adapting his Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers into a movie.
• Speaking of SXSW, if you didn't catch We Live in Public at the 2009 fest or during this week's limited run, it's playing in Austin for another week, daily at Alamo Ritz. Wish we'd thought of this sooner, but Alamo totally should host a Tweet-Along night for this documentary.

The out-of-town fans, actors, filmmakers and film critics have gone home, the parties are over and the post-fest colds are slowly fading after Fantastic Fest 2009. It seems like a good time to reflect over and share my personal festival experience this year, including some films you might want to check out.

Movie highlights:

Solomon Kane - The talented and charismatic British actor James Purefoy portrays the title fictional character created by pulp-era writer Robert E. Howard, best known for his Conan the Barbarian series. Sword and sorcery adventure takes a twist, set in the Puritan era in a grim time portrayed through rain and snow. Despite all the action that packs a wallop in this film, what is truly the core of Solomon Kane is the vision of one man's path to redemption, found in an unlikely manner. The supporting characters in the Crowthorn family were well-cast, with Pete Postlethwaite and Alice Krige as the protective parents and siblings Rachel and Patrick Hurd-Wood as two of the Crowthorn children. Max Von Sydow also makes an appearance.

Q & A highlight: I especially enjoyed writer/director Michael J. Bassett talking about the process of determining the effects of certain weapons, which I described in our latest podcast. It's a technique that will make me question every action film I see involving a weapon from now on.

If you are planning on attending the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival next year, you can save money by registering before the first deadline, which is this Friday, September 25. A film badge includes admittance to 9 days of film-festival screenings and premieres, plus 5 days of panels, keynotes, and Q & A sessions. Other perks include entry to the film awards and parties. Currently a film badge costs $325, a savings of $155 from the walk-up rate, so act fast for the best value. You can register here.

Another deadline on the horizon is for early registration to Austin Film Festival and Conference, which starts October 22. Conference panels run through Oct. 25 and festival screenings continue until Oct. 29. You must purchase a badge by September 30, 2009 to receive the discounted rates. There are various badge and passes available that you can check out here.

Finally, keep in mind that VIP tickets for Fantastic Fest 2009 went on sale during the 2008 event, and sold out within 45 minutes. This could very likely happen again this year. We recommend you follow the Fantastic Fest blog and Twitter feed, and we will post an update to the Slackerwood Twitter feed when we hear the news!

[Photo credit: Denia and her family at the Q & A for The Least of These, a documentary on the detainee families at Hutto facility, by Debbie Cerda on Flickr.]

While volunteering for the SCARE for a CURE haunt last year, I was intrigued and amazed by the visually impaired students who also volunteered for the event. The students had their own scene which focused around an audio studio. One student, Johnathan, was also filming the haunt experience. Although he could not see the activity going on around him, he thoroughly enjoyed the narrative and "boo scares" as much as our typical guests. Turns out that John is an aspiring filmmaker who won the high-school division award in the 2007 Cinema Touching Disability Short Film Competition.

The competition is part of the Cinema Touching Disability Film Festival, which returns in its sixth year to continue its mission of raising awareness of disabilities. The film fest will be held November 6-7 at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar.

This year the festival will feature the documentary The Eyes of Me, an up-close look at four high-school teens who have lost their sight. The film premiered at SXSW earlier this year -- Filmmaker magazine published an interview with director Keith Maitland.

The ninth annual Bicycle Film Festival is coming to Austin this week: Wednesday, August 5 through Sunday, August 9. This 39-city international touring film fest celebrates bicycles and the people who ride them with many short films, a few features and lots of related events, such as an art show and a bike polo tournament.

On Friday there is a benefit for the Yellow Bike Project, an all-volunteer effort "dedicated to providing human-powered transportation for the people of Austin, running a community bike shop, and educating kids and adults."

A Texas film is among the shorts screening at the fest: Ultra Cool Texas Emo Hipsters Ride Fixed by director Donny Hall. Most of the festival films are screening at 501 Studios.

Festival passes are $27, with tickets available at individual events. Visit The Bicycle Film Festival site for more details.

The first annual Lights. Camera. Help. Film Festival featuring non-profit and cause-related films was held this weekend, along with a wrap party Sunday night at the New Movement Theatre where the winning submission was announced.

Congratulations goes out to Layton Blaylock for his winning submission Art from the Streets, a feature-length documentary about a program for homeless artists, also called Art From the Streets. This program was established in Austin in 1991 with the goal of providing a safe and nurturing environment for homeless people to produce art. Program volunteers accomplish this mission by sponsoring twice weekly art "classes" and an annual show where artists sell their work.

The film tracks five of the artists over the course of a year, showing homeless camps, the daily challenges of street life, and the strengths of human character. At the two-day art exhibit held each November here in Austin, the artists' work is sold. There the artists interact with people in a rare but positive environment.

I was fortunate to meet David Neff, Director of Web and Interactive Strategy for the American Cancer Society and the main man behind Sharing Hope.tv when he presented his "User Generated Content: Listen Up or Fade Away" talk at BarCampAustin III last year. I was quite excited when David started talking about his new project, the Lights. Camera. Help. festival. It comes as no surprise that one of the local advocates of "Social Media for Social Good" would put ideas into action by hosting a film festival dedicated to social causes.

Tickets are still available for the Lights. Camera. Help. festival, which will run Friday and Saturday evenings with a wrap-up party on Sunday. Check the fest website for more details, including the lineup.