Although dominated by the bad boy troika of Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, and Robert Rodriguez, who, with their respective entourages, seemed ubiquitous, this year's SXSW Film Festival and Conference showed signs of beginning to grow up. With many sold-out screenings and the ensuing confusion of too many viewers for way too few seats, the festival boasted heavy industry presence and the advantages, not yet fully explored, of merging film, new media, and music conferences into one long, permutating event.

The festival's opening night screening of Sarah Kelly's Full Tilt Boogie, a doc offering often hilarious behind-the-scenes tidbits from the set of From Dusk Till Dawn, established the tone for the reverence paid to certain filmmakers. Executive produced by Tarantino and "starring" Tarantino, the film is an interesting document of the American indie film scene rife with male filmmaking angst and sexual posturing. It features a rather unflattering portrait of producer Lawrence Bender, who tries to play down union trouble, as well as a wonderfully philosophical and wholly incongruent rant by Harvey Keitel. The film swings between awe and scathing critique; unfortunately, the critical aspects often seem unintended, but then again, the filmmaker was hired by Tarantino.

The festival also featured a solid list of strong films, many of which were enjoying a second screening right out of Sundance, including Neil LaBute's disturbing In the Company of Men, Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy, and Stephen Winter's Chocolate Babies. The strongest component of the festival, however, was a two-day film conference featuring more than 20 panel and roundtable discussions on subjects ranging from promoting your film on the world wide web and underground distribution, to casting, budgeting and scoring your film effectively. Indeed, SXSW is very much geared toward its local filmmaking audience and effectively provides a venue for Texans to meet indie/industry heavies from New York, Los Angeles and other parts of the country .

Perhaps the most amusing panel during the film conference was "Outside the System, Inside the System", which promised to address how hard it is for indie filmmakers to deal with success and to function "inside the system". Tarantino, arriving a fashionable 20 minutes late, nevertheless took charge of the panel, paying homage to Harvey Weinstein and Miramax and noting that Weinstein's charm lies is in his ability to say yes or no to a movie without answering to anyone else. Kevin Smith seconded Tarantino, and he and the other panelists (which included George Huang, Mike Judge, Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater, and Robert Rodriguez) went on to tell anecdotes about working with various studio executives. The first question from the audience queried the stunning lack of even one woman director on the panel; the question was glibly ignored after Steven Soderbergh jokingly explained that no women had been invited to the festival thus precluding their presence on any panel. Hilarious.

The multimedia conference followed the film conference, and while there wasn't a tremendous amount of cross-over, the connections between these two components will surely grow as filmmaking and new media converge. Indeed, it will be interesting to see how the festival manages to bridge the gap, which this year was perhaps best covered in the trade show which featured an array of new software and hardware useful for filmmakers and multimedia enthusiasts. Again, the prospects for filmmakers are still nascent; continued exploration among the SXSW programmers could result in making the festival extremely significant in the near future.

The Cannes Film Festival by Noah Cowan
The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival by Michael Jones
The New York Underground Film Festival by Pamela Grossman
SXSW Film Festival by Holly Willis
San Francisco International Film Festival by Isabel Sadurni
Aspen Shortsfest by Holly Willis
Gen Art Film Festival by Adam Pincus