South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival

You know you’re at South by Southwest when they start giving away free software at parties," someone said, standing next to me as we looked out over the crowd. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, a former dot-commer squeezing out the final months of his job like a drunk at last call. He downed the remainder of his drink, mumbled, "I’m going to get another one" and shuffled into the crowd. And so it was at this year’s South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival (SxSW), where this same scene replayed every night, screening after screening, party after party, and although the people were different, the looks on their faces were not.

What a change from years past, when this Austin, Texas, festival seemed to be literally exploding with energy – or, as the festival’s organizers would have put it then, synergy. But with the tech world’s recent economic collapse, it seems as if a black cloud has settled over the festival. Maybe it’s the drying up of private equity money, but the indie scene, like the Nasdaq, is adjusting to a bear market.

Yet there could be a silver lining to the darkest of dot-com clouds: the playing field has been leveled, and it is now time for the films themselves to shine. This year, as has been the case in the past, documentaries scored with audiences hoping to discover another Dark Days or The Target Shoots First. What they got this past spring was a solid bill of diverse films encompassing a slew of musically oriented docs (popular with those in town for the music part of SxSW) coupled with a healthy dose of quirky, "personal journey" pieces.

Stephen Ives’s Amato: A Love Affair with Opera, which chronicles a couple’s dedication to their cramped Opera House in the heart of New York City’s Bowery, was a crowd favorite as well as a Competition runner-up, tying for second place with Bradley Beesley’s short film Okie Noodling. Okie Noodling, about – what else? – catching fish with your hands, was probably the biggest surprise of all the docs, as it also was awarded an audience award. Sarah Price’s Caesar’s Park explores the filmmaker’s neighborhood, unraveling delicate parallels of race, class and ageism in subtle and endearing ways. Chronicling urban sprawl in a small Virginia town, Micha X. Peled’s Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town was a shocking exposé of the business practices of Wal-Mart stores and one town’s fight to stop their expansion. The film, funded by ITVS, was aired on PBS in June. Heather Courtney’s Los Trabajadores (The Workers), which highlights the plight of Austin’s illegal aliens trying to find work in the shadow of Austin’s construction boom, won the Documentary First-Film Prize.

One of the strangest entries in the nonfiction competition, Hybrid, directed by Monteith McCollum, was also the jury’s favorite, picking up this year’s Best Documentary Award. The festival guide synopsis describes it as a "film that poetically describes the sexuality of corn." All joking aside, the black-and-white film is a visual and emotional achievement. Pulling a resonant tale from a seemingly banal subject, McCollum captures the heart of Milford Beeghly, a man who spent 70 years developing hybrid corn only to have alienated his family in the process.

There weren’t as many bright spots in this year’s dramatic lineup. The Zeros, written, directed and produced by John Ryman picked up a nod as runner-up in narrative competition and a best-feature award in the audience competition. Set in the future, The Zeros is an entertaining road movie that comes off as a poignant yet dark comedy with good bite. Local filmmaker and former location scout James Crowley took home the award for Best First Feature with The Journeyman, his socially conscious yet violently bitter homage to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. Eric Schaeffer’s latest film, Never Again, though not in competition, premiered at the festival with little hype, but was soon a "must-see" after it received a standing ovation at the Paramount Theater. Jill Clayburgh and Jeffrey Tambor turn in amazing performances as two older singles trying to cope with their fear of relationships.

While this year’s SxSW may have failed at providing stress-free networking parties, the festival, on the whole, succeeded at what must be considered its main mission: showing good films. Documentary filmmaker Sarah Price, a festival veteran with partner Chris Smith with their films American Job and American Movie, feels that SxSW’s size facilitates successful screenings: "I think my film could have gotten swallowed up at a larger festival, but this festival is just large enough and small enough for every film to have its moment." – Josh Zeman

Cannes International Film Festival by Noah Cowan
IFP/West Los Angeles Film Festival by Rolf Gibbs
South by Southwest Conference and Film Festival by Josh Zeman
San Francisco Documentary Film Festival by Justin Lowe
San Francisco International Film Festival by Chuck Stephens