SXSW
-
I WAS TOLD THERE WOULD BE COWBOY HATS
…at the Texas Hall of Fame Film Awards, a glorious benefit for the Austin Film Society that drew the cream of the Texas to Austin Studios last night. And indeed, there were Cowboy hats aplenty — Robert Rodriguez even gave one to Quentin Tarantino, the evening’s honoree. Some pictorial highlights: Kim Le Blanc of the Texas Film Commission, Lovers of Hate director Bryan Poyser, whose film is part of IFC’s day-and-date “Direct from SXSW” initiative, and Janet Pierson, Director and Head of Programming at SXSW and the kind of woman who can start sentences with, “When I was running a […]
-
A SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDE TO SXSW ’10
Mashable.com has compiled an unbelievable guide to how you can follow SXSW (in Austin or afar) through social media. The one we’re most intrigued by is Cliqset.com. Cliqset.com has created a real-time map that aggregates all of the geo-tagged activity in the festival area of Austin. Pulling in data from the major location-based social networks (Brightkite (), Flickr (), Foursquare, Gowalla (), Qik, and Twitter), the map will give you a bird’s eye view of who is at SXSW, where they are, and what they’re doing.
-
Marwencol’s Jeffrey Malmberg
By Alicia Van Couvering
Mark Hogencamp was an illustrator living in Kingston, NY, and one night in 2000, he walked out of a bar and was followed by a group of teenagers who beat him mercilessly and left him for dead. Hogencamp was in a coma for nine days, suffered massive brain damage, and lost most of his memory and ability to move and write. Unable to afford therapy, he came up with his own: Marwencol. A 1/6 scale World War II-era town set someplace in Belgium, Marwencol’s inhabitants are dolls painstakingly painted and clothed by Mark, most representing a person from his real […]
-
How to Go Green with Producer Miranda Bailey
For a filmmaker approaching L.A.’s Ambush Pictures with a new project, “greenlit” is the happiest word in the English language. For Ambush Entertainment co-founder Miranda Bailey, an executive producer of The Squid and the Whale and a producer of the upcoming Super, the word came to mean something very different as she made her directorial debut. Greenlit is its title, and it refers to Bailey’s commitment to “green” the company’s The River Why by hiring an environmental consultant during production. While there’s been much documentation about greening the motion picture business, Bailey brings a perspective that’s both practical and irreverently […]
-
GILBERT SHELTON AT SXSW
As part of their annual look at SXSW, The Austin Chronicle gets ready for the fest with this piece on iconic psychedelic comic book artist Gilbert Shelton, who’s best known for his Freak Brothers comics. He will also have an exhibit of his work in town during the fest as well as Harry Knowles conducting a conversation with Shelton on March 15 at the Austin Convention Center. Here’s an excerpt from the piece: Freewheelin’ Franklin, Phineas, and Fat Freddy symbolized the pot culture of the Sixties, their free-spirited lifestyle in pursuit of sex, drugs, and rock & roll the model […]
-
“LOVERS OF HATE'”S BRYAN POYSER | By Alicia Van Couvering
Originally posted as part of our Sundance 2010 coverage, Lovers of Hate will screen at SXSW and is available on VOD beginning March 15. Playing in competition this year is Austin filmmaker Bryan Poyser’s Lovers of Hate, starring Alex Karpovsky and Chris Doubek as brothers, Paul and Rudy, vying for the attention of Rudys’ soon-to-be ex-wife, Heather (Heather Kafka.) Paul is enjoying wild success as the author of a Harry Potter-like series of children’s books, which are based on stories that Rudy used to make up for Paul when they were children. Rudy, who calls himself a writer but who […]
-
SXSW 2010 COVERAGE STARTS HERE
Think of this post as a scrawled line on a notebook separating notes you made a year ago with notes you are making today… SXSW ’10 coverage starts here (i.e., look above). If you want to see what we posted about last year’s festival, scroll below.
-
“SEVERE CLEAR'”S KRISTIAN FRAGA AND MIKE SCOTTI By Alicia Van Couvering
Severe Clear premiered at SXSW this week, five years to the day after the US invasion of Baghdad. Back then, Kristian Fraga was just one of millions, watching events unfold on cable news. First Lieutenant Mike Scotti was crossing the Iraqi border in an artillery tank, and he had a video camera. Severe Clear is a chronicle of the Baghdad invasion culled from over 60 hours of this footage, edited from a pure first-person perspective to ensure that the viewer goes through an experience as close to Mike’s as possible. We first meet Mike and his unit in a desert […]
-
“FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES”‘ GERALD PEARY By Alicia Van Couvering
Gerald Peary is not a cell phone person. He has witnessed a quarter century of films and criticism, from when Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris drew their lines in the critical sand to the currently expanding blogosphere. Gerald Peary is old school. A working film critic for 25 years, his work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Toronto Globe and Mail, The Chicago Tribune, Film Comment, Cineaste, Sight and Sound and Positif, to name a few. He is the weekly reviewer for the Boston Phoenix, one of a rapidly diminishing club of alternative weeklies as paper after paper […]
-
SMILE LIKE YOU MEAN IT
Arms locked together, smiles frozen in place awaiting the digital flash — we all have these photos on our cameras and phones when we return from a film festival. These moments sure look like happy ones now that a festival premiere has spackled over all the fractures that production wrought. At SXSW this year, however, one group tried to summon up smiles that were a bit more sincere in intent. Operation Smile is a non-profit organization that provides cleft-lip and palate repair to children and young adults around the world, many in developing countries. Reps from the organization manned a […]
