Airline fares entered the stratosphere weeks ago, hotels were booked months ago, and SXSW begins today. As always, I’m interested in film and tech. Regarding the latter, Jenna Wortham at the New York Times checked in with a number of the big companies that launched in Austin in the past and found that many, like Foursquare, are skipping it. In their place are tech start-ups from Africa, South Korea and Brazil. Scanning the program, I see fewer rock star speakers (is Chelsea Clinton a rock star speaker?) and many folks from on-the-horizon tech like personal health management and computing wearables. […]

Coming off the heels of last week’s announcement, SXSW rounds out their lineup with the Midnighters and Shorts sections. As was the case with the bulk of the festival’s Features, there’s not a huge carry over from Sundance, beyond Adam Wingard’s The Guest and Jonathan’s Chest, Person to Person, Notes on Blindness, Funnel, Dig, Verbatim and Marilyn Myller in the Shorts section. Also of note are 25 New Faces Mohammad Gorjestani and ornana’s Danny Madden, who will screen Refuge and Confusion Through Sand, respectively. Check out the full list of Midnighters; Narrative, Documentary, Animated, Midnight, Texas and Texas High School Shorts; and Music Videos below. MIDNIGHTERS Scary, funny, sexy, controversial – […]

Here we go. Unlike many other major festivals who favor an incremental approach, South by Southwest unloads 115 films from their extensive lineup (barring the midnight and shorts selections) in one fell swoop, so there’s plenty to parse through here. 68 of the featured films are directorial debuts, a number of which can be found in the Visions section, which housed my favorite discovery from last year’s festival: Petra Costa’s Elena.  That’s not to say there aren’t a few familiar faces: Lawrence Michael Levine’s Wild Canaries will premiere in the Narrative Competition, while Festival Favorites boasts Sundance selections from a bevy of […]

The SXSW Film Conference and Festival has announced the first batch of premieres for its 2014 edition, including Jon Favreau’s Chef, the Veronica Mars movie, and acting-screenwriting ventures from Jeremy Sisto and Mark Duplass. Joining the aforementioned narrative titles are Doc of the Dead, which charts the evolution of the zombie genre; Leave the World Behind,  a portrait of Swedish House Mafia; and Fox’s series remake Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, as hosted by astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Said Janet Pierson of Chef, the opening night film, “Jon Favreau’s wonderfully entertaining return to independent filmmaking works beautifully as our 2014 Opening Night Film, with his sharp […]

In a saturated festival landscape, SXSW has long distinguished itself through a grounding sense of community and accessibility. The ever-expanding conference put this notion to the test with the implementation of the SXSW PanelPicker, which calls upon the public to curate its panel programming. Originally launched for the Interactive Festival in 2007, before successfully spilling over to the Film and Music arms in 2011, the PanelPicker invites interested parties to upload presentation, conversation, and panel proposals for broad consideration. Weighing the public vote at 30%, alongside 30% for the festival staff and 40% for its advisory board, SXSW will invite […]

It’s no secret that the independent film industry has been irrevocably altered by the modern financing and distribution landscapes. With new technologies rendering traditional media — both film itself and releasing platforms — obsolete, filmmakers have managed to weave the presence of such nostalgias and tropes into their work. In Josh Johnson’s Rewind This!, which had its world premiere at SXSW, the effects of the home video revolution are dissected by collectors, fanatics, programmers, and critics alike. Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, which screened at SXSW following its world premiere at Sundance, is a comedic period piece in which programmers and […]

As screenings continue and the music folks roll into town, SXSW last night announced the winners of its 2013 Film Festival. At the Paramount Theater, Destin Cretton’s crowd-pleasing Short Term 12 and Ben Nabors’ African-set, sustainable energy doc William and the Windmill took the top juried prizes. Audience prizes will be announced at the festival’s conclusion. A complete list of winners follows: Feature Film Jury Awards DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION Grand Jury Winner: William and the Windmill Director: Ben Nabors Special Jury Recognition for Cinematography: Touba Director of Photography: Scott Duncan Special Jury Recognition for Directing: We Always Lie To Strangers […]

Every festival has its bright spots, especially important ones like the SXSW Film Conference & Festival, but this year they were perhaps harder to find than in years past. I would have stuck around to see the lovely Destin Daniel Cretton and his indie tearjerker Short Term 12 accept the top prize for narrative (or Ben Nabor take the doc prize for his look at a Malawian windmill architect, William and the Windmill), but the weirdly tone-deaf, sycophantic awards ceremony — during which festival honcho Louis Black railed about how he “didn’t care about money” at this for-profit festival and the all-white […]

Winner of the Narrative Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival, Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12 is a warm, generous drama about counselors and youth at a group home for troubled teens. A feature expansion of his 2009 short of the same name, winner of the Best Short Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Cretton’s new picture has a low-key authenticity — the writer/director worked himself in such a facility, and his experiences inspire some of the subplots here — as well as the classic values of good, character-based storytelling. (At the premiere’s post-screening Q&A, Cretton cited One […]

Jillian Lucas and Lucas Leyva, two of our “25 New Faces” from 2012, are back at SXSW with their new short #PostModem after making their name at the fest last year with the mind-blowing Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke. Here they talk with Romain Thomassin as part of the Motionmaker series of Young Guns interviews with emerging filmmakers.