SXSW Film Festival
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Five Questions with Touba Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Touba was seven years in the making: five of shooting, two of post-production. It grew out of her second documentary — 2008’s Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love — which followed the legendary Senegalese musician before and after 2004’s Egypt album, whose religious themes raised the ire of the country’s religious argument. Her newest film began life on vibrantly grainy 16mm, following an annual Senegal trek undertaken by hundreds to the city of Touba to visit the home of Sheikh Amadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride Brotherhood. Like her last film, Vasarhelyi’s newest focuses on Islam […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 8, 2013 -
25 Picks for the SXSW Film and Interactive Festivals
SXSW is a festival of contradictions. (Or, “Spring Break for filmmakers,” as Ti West posted on his Twitter stream last night.) Its film program feels homey, intimate, with Janet Pierson and her team evincing a real sense of enthusiasm as well as curatorial play. There are, of course, types of films that are expected and do well at SXSW: cutting-edge genre titles, hip mainstream features, music- and technology-themed documentaries, and low-budget, youth-oriented relationship tales. But within and even outside of those categories, SXSW always turns up some real discoveries. (Last year there were several — Sean Baker’s Starlet, Andrew Neel’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2013 -
The 6th Annual Thin Line Film Fest
First things first – Texas’s Thin Line Film Fest does not take place in Austin, nor in March, nor does it accept indie narratives, nor any fiction films at all. In fact, this six-year-old event, which plays a month prior to SXSW, smartly doesn’t define itself in relation to that cinematic elephant in the Lone Star State. Which is its strength. Texas’s only fest devoted strictly to docs – from local to international – Thin Line (the name inspired by its founders’ desire to explore that space between fact and fiction) does take over Denton, Texas, for 10 days in […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 25, 2013 -
Sophia Takal, Green
In Sophia Takal’s Green, a couple of young, New York sophisticates travel upstate in order to research a book on sustainable farming, but when a working-class local woman becomes the object of their affection, jealousy and sexual gamesmanship threaten to ruin their relationship. Mining the insecurities that persist amongst young lovers is not necessarily new ground, but Takal, working with her fiance Lawrence Levine and roommate Kate Lyn Sheil, invests the storytelling with a moody disquiet, an emotional honesty and a jarring sense of foreboding that elevate the film above so many of its predecessors. Widely deploying the color of envy in […]
by Brandon Harris on Sep 7, 2012 -
“BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD” — A HAMMER TO NAIL ‘REVIEW’
(Beasts of the Southern Wild world premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Narrative Grand Jury Prize, as well as Best Cinematography for Ben Richardson. It also won the Camera d’Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. It is being distributed by Fox Searchlight and opened theatrically on June 27, 2012. Visit the film’s official website—as well as the virtual home base of the Court 13 collective—to learn more.) I want to make this immediately, abundantly clear. Perhaps more than any other review I’ve ever written, this one is coming from the pained perspective of a […]
by Michael Tully on Jun 28, 2012 -
EXCLUSIVE: “PAVILION” TRAILER FEATURING NEW SAM PREKOP TRACK
Prior to its BAMcinemaFest screening on June 28, Tim Sutton’s festival favorite Pavilion has a haunting new trailer — featuring a new song from The Sea and Cake’s Sam Prekop — which we are delighted to be exclusively premiering on the Filmmaker website. In the current issue of the magazine, Scott wrote the following on the film: Tim Sutton’s Pavilion, premiering in the Emerging Visions section, is a beautifully shot and tantalizingly subtle tale of the fragility of adolescent friendships. A teenage boy (Max Schaffner) spends summers with his mother in upstate New York before traveling to stay with his […]
by Nick Dawson on Jun 18, 2012 -
SXSW Film Festival
Among the many things SXSW is known for — barbecue, the Alamo Drafthouse and long lines, for example — one is breakout apps. Twitter and Foursquare both got enormous boosts from launches or promotions during previous editions of SXSW Interactive. Last year, the buzzword at the tech fest was contextual search and, indeed, you’re seeing that functionality being built into products this year from Apple, Google and others. In 2012, the buzzed-about app heading into the fest was Highlight, a sort of social version of Foursquare. Installed on your phone, it alerts you to other Highlight users nearby. “You can […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 17, 2012 -
THE MICRO-BUDGET CONVERSATION: SXSW AND ITS EMOTIONAL TOLL
I am not cut out for big festivals…film or otherwise. Let’s take away the fact that large crowds disturb my calm, on top of that I am a person of extremes. I either jump in all the way, or abstain from the activity entirely. Take a person like that and just feed them beer and films…and you get the worn-out mess that is myself. Two days after the experience I’m still sick, tired, and working hard to gain a foothold on what the festival meant to me and what it means to our industry. Industry is a great place to […]
by John Yost on Mar 21, 2012 -
DISPOSABLE MEMORIES FROM SXSW
I pack quickly the night before leaving for SXSW. Not only do I forget to bring business cards, I don’t even pack my digital camera. I pop into a CVS once I’ve landed in Austin and pick up a two-pack of disposable cameras. I’m surprised they still sell them. My five day jaunt across SXSW is a flurry of rain, movies, tacos, friends, panels, and long lines. I watch Purple Rain on VHS. I watch V/H/S in a movie theater. I’m asked by multiple people if I’ve heard what this year’s Tiny Furniture is. I hear a big-four agent tell […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Mar 16, 2012 -
The Microbudget Conversation: SXSW #1
2,637. That’s the number of days it has been since I was in Austin, TX. My wife and I moved there right after working a full season at the Maine Workshops, and the moment we arrived we realized we absolutely loved the place…and there was no way we could stay. At the time (and until I’m dead it seems) I owed an incredible amount of money in school loans and 2004 seemed to be the year everyone decided to stay, or move to Austin…I considered working at Jamba Juice after two months without a job…I said “considered.” We were flat […]
by John Yost on Mar 8, 2012
