The South by Southwest (SXSW) Conferences and Festivals is an annual 9-day event in Austin, Texas, US covering music, film and interactive technology during the Spring Break holiday season in March. This smart bit of scheduling ensures that Austin's 50,000+ University of Texas college kids hightail it out of town in search of suds, sex and sand just as SXSW begins, clearing elbow room for a smaller but equally ravenous horde of SXSW artists, industry professionals, critics and fans to worthily take their place.
SXSW Music, now 15-years old, is a well-known and respected event in the music recording industry. With surprising speed, SXSW Film, added just 8 years ago, has grown into a vibrant showcase on the film festival circuit, attracting independent filmmakers and industry professionals from all corners of the United States. SXSW Film 2001's mission statement is to "showcase visionary filmmakers and innovative films" in both narrative and documentary film categories. In addition to films shown in the award-eligible categories, SXSW Film typically showcases a solid collection of special screenings of films in limited or festival-only (but already in the distribution pipeline) release, giving SXSW audiences the perk of experiencing a national or regional US premiere. This year's narrative special screenings features high profile titles like Christopher Nolan's Memento, Ted Demme's Blow, and the Best Foreign Film Academy Award Nominee Amores Perros. SXSW Film widens its scope this year with a brand new category of international film programming, introducing an assortment of remarkably high quality feature films from Australia, Sweden, Israel, Italy, Argentina and France.
SXSW Film is particularly strong in its feature-length documentary programming with the best of the lot eventually gaining distribution on US pay or public television networks like HBO, Showtime and PBS. This year's Documentary Feature Jury Award winner is Hybrid, the story of eccentric corn seed researcher Milford Beeghly, with runner-up awards to Amato: A Love Affair With Opera and Okie Noodling. I never caught up with Hybrid, but its festival buzz is moderately positive, chiefly for its superlative, sweeping visuals. Still, many festival goers are more energized about Okie Noodling, a film about an unfathomable subculture of fishermen ("noodlers") in the Southwestern US who completely submerge themselves in murky lakes and use their hands as bait to catch monster catfish, fishing poles be damned! Indeed, Okie won the Documentary Feature Audience Award.
The narrative film competition programming has been hit or miss in past years, and this year's mixture of indie dramas and black comedies is no exception. The award-eligible narrative film with the most buzz going into the festival is Bartleby, a funky, modern update of Herman Melville's 1853 story "Bartleby the Scrivener" starring Crispin Glover, David Paymer and Glenne Headly. The buzz quickly fizzled and it left the festival sullied and empty-handed. The Narrative Feature Jury Award winner is Canadian Blaine Thurier's Low Self-Esteem Girl, a mind-numbingly amateurish and technically underachieving digital video feature about blonde ingénue Lois and her unremarkable struggle against the manipulative influences of sleazy sexual opportunists, zealous Christians, and substance abuse. I searched high and low for someone at the festival who actually liked the film, but I literally couldn't find one person to even moderately praise it. Narrative Feature Jury Award Runner-Up and Audience Award winner The Zeros is a somewhat novel black comedic (and slightly futuristic) spin on the "buddy road picture" formula, but nevertheless still a middling film. The other films I viewed in the narrative feature competition category - Manna From Heaven and red deer - are dreadful films, so I suppose the victory of Low Self-Esteem Girl is a hollow one at best. The most satisfying film in competition is Narrative Feature First Film Audience Award winner (the category isn't eligible for a Jury Award) The Journeyman, a stylish, divergent riff on the spaghetti western genre nimbly written and directed by Texan newcomer James Crowley.
The conference portion of SXSW Film is a collection of panel discussions, mini-meetings, and one-on-one mentoring sessions covering all aspects of film creation and production, from screenwriting through distribution. The topic tracks for 2001 include digital filmmaking, animation, documentary filmmaking, film festival circuit wrangling, and even "Filmmaking 101," which advises on such nuts-and-bolts issues as raising funds, post production, and how to get a film distributed. This year's panels are stacked with many notable creative artists and film professionals, including directors D.A. Pennebaker, Penelope Spheeris, Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater and Eric Schaeffer (scheduled director Jim Jarmusch cancelled his panel appearance at the last minute, and Quentin "No-Show" Tarantino unexplainably split mid-conference before his panel appearance with Rodriguez and Linklater on the conference's final day). The conference is a too-good-to-be-true resource for burgeoning filmmakers, a golden opportunity for intimate (and sometimes hands-on) access to industry players unheard of at larger competing North American festivals like Sundance, Telluride and Toronto. Where else can you pony up a measly $255 to rap with D.A. Pennebaker about shooting documentaries and then wander next door to pick Miramax Films Director of Acquisitions Michelle Krum's brain about the basics of distribution? Speaking of Pennebaker, in a coincidence that could only happen at a film festival, I hit the men's restroom immediately following a screening of the fine documentary Cinéma Véritê: Defining the Moment and none other than the cinéma véritê pioneer himself pulled up to the urinal next to me. Pennebaker made the moment even more surreal by relaying his experience to a waiting colleague of filming then-US Senator John F. Kennedy taking a leak while Pennebaker was a cameraman on Robert Drew's landmark documentary Election about the 1960 US Presidential primary between Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey!
A highlight of SXSW Film is its director retrospective, a showcase of 4 selected films from an honored director with said director in attendance for Q&A sessions. This year's honoree is spirited director Penelope Spheeris. While she's recognizable as the director of mainstream (and financially successful) Hollywood comedies like Wayne's World, The Little Rascals, and The Beverly Hillbillies, Spheeris is worshipped as a cult icon by punkers, metalheads, and cineastes alike for her seminal The Decline of Western Civilization... music documentary trilogy, which are the featured works for her retrospective.
The Decline of Western Civilization... films are culturally and historically significant snapshots of Los Angeles' fringe music scene - and damn fine films from a purely cinematic perspective. Part I documents a slice of the L.A. punk scene in 1980; Part II documents big-name and grunt players alike from the L.A. heavy metal scene in 1987; and Part III returns to a subsequent generation of punk music in 1997 while taking a deeper look at the plight of "gutterpunks," a subculture of homeless young people living self-destructive lifestyles with punk attitude (much like the characters of Spheeris' early indie feature "Suburbia"). Filmed in a similar stark, stripped-down style (her interview sets consist of a monochrome backdrop and a lone, unshielded light bulb suspended from the ceiling), the documentaries ultimately triumph because Spheeris wittingly shatters the documentary filmmaker tenet of not becoming emotionally attached to your subject - she clearly loves the music and deeply cares about her subjects. Decline III, Spheeris' personal favorite of the series, remains in unreleased limbo because every theatrical distribution offer she's received to date requires her to relinquish the DVD and video rights to the entire Decline series. Her response? An old-school punk "no fucking way!"
Spheeris' latest documentary feature is We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n Roll, a film shot during the 1999 Ozzfest music festival tour. Shot on high definition digital video at 15 concert dates, the film is a gorgeous-looking, kick-ass gut punch that will make your ears bleed with pleasure. Spheeris, dressed in black with attitude at the screening (indeed, I never saw her wear another color the subsequent 3 times I saw her at the festival), described its filming as "the best and worst experience of her life." Given the inescapable ocean of drunk, sweaty white dudes engulfing her and her crew, it's easy to commiserate. Spheeris keeps the film fresh and kinetic by bouncing between candid behind-the-scenes/interview footage of the Ozzfest bands and explicit illustrations of the festival's chaotic cultural underbelly - volunteer topless mechanical bull riding, a gruesome freak sideshow (involving violating human flesh with tools like a staple gun, an electric drill, and a hammer-and-nail), and a live S&M show by the "Devil Girls and Slave Boy," among other spectacles. Most fans attending Ozzfest are misfits at best, but lovable misfits through the lens of Spheeris' camera. Ozzy Osbourne, following his affable and hilarious appearance in Decline... Part II, continues to be a fascinating subject as the atypical dichotomous aged, rehabbed rock god and devoted family man. Without a doubt, Spheeris still has the magic touch for this material.
Christopher Nolan's Memento, still riding the positive buzz of its 2001 Sundance Film Festival appearance, is a stunningly beautiful and elliptically cerebral film noir with a stylized narrative technique rivaling the freshness of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction at the time of its 1994 release. Director/writer (and University College London graduate) Nolan infuses the familiar staples of noir with the subversive, noir-busting concepts of infinite, unrequited revenge and the existence of truth (or lack thereof) in the absence of visceral memory. Memento's reverse linear style, employing a narrative structure rarely used in mainstream cinema (David Jones' film adaptation of Harold Pinter's play Betrayal is the only cinematic precursor I recall, although sporadic literary examples are found in the works of contemporary writers like J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick and Martin Amis), transcends gimmickry as a crucial, metaphorical immersion into protagonist Leonard Shelby's permanently traumatized brain.
Tillsammans (aka Together), an entry in SXSW Film's new international features category, is talented Swedish director/writer Lukas Moodysson's follow-up to his well-regarded drama Fucking Åmål (aka Show Me Love). An equally engaging film, Tillsammans is a 1975 period piece about the merging of contradictory lifestyles - leftwing socialism and conventional family principles - at a multifamily commune in Stockholm over the Christmas holiday season. Although the film ultimately indicts socialism for its confusing and damaging effect on the family unit (especially to children), it is just as critical of more conventional, nonpolitical ills like alcohol abuse, domestic violence and spousal neglect. The beauty of Tillsammans is Moodysson's magnificent skill at handling this potentially depressing material with delicate sophistication and splendid humor. It's not often you find a movie that can be both emotionally stirring and damn witty. The likeable characters, well-acted by an ensemble cast, are written with remarkable sympathy and complexity. Moodysson brings a cozy, documentary-like style to the movie with his reliance on handheld cameras and an oft-used technique of quick zooms on his character's faces, creating a "home movie" vibe. Tillsammans is a poignant, rewarding film and the richest viewing experience I had all festival.
The Australian film Risk, another entry in the international features category, is a curiously gun-free film noir set in the corporate world of automobile insurance. Taking several pages from Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity and The Apartment, director Alan White presents a slick, likeable, but ultimately toothless thriller about fresh-scrubbed corporate newcomer Ben Madigan's (Tom Long) battle against the dark temptations of greed, sex and ruthless ambition as enticingly dangled before him by his mentor, white collar shark John Kreisky (well-acted by veteran Australian actor Bryan Brown). Risk is a visually stunning film, from its treeless, urban vistas to the attractive looks and well-toned bodies of leads Long and Claudia Karvan (whose killer legs belong in the femme fatale Hall of Fame). Still, the film's polished technical style, clearly benefiting from White's expert experience at directing television commercials, doesn't quite have the power to gloss over the narrative's rather tepid, unsophisticated, and relatively double-cross-free approach to corporate intrigue.
Blood-spattered low-budget gem Ginger Snaps is quite simply one of the best North American horror film since The Blair Witch Project. Helmed by Canadian television director John Fawcett (Xena: Warrior Princess, La Femme Nikita), Ginger Snaps is the unruly account of two goth teenage sisters and the werewolf that intrudes into their dark but previously-harmonious lives. Digging beneath its furry werewolf surface, Fawcett and screenwriter Karen Walton's rebellious tale is evocative of the biological-revolt horror themes of fellow Canadian David Cronenberg with its equating of lycanthropic transformation to first-time menstruation and burgeoning female sexuality. Ginger Snaps is splendidly gory - buckets of syrupy, cherry-red blood ubiquitously saturate the proceedings - and amusingly vulgar (with enough utterances of "fuck" to rival Goodfellas), effortlessly swinging from brutal ferocity to dead-on, biting wit. The film's gender roles are divergently nonconforming to genre conventions ("Who's the man here?!" shouts a teenage boy during a soon-to-be-regretted sexual encounter with the titular Ginger) and cunningly challenging to modern standards of feminine body image and sexuality that are questionably pushed on young girls at the cusp of womanhood.
The festival closed with an open discussion panel with Austin-based directors Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty) and Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, subUrbia, The Newton Boys, Before Sunrise) moderated by Peter Biskind, author of the critically acclaimed book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls concerning 1970s-era Hollywood. The panel opened with Linklater asking for a show of hands from aspiring filmmakers in the overflowing audience. Predictably, a good number of arms shot up like springs in a jack-in-box. Then he asked for a show of hands from aspiring film distributors. None were raised, unsurprisingly. He then recounted the experience of his recent return in 2001 to the Sundance Film Festival for the first time since his early-1990s Slacker days to shop his visionary animated feature Waking Life (which enjoyed an unannounced and exceptionally well-received screening at SXSW) for a distribution deal. He was shocked to meet with the exact same distributor representatives he encountered 10 years ago - "just a little older and grayer." Linklater is clearly bothered by this monopoly, and he encouraged - or planted seeds, as he called it - audience members to consider careers in film distributing, especially as entrepreneurs, so the art of filmmaking won't suffer from present-day limitations.
Rodriguez was an enthusiastic presence, arriving with his arms full of audio and video/film production samples from his latest film Spy Kids, including computer-animated storyboards, before-and-after special effects shots, and soundtrack recordings. Rodriguez is an unabashed HD digital video evangelist (the digital video technology George Lucas is using to film the next Star Wars sequel, not the format currently available on the commercial/consumer market), declaring that he will never shoot on film again. He converted the panel audience by showing a test reel comparing sequences he shot on high definition digital video and 35mm film during rehearsals for Spy Kids. To be sure, the HD digital video-shot sequences demonstrated an astonishing improvement in image clarity, contrast, color, and black-level reproduction as compared to those shot on 35mm film. Rodriguez's infectious zeal for all aspects of filmmaking, perfectly illustrated by the staggering 6 credits he receives on Spy Kids (producer, director, writer, editor, composer, and special effects supervisor), was a fabulous boost to close out SXSW Film 2001.
