The SXSW Film Festival will take place March 12-20 in Austin, Texas.
11/4/08
Director: Jeff Deutchman
Weaving together footage recorded throughout the world on the day Obama was elected President, this vérité documentary explores how people choose to live through “history.” (World Premiere)
A Different Path
Director: Monteith McCollum
In an automobile dominated society, a cast of characters uses ingenuity and wit to forge a new way to commute. One by foot, one by bike, two by boat. (World Premiere)
American: The Bill Hicks Story (United Kingdom)
Directors: Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas
At last the true life story of the outlaw comic who tried to save the world. Three years in the making, using a stunning new animation technique, American: The Bill Hicks Story finally brings the amazing tale of one of modern culture's most iconic heroes to the big screen. (North American Premiere)
Audrey the Trainwreck
Director and Screenwriter: Frank V. Ross
Audrey the Trainwreck is a comedy about attempting to keep life simple, and the beauty of such an absurd pursuit. Most men live lives of quiet desperation – Ron’s desperation is about to get loud.
Cast: Anthony Baker, Alexi Wasser, Danny Rhodes, Rebecca Spence, Joe Swanberg, Jess Weixler & Nick Offerman (World Premiere)
Bear Nation (Canada)
Director: Malcolm Ingram
What if your biggest perceived flaw became you greatest asset? Bear Nation is a thorough and stylistic examination of the sub culture sweeping gay culture, the sexualization of fat and hair. From the director of small town gay bar and Exec Produced by honorary bear Kevin Smith. (World Premiere)
Cherry
Director and Screenwriter: Jeffrey Fine
When a virginal freshman is dropped off at college, he encounters an older woman and her underage daughter who give him an education he never expected.
Cast: Kyle Gallner, Laura Allen, Britt Robertson (World Premiere)
The Happy Poet
Director and Screenwriter: Paul Gordon
Bill, an out of work poet, puts his heart, soul, and last few dollars into starting an all-organic mostly-vegetarian food stand. Complications with the business jeopardize his dreams for a hot dog-free future.
Cast: Paul Gordon, Jonny Mars, Chris Doubek, Liz Fisher, Amy Meyers-Martin (World Premiere)
Les Signes Vitaux/The Vital Signs (Canada)
Director and Screenwriter: Sophie Deraspe
The Vital Signs: the amount of life beings have… or lack thereof.
Cast: Marie-Hélène Bellavance, Francis Ducharme, Marie Brassard, Danielle Ouimet, Suzanne St-Michel (U.S. Premiere)
Mars
Director and Screenwriter: Geoff Marslett
Mars is a uniquely animated romantic comedy about astronauts and robots falling in love on their way to the red planet. Told in the playful style of a graphic novel, Mars explores why we explore.
Cast: Mark Duplass, Zoe Simpson, Paul Gordon, Howe Gelb, Liza Weil, James Kochalka, Cynthia Watros, Michael Dolan, and Kinky Friedman (World Premiere)
NY Export: Opus Jazz
Director: Henry Joost and Jody Lee Lipes. Screenwriter: Jody Lee Lipes
This scripted adaptation of a 1958 jazz ballet by Jerome Robbins (West Side Story) takes the original choreography and returns it to the streets that inspired it in this tale of disaffected urban youth. Shot on 35mm on location all over New York City with dancers from the New York City Ballet.
Cast: Dancers with New York City Ballet, Jerome Robbins. (World Premiere)
The Parking Lot Movie
Director: Meghan Eckman and Christopher Hlad (Assistant Director)
“It’s not just a parking lot, it’s a battle with humanity.” The Parking Lot Movie is a documentary about a singular parking lot in Charlottesville, Virginia. The film follows a select group of Parking Lot Attendants and their strange rite of passage. Something as simple as a parking lot becomes an emotional weigh station for the American Dream. (World Premiere)
Passenger Pigeons
Director and Screenwriter: Martha Stephens
Set among the Eastern Kentucky Coalfields, Passenger Pigeons quietly interweaves four separate story lines over the course of a weekend as the town copes with the death of a local miner.
Cast: Kentucker Audley, Brendan McFadden, Bryan Marshall, Caroline White, Martha Stephens (World Premiere)
Putty Hill
Director and Screenwriter: Matthew Porterfield
A young man's untimely death unites a fractured family and their community through shared memory and loss.
Cast: Sky Ferreira, Zoe Vance, Dustin Ray, Cody Ray (North American Premiere)
Red White & Blue (United Kingdom)
Director and Screenwriter: Simon Rumley
In Austin Texas, the lives of three young people “Erica, Franki and Nate” intertwine in a fateful, tragic way and head down a rocky and violent road to heart-rending oblivion.
Cast: Noah Taylor, Amanda Fuller, Marc Senter (North American Premiere)
Skeletons (United Kingdom)
Director and Screenwriter: Nick Whitfield
Skeletons is a surrealist comedy about two traveling salesmen in the business of cleaning skeletons out of people's closets.
Cast: Andrew Buckley, Ed Gaughan, Paprika Steen, Tuppence Middleton, Jason Isaacs (North American Premiere)
We don’t care about music anyway… (France)
Directors: Cedric Dupire and Gaspard Kuentz
"We don't care about music anyway"…In other words, "we make it and that's all". Beyond the music and beyond its performance, the future and mode of existence of a city, and society as a whole, are in motion. (North American Premiere)
World Peace and other 4th-Grade Achievements
Director: Chris Farina
World Peace and other 4th-Grade Achievements portrays John Hunter, a remarkable public-school teacher who has dedicated his life to teaching children the "work of peace." (World Premiere)
World’s Largest
Directors: Amy C. Elliott and Elizabeth Donius
Desperate for tourism, hundreds of small towns across the U.S.A. claim the "world's largest" something – from 15-foot fiberglass strawberries to 40-foot concrete pheasants. World's Largest visits 58 such sites and profiles Soap Lake, Washington’s five-year struggle to build the World’s Largest Lava Lamp. By documenting these roadside attractions, World’s Largest captures the changing, perhaps even vanishing, culture of small-town America. (World Premiere)