Austin Film Society
Encyclopedia
The Austin Film Society is a non-profit
film society
based in Austin, Texas
. Founded in 1985 to exhibit independent, experimental, foreign and various other non-mainstream art films, the film society has grown from just film exhibition to fostering independent filmmaking in Texas and has served as a cornerstone in building the film industry in Austin. The film society also owns and maintains Austin Studios, hosts the annual http://www.austinfilm.org/tfhof/Texas Film Hall of Fame
] gala, and oversees the Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund grant program. The film society was founded by film director Richard Linklater
, who currently serves on the board as artistic director. Other notable members on the board and advisory board include Tim McCanlies
, Robert Rodriguez
, Charles Burnett
, Guillermo del Toro
, Jonathan Demme
, Mike Judge
, John Sayles
, Steven Soderbergh
, Paul Stekler
and Quentin Tarantino
.
, cinematographer Lee Daniel
, Austin Chronicle
editor and South by Southwest
(SXSW) founder Louis Black
, University of Texas at Austin
film professor Charles Ramirez-Berg and film programmer and professor Chale Nafus. Their original goal was to bring hard-to-find, sometimes obscure films for screening in Austin. Early screenings held in a makeshift projection room upstairs from a local coffee shop drew a moderate cult following. AFS eventually grew in scale and began developing various programs to boost film production and education.
In 2000, with a unique partnership with the City of Austin, AFS created Austin Studios on a section of land from the former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport
. Former airplane hangars were converted into five studio production stages while several terminals were turned into production offices. Austin Film Society is currently located on the Austin Studios property, overseeing the daily operations of the studios, in addition to actively bringing in new film productions from small independent films to large studio pictures.
is a 20 acres (80,937.2 m²) film and video production facility with 10000 square feet (929 m²) of production office space and over 100000 square feet (9,290.3 m²) of production space. The space includes five production stages converted from airplane hangars, two production office buildings, and numerous onsite vendors including Chapman/Leonard, Film Fleet, Gear, Miscellaneous Rentals, Great FX and Heartland Studio Equipment.
Austin Studios is also home to the Austin Film Society breakroom and screening room with 35 mm, 16 mm and video projection capabilities.
Various studio films shot at Austin Studios include: Miss Congeniality, The New Guy
, The Rookie
, The Life of David Gale
, 25th Hour
, Texas Chainsaw Massacre
, Secondhand Lions
, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
, Man of the House
, Friday Night Lights, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, The Wendell Baker Story
, Idiocracy
, A Scanner Darkly
, Infamous
, The Hitcher
, The Return
, Stop-Loss, and Grindhouse. Various TV shows, commercials and music videos have also been shot at the studios. The Flaming Lips
video "Psychic Wall" from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
was shot in one of the stages and shows a behind the scenes look at the hangars. Austin Studios is also the former home to the Thunderdome, headquarters and skating facility of the Texas Rollergirls, as seen in the A&E
reality series Rollergirls
.
In November 2006, the city of Austin voted in favor of Proposition 4, which allotted a $5 million bond to improving Austin Studios. Planned renovations include soundproofing the stages, climate control, and improving the digital infrastructure of the facilities.
The Austin Film Society recently sponsored the cast of The Real World Austin to produce a documentary on SXSW. In several episodes, AFS facilities and staff can be seen.
AFS also hosts the Quentin Tarantino Film Festival
, where Tarantino
spends over a week in Austin screening some of his favorite films from his private collection and sharing his unique encyclopedic knowledge of obscure films. The Tarantino Film Festival first began in 1996 as a 10 day event at the Dobie Theatre (at which Tarantino showcased his favorite "sleazy genre films").
AFS has also hosted numerous regional and world premieres of films including: Sin City
, Bad News Bears, School of Rock
, The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl, Jackie Brown
, and various other films usually directed by Austinite filmmakers like Richard Linklater
and Robert Rodriguez
.
The film society also hosts smaller screenings of independent films and rough cuts to private audiences at the AFS screening room. New artists services programs like the Docs-In-Progress series allow filmmakers to screen rough cuts to AFS members as a test audience. More recently the cast of The Real World Austin screened a rough cut of their SXSW documentary The Real SXSW.
, Cannes
, and SXSW.
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
film society
Film society
A film society is a membership club where people can watch screenings of films which would otherwise not be shown in mainstream cinemas. In Spain they are known as "Cineclubs," and in Germany they are known as "Filmclubs"....
based in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
. Founded in 1985 to exhibit independent, experimental, foreign and various other non-mainstream art films, the film society has grown from just film exhibition to fostering independent filmmaking in Texas and has served as a cornerstone in building the film industry in Austin. The film society also owns and maintains Austin Studios, hosts the annual http://www.austinfilm.org/tfhof/Texas Film Hall of Fame
Texas Film Hall of Fame
The Texas Film Hall of Fame, which operates under the auspices of the Austin Film Society, was co-founded in 2001 by Louis Black, the editor of the Austin Chronicle, and Evan Smith, Editor-In-Chief and CEO of The Texas Tribune and former editor of Texas Monthly...
] gala, and oversees the Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund grant program. The film society was founded by film director Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater
-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...
, who currently serves on the board as artistic director. Other notable members on the board and advisory board include Tim McCanlies
Tim McCanlies
Tim McCanlies is a film director and screenwriter. He has attracted attention for his work writing and directing Secondhand Lions, and wrote the screenplays for The Iron Giant and Dennis the Menace Strikes Again....
, Robert Rodriguez
Robert Rodriguez
Robert Anthony Rodríguez is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor and musician. He shoots and produces many of his films in his native Texas and Mexico. He has directed such films as Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn, The Faculty, Spy Kids, Sin City, Planet...
, Charles Burnett
Charles Burnett (director)
Charles Burnett is an African-American film director, film producer, writer, editor, actor, photographer, and cinematographer...
, Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and designer. He is mostly known for his acclaimed films, Blade II, Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy film franchise. He is a frequent collaborator with Ron Perlman, Federico Luppi and Doug Jones...
, Jonathan Demme
Jonathan Demme
Robert Jonathan Demme is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, he has also directed the acclaimed movies Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married, the Talking Heads concert movie Stop...
, Mike Judge
Mike Judge
Michael Craig Judge is an American animator, film director, writer and voice actor, best known as the creator and star of the animated television series Beavis and Butt-head , King of the Hill , and The Goode Family .He also wrote, directed and in some instances produced the films Beavis and...
, John Sayles
John Sayles
John Thomas Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter and author.-Early life:Sayles was born in Schenectady, New York, the son of Mary , a teacher, and Donald John Sayles, a school administrator. He was raised Catholic and took to labeling himself "a Catholic atheist"...
, Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
, Paul Stekler
Paul Stekler
Paul J. Stekler is a political documentary filmmaker, a professor, and former head of the production program in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin College of Communication...
and Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
.
History
AFS was created in 1985 by film director Richard LinklaterRichard Linklater
-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...
, cinematographer Lee Daniel
Lee Daniel
Lee Daniel is a cinematographer. He was born Lee Cavender Daniel in Dallas, Texas on 23 January 1962. His best known film is Dazed and Confused, directed by Richard Linklater. Daniel has worked on many of Linklater's films and worked with Linklater as a co-founder of the Austin Film Society. He is...
, Austin Chronicle
Austin Chronicle
The Austin Chronicle is an alternative weekly, tabloid-style newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demographic...
editor and South by Southwest
South by Southwest
South by Southwest is an Austin, Texas based company dedicated to planning conferences, trade shows, festivals and other events. Their current roster of annual events include: SXSW Music, SXSW Film, SXSW Interactive, SXSWedu, and SXSWeco and take place every spring in Austin, Texas, United States...
(SXSW) founder Louis Black
Louis Black
Louis Black is a co-founder of The Austin Chronicle, an alternative weekly newspaper published in Austin, Texas, and has been the newspaper's editor since its inception. He has written over 600 articles in his column in that newspaper...
, University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
film professor Charles Ramirez-Berg and film programmer and professor Chale Nafus. Their original goal was to bring hard-to-find, sometimes obscure films for screening in Austin. Early screenings held in a makeshift projection room upstairs from a local coffee shop drew a moderate cult following. AFS eventually grew in scale and began developing various programs to boost film production and education.
In 2000, with a unique partnership with the City of Austin, AFS created Austin Studios on a section of land from the former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport
Robert Mueller Municipal Airport
Robert Mueller Municipal Airport served the Austin, Texas, United States, area until it was replaced by the Austin Bergstrom International Airport and subsequently closed in 1999...
. Former airplane hangars were converted into five studio production stages while several terminals were turned into production offices. Austin Film Society is currently located on the Austin Studios property, overseeing the daily operations of the studios, in addition to actively bringing in new film productions from small independent films to large studio pictures.
Austin Studios
Austin StudiosAustin Studios
Austin Studios is a film and video production facility with 10,000 square feet of production office space and over 100,000 square feet of production space established in 2000...
is a 20 acres (80,937.2 m²) film and video production facility with 10000 square feet (929 m²) of production office space and over 100000 square feet (9,290.3 m²) of production space. The space includes five production stages converted from airplane hangars, two production office buildings, and numerous onsite vendors including Chapman/Leonard, Film Fleet, Gear, Miscellaneous Rentals, Great FX and Heartland Studio Equipment.
Austin Studios is also home to the Austin Film Society breakroom and screening room with 35 mm, 16 mm and video projection capabilities.
Various studio films shot at Austin Studios include: Miss Congeniality, The New Guy
The New Guy
The New Guy is a 2002 American teen comedy directed by Ed Decter. The film tells the story of high school loser Dizzy Gillespie Harrison. Dizzy is an unpopular, high school band geek going through a hellish senior year...
, The Rookie
The Rookie (2002 film)
The Rookie is a 2002 drama sports film directed by John Lee Hancock. It is based on the true story of Jim Morris, who had a brief, but famous Major League Baseball career in 1999. The film stars Dennis Quaid, Rachel Griffiths, Jay Hernandez, and Brian Cox....
, The Life of David Gale
The Life of David Gale
The Life of David Gale is a 2003 American drama film directed by Alan Parker and written by Charles Randolph.Kevin Spacey stars as the eponymous character, a college Professor and longtime activist against capital punishment who is sentenced to death for killing a fellow capital punishment opponent...
, 25th Hour
25th Hour
25th Hour is a 2002 American drama film directed by Spike Lee and is based on the novel The 25th Hour written by David Benioff, who also wrote the screenplay. The film stars Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin, and Brian Cox...
, Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003 film)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a 2003 remake of the 1974 horror film of the same name. The 2003 film was directed by Marcus Nispel and produced by Michael Bay...
, Secondhand Lions
Secondhand Lions
Secondhand Lions is a 2003 American dramedy film written and directed by Tim McCanlies. It tells the story of an introverted young boy who is sent to live with his eccentric uncles on a farm in the U.S...
, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over is a 2003 American action-adventure family film directed by Robert Rodriguez and the third film in the Spy Kids series. It was released in the United States on July 25, 2003. The film featured the return of many cast members from the past two films, although most were in...
, Man of the House
Man of the House (2005 comedy film)
Man of the House is a 2005 crime comedy film directed by Stephen Herek, written by John J. McLaughlin and Scott Lobdell, and starring Tommy Lee Jones. The main plot revolves around Lt...
, Friday Night Lights, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, The Wendell Baker Story
The Wendell Baker Story
The Wendell Baker Story is a 2005 American film. It is the first film directed by Luke Wilson and his eldest brother Andrew Wilson, which premiered at the 2005 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas in March 2005...
, Idiocracy
Idiocracy
Idiocracy is a 2006 American film, a satirical science fiction comedy, directed by Mike Judge and starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, and Terry Crews....
, A Scanner Darkly
A Scanner Darkly (film)
A Scanner Darkly is a 2006 science fiction thriller directed by Richard Linklater based on the novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick. The film tells the story of identity and deception in a near-future dystopia constantly under intrusive high-technology police surveillance in the midst of a drug...
, Infamous
Infamous (film)
Infamous is a 2006 American drama film, based on the 1997 book by George Plimpton, Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career....
, The Hitcher
The Hitcher (2007 film)
The Hitcher is a 2007 horror film starring Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, and Zachary Knighton. It is a remake of the 1986 film of the same name starring Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and C. Thomas Howell. The Hitcher was directed by Dave Meyers and produced by Michael Bay’s production company...
, The Return
The Return (2006 film)
The Return is a 2006 psychological thriller directed by Asif Kapadia. The film stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kate Beahan, Peter O'Brien, and Sam Shepard...
, Stop-Loss, and Grindhouse. Various TV shows, commercials and music videos have also been shot at the studios. The Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips are an American alternative rock band, formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1983.Melodically, their sound contains lush, multi-layered, psychedelic rock arrangements, but lyrically their compositions show elements of space rock, including unusual song and album titles—such as "What...
video "Psychic Wall" from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie is a 2004 American animated film based on the popular Nickelodeon television series SpongeBob SquarePants. The film stars the voices of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Clancy Brown, Rodger Bumpass, Doug Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson, Alec Baldwin, Jeffrey Tambor, and...
was shot in one of the stages and shows a behind the scenes look at the hangars. Austin Studios is also the former home to the Thunderdome, headquarters and skating facility of the Texas Rollergirls, as seen in the A&E
A&E Network
The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...
reality series Rollergirls
Rollergirls
Rollergirls is a 2006 A&E Network reality show examining the personalities, antics and motivations of the women involved with the Austin, Texas Lonestar Rollergirls roller derby league. According to their website, the league was founded in 2001 and is run as a "skater-owned and operated" company...
.
In November 2006, the city of Austin voted in favor of Proposition 4, which allotted a $5 million bond to improving Austin Studios. Planned renovations include soundproofing the stages, climate control, and improving the digital infrastructure of the facilities.
The Austin Film Society recently sponsored the cast of The Real World Austin to produce a documentary on SXSW. In several episodes, AFS facilities and staff can be seen.
Programming
Since its inception in 1985, the Austin Film Society has screened more than 2000 films. The 'Essential Cinema' series offers weekly screenings that are free to film society members, and range in monthly themes from director retrospectives, to regional or genre specific series. The 'Texas Documentary Tour' is a monthly series which hosts groundbreaking documentaries usually with the filmmakers in attendance. Both series are usually screened at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.AFS also hosts the Quentin Tarantino Film Festival
Quentin Tarantino Film Festival
The Quentin Tarantino Film Festival, or QT-Fest, is a semi-annual film and multimedia event held by the Austin Film Society in Austin, Texas and attended by film director Quentin Tarantino. Most recently, the Alamo Drafthouse theater in downtown Austin, Texas has been the selected venue...
, where Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
spends over a week in Austin screening some of his favorite films from his private collection and sharing his unique encyclopedic knowledge of obscure films. The Tarantino Film Festival first began in 1996 as a 10 day event at the Dobie Theatre (at which Tarantino showcased his favorite "sleazy genre films").
AFS has also hosted numerous regional and world premieres of films including: Sin City
Sin City (film)
Sin City, also known as Frank Miller's Sin City, is a 2005 crime thriller film written, produced and directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez...
, Bad News Bears, School of Rock
School of Rock
School of Rock, also called The School of Rock, is a 2003 American musical comedy film directed by Richard Linklater, written by Mike White, and starring Jack Black...
, The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl, Jackie Brown
Jackie Brown (film)
Jackie Brown is a 1997 American crime drama film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It is an adaptation of the novel Rum Punch by American novelist Elmore Leonard and pays homage to 1970s blaxploitation films....
, and various other films usually directed by Austinite filmmakers like Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater
-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...
and Robert Rodriguez
Robert Rodriguez
Robert Anthony Rodríguez is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor and musician. He shoots and produces many of his films in his native Texas and Mexico. He has directed such films as Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn, The Faculty, Spy Kids, Sin City, Planet...
.
The film society also hosts smaller screenings of independent films and rough cuts to private audiences at the AFS screening room. New artists services programs like the Docs-In-Progress series allow filmmakers to screen rough cuts to AFS members as a test audience. More recently the cast of The Real World Austin screened a rough cut of their SXSW documentary The Real SXSW.
TFPF
The Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund is a grant program for emerging Texas-based filmmakers. The program was created in 1996 in response to the lack of public grant funding for filmmakers. As of 2009, the film society has given out over $1,000,000 worth of grants to 272 filmmakers since its inception, providing the seed money for several projects that went on to screen at festivals like SundanceSundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
, Cannes
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
, and SXSW.