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Arts Magazine

March 2003 Edition

Years of Films at South by Southwest

by Cesar Diaz

In the last decade the South by Southwest Film Festival has attracted a wide array of regional and international films by veteran filmmakers and newcomers alike. This March the South by Southwest Film Festival celebrates their 10 year anniversary with a retrospective highlighting some of its most noteworthy features. The retrospective promises to honor a wide array of films that reflect the festival's last decade of outstanding, original filmmaking. The retrospective program will run in conjunction with this year's film festival.

A rundown on some of the films selected for the retrospective:

Screenwriter/director Tim McCanlies' Dancer, Texas Pop. 81. Originally featured at the 1998 South by Southwest Film Festival, McCanlies's film, shot in a span of a month in Fort Davis, portrays four childhood friends (Brekin Meyer, Peter Facinelli, and Ethan Embry) who struggle to leave their small town behind after vowing to move to Los Angeles upon their high school graduation. (Alamo Drafthouse, March 8 at 5:15pm; March 13 at 2:45pm)

Eric Saperston wrote, directed, produced and starred in his 2001 documentary The Journey. Saperston filmed The Journey as he drove his 1971 Volkswagen bus with a dog and three other travelers in search of "the meaning of life." The film is an engaging look into a man's summer road trip that often alludes to The Wizard of Oz. The film boasts cameos from Ken Kesey, Henry Winkler, and former Texas Governor Ann Richards. (Convention Center, March 8th, 7pm; Alamo Drafthouse, March 13th, 12:30 pm)

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Made Up is a coming-of-middle age comedy about a divorced mother that finds love at the most unexpected time in her life. The film, directed by and starring recent Golden Globe winner Tony Shalhoub, received last year's First Narrative Feature award. (Millennium, March 12th, 5:30 pm; Paramount, March 14th, 4pm).

Aviva Kempner's The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg is a rousing documentary detailing the story of Greenberg, the first Jewish-American baseball player in the 1930s. Kempner superbly illustrates Greenberg and a sport that at the time was racially segregated and intolerant of racial equality.

Also scheduled in this year's retrospective is Richard Linklater's (Slacker, Tape, Waking Life) first feature It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (Paramount Theatre, March 9th at 9 pm; Alamo Drafthouse, March 12th,11:30 am), Christopher Wilchan's award-winning documentary, The Target Shoots First (Alamo Drafthouse, March 9th , 9:30 pm; Convention Center, March 12th, 12:45pm), and George Huang's Swimming with Sharks (Alamo Drafthouse, March 10th, 9:00 pm; Westgate, March 12th, 6:15 pm).

South by Southwest is currently scheduling more feature films for inclusion in this year's 10th Anniversary retrospective. For more information on tickets and screening information log on to www.sxsw.com/film/.

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