by Lucy Shaw

The 4th Annual Austin Film Festival is here, bringing with it a big chunk of fancy Hollywood flavor to the Austin scene. This massive event consists of a seven-day film festival (Oct. 2-9), the Screenwriter's Conference (Oct. 2-5), and the Heart of Film Screenplay Competition (which will announce its winners Oct. 3 at the Screenplay Competition Award Luncheon).

Started by executive directors and co-founders Marsha Milam and Barbara Morgan, the Austin Film Festival is the first to celebrate the screenwriter's contribution to the motion picture and television industry. Possibly the most valuable offering of the Festival to the writer is the Screenplay Competition. "In the Hollywood production community and in the screenwriter community, it was the competition that really put us on the map," said Milam. Two screenplays from the competition have now been made into major motion pictures. One of them, Excess Baggage, starring Alicia Silverstone, was just released in August. The writer, Max Adams, had the winning screenplay from 1994. She was a housewife living outside of Salt Lake City, Utah before she got her script optioned by Columbia Pictures President of Production Barry Josephson. Currently, she is reported to be living is L.A as a writer working on her fourth feature. The other soon-to-be-released major motion picture coming out of the Heart of Film Competition is Ron Peer's 1995 semi-finalist script, Good-Bye, Lover. His script was optioned by a group that had just left Miramax and formed their own production company, Gotham Entertainment. The movie will be released in January starring Ellen DeGeneres and Patricia Arquette. "No other screenplay competition has had this kind of success," says Milam, "and the reason we do is because our judges at the semifinalist and finalist level are development executives and producers in Hollywood who are actually looking for new product."

This year the competition received over 3200 submissions. The scripts are categorized by feature length adult/mature themes and feature length children/family themes. The authors of winning screenplays will receive $3500 cash, participation in the Heart of Film Mentorship Program, airfare and accommodations to attend the Conference, and the Heart of Film Bronze Award. The Mentorship Program is being spearheaded by Bill Wittliff, screenwriter of Legends of the Fall and the Emmy-award winning television screenplay for Lonesome Dove. He is also founder of the Southwestern Writer's Collection at Southwest Texas State University.

This year's Conference hosts over 70 different panelists and 1200 plus attendees. From the 48 panels on screenwriting and filmmaking, panelists will include Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider, Blue Velvet), Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers, Nixon), Buck Henry (The Graduate, Catch 22, To Die For), Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), Ed Solomon (Men in Black), Andrew Marlowe (Airforce One), Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill), Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven), Whit Stillman (Metropolitan), Joe Tropiano (Big Night) -- and the list of writers, directors, filmmakers, and actors goes on. An added feature will be MTV Films' special panel on Austin Stories, with the executive producer, director, writer and a cast member attending. Those with reservations for the conference (held at the Driskill Hotel) will have a great opportunity to rub elbows with leading industry development and production executives.

This year's film festival has been extended into a full-week event and will present over 60 feature films and 40 shorts. The screenings include premieres, advance screenings, retrospectives and competition films. Competition films were accepted in the following categories: Feature Film, Short Film & Student Short Film. Last year's festival highlights included regional premieres of Sling Blade and Albino Alligator. So hopes are high for this year's crop. "The movies were selected by a committee of seven people," says Jason White, the festival's Film Program Director, "and they all have really wonderful elements in them that go from the commercial to the offbeat." Saturday night at the Paramount, an underground internet film reviewer credited for killing the box office will present his picks of the festival's competition films.

So why all the excitement here, you ask? "I think the reason people want to come to the Austin Film Festival," says Milam, "is because, one, it is for the writer and we were the first to do that, and, two, it's in Austin, Texas, and everybody loves to come to Austin. Austin has got such a great buzz." Milam also points out the fact that all the big studios and production companies have sent their scouts to the film festival to act as the actual judges for the Screenplay Competition. "Everybody knows it all starts out on the written page and this festival is all about that.