South-by-Southwest 2016

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 08 March 2016 18:11

Written by Eric Lurio

Everybody Wants Some

When it comes to North American Film Festivals, Austin, TX’s South By Southwest is #3. Only Sundance and Toronto are bigger and more important. Also, it’s not just a film festival, but a music festival and several trade shows as well.

To get oriented go to the North shore of the Colorado river at Congress street.

Look north towards the capital building. The “festival territory” is on you’re right going from the Convention center on Cesar Chavez and on Congress Street from the river to the Capitol grounds. Most of it is on the notorious Sixth Avenue entertainment district, where there are dozens of clubs and the best pizza in the state. Within this area is 80% of the whole thing.

The South-By-Southwest festival (known by one and all as “Southbuy”) was founded in 1986 by the people who ran the New Music Seminar (http://newmusicseminar.com/) and from then added stuff, changed it’s name from NMS/Southwest, and became an annual fixture that basically takes over downtown for two weeks.

The whole mishegas is divided into three major parts and several smaller ones. Music, Movies and Interactive, plus what they call “eco” and some other things I can’t recall.

Interactive

This is a trade show, pure and simple. They show products and hold seminars.

The thing will start when at 8AM with the first panel discussions. President Obama himself makes a keynote speech Friday, March 11 at 2:30pm at Dell Hall at The Long Center for the Performing Arts (701 W Riverside Dr., off Guadalupe), admission for that is via a lottery. Everyone else just does the con thing.

This will go on for five days.

Music

When Interactive ends, then the music festival starts. This is also a convention, but is more open and there are lots of places where one can just hang out and do what God put Austin there for you to do, listen to country-western and punk until you’re ears bleed. The entire industry will be there to some extent and it’s going to be one of those party-till-you-drop events.

This will also go on for five days.

Film

This thing goes on for nine days.

They’re going to screen 139 films: 89 world premieres, 14 North American premieres and seven U.S. premieres, including 52 films from first-time directors. These films were selected from 2,455 feature-length film submissions composed of 1,467 U.S. and 990 international feature-length films from a total of 7,235 submissions.

Among the highlights are a special work-in-progress preview screening of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s catnapping comedy Keanu, Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused sequel Everybody Wants Some and John Michael McDonagh’s brilliantly titled: War on Everyone.

Notable world premieres include Mike Birbiglia’s Don’t Think Twice, starring the abovementioned Keegan-Michael Key; Ti West’s In a Valley of Violence, starring Ethan Hawke and Taissa Farmiga; The Master Cleanse, with Johnny Galecki and Anna Friel; Sophie Goodhart’s My Blind Brother, starring Adam Scott and Nick Kroll; Shovel Buddies, featuring Bella Thorne; The Trust, starring Nicolas Cage and Elijah Wood; and Kasra Farahani’s The Waiting, with James Caan.

Among the non premiers are: Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition,” which opened Toronto in September, stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts and Chris Cooper and biopics about Miles Davis(Don Cheadle)“ (Miles Ahead, which closed the New York Film Festival last year) and Chet Baker (Born to Be Blue, starring Ethan Hawke).

Not only that, they’ve decided to include TV shows: Danny McBride’s Vice Principals will also be featured.

Between these three, there’s almost no time to sleep. (there is also an “Eco” section, or so they say—wow).

• < Prev
• Next >