Shining stars of the AFS

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Rebecca Campbell, executive director of the Austin Film Society, provided this list of the society's top 10 contributions to Austin since the group's inception 20 years ago.

1. Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund

The film society has given out $550,000 to 195 emerging Texas filmmakers. The fund has nurtured rising talent like Kyle Henry ("Room" played the Sundance and Cannes film festivals, and comes to theaters in April), Bryan Poyser and Jake Vaughan ("Dear Pillow" and the recently completed "The Cassidy Kids" for Burnt Orange Productions), Kat Candler (her second feature, "Jumping Off Bridges," is near completion) and Eileen Maxson (first recipient of the $30,000 Texas prize).

2. The Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards

Six years in, the annual gala hatched over a bowl of chips at Las Manitas is one of the major parties for Austin movers. Sissy Spacek, Terrence Malick, Marcia Gay Harden, Forest Whitaker, Ethan Hawke, Horton Foote and Dennis Quaid are among the luminaries who have been inducted into the hall, and the event has netted more than $500,000 in support of the film society's educational and artistic programs.

3. Austin Studios

The City of Austin welcomed a proposal from Richard Linklater and friends to use empty airplane hangars at the old Robert Mueller Airport for filmmaking. Since opening in 2000, 27 features have been shot there, including "The Rookie," "The Life of David Gale" and "Secondhand Lions," along with dozens of film and video projects, from a Nike commercial starring Lance Armstrong and a SpongeBob SquarePants music video to the infamous Dixie-Chicks-in-the-buff Entertainment Weekly cover.

4. Free Cinema and Essential Cinema series

In 1995, to celebrate its 10th anniversary of showing rarely seen classic films, the film society sponsored a year of free screenings. Audiences multiplied tenfold, and 700 people signed up as society members. The society offered free cinema for the next five years, reinstituting a $4 nonmember ticket price in 2003 (members still get in free).

5. The Texas Documentary Tour

This monthly program — presented in partnership with the Austin Chronicle, South by Southwest, the University of Texas and the Alamo Drafthouse — brings documentary filmmakers to Austin to show their work. Since starting in 1996, Austin's appetite for documentary has been huge, prefiguring a national trend.

6. Community outreach and education

The film society's newest program has filmmakers in seven East Austin schools, teaching kids to make movies and view media critically. The program puts cameras and editing tools in the hands of its participants and gives them a sense of accomplishment through screening their work. Program graduate Angel Pedraza received a $3,000 scholarship to attend UT and is mentoring aspiring filmmakers at his alma mater, Reagan High School.

7. Friend-raising

Film society screenings, parties and programs have brought together a diverse group — hippies and yuppies, doers and viewers — who share one goal: seeing filmmaking thrive in Texas. As maturing generations reach out to the next, a self-renewing film community is born.

8. Fundraising

Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellan have donated premieres of all their films, raising more than $300,000 for film society programs and services. Tim McCanlies, Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Mike Judge and Kevin Smith are among the recognized forces in American cinema who have worked through the society to support our film scene, through service on the Board of Directors or Advisory Board, premieres and participation in the Texas Film Hall of Fame.

9. QT

Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater met in Santa Monica at a midnight screening of "Nashville." After Tarantino completed his "Pulp Fiction," Linklater asked him to premiere it in Austin as a benefit for the Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund. Since then, Tarantino has shared his personal collection of films with Austin audiences during six QT film festivals. Austin counts Tarantino as an adopted favorite son, and hundreds of Austin film geeks have reveled in his encyclopedic knowledge of and exuberance for '60s and '70s film.

10. Slacker(s)

Richard Linklater developed the skills and built the community he would need to complete "Slacker" as an unplanned result of starting the Austin Film Society. The film coined a word, nailed a zeitgeist and made Austin a beacon on the newly forming indie film map, drawing like-minded cinephiles and cultural rebels.