MOVIES

Austin filmmakers snowball through Sundance Film Festival

By Chris Garcia
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM CRITIC
Sunday, January 20, 2008

PARK CITY, Utah — On this night, in this room, Austin is making its presence felt at the Sundance Film Festival in a flashy, foggy, karaoke way.

Matt Dentler, producer of the South by Southwest Film Festival, stands before a gaggle of partygoers, rainbow beams of light gyrating behind him. He holds a microphone and — how to say this politely? — cracks and warbles.

White fog fills the room, courtesy of Tim League, who, playing DJ, cranks up the fog machine. League, co-founder of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas and the annual Fantastic Fest in Austin, assumes the role of Mother Nature: Let there be fog. Lots of it!

And then the Park City Fire Department shows up.

Seems the neighbors in this snowbound condominium complex witnessed billows of smoke mushrooming from the doors and windows.

False alarm. Laughs all around. Bad singing continues.

This spot, this Friday night, could pass as Austin's Sundance headquarters. The prestigious and severely discerning film festival boasts an unprecedented number of Austin filmmakers in its lineup this year, from director Margaret Brown and her feature documentary "The Order of Myths" and cinematographer PJ Raval and the documentary he shot "Trouble the Water," to David and Nathan Zellner's feature "Goliath" and Mark and Jay Duplass' "Baghead."

At this packed and raucous late night party, co-hosted by League, the Austin gang's almost all here: League; Dentler; Amy Grappell, field scout for "The Order of Myths"; Raval; Nathan Zellner; Kelcey Edwards, who's screening a short film at the nearby Slamdance Film Festival; and Alamo South chef John Bullington, who whips up sophisticated finger foods in the open kitchen.

Documentary filmmaker and University of Texas film professor Paul Stekler and Austin filmmaker Karen Skloss are on their way, and Louis Black, editor of the Austin Chronicle and associate producer of "The Order of Myths" might also drop in.

Brown, meanwhile, is surely fast asleep, entertaining unsettling dreams about the world premiere of "The Order of Myths," an insider look at race relations in the context of Mardi Gras in Mobile, Ala. The movie is to play the next day in the documentary competition, going against 15 other titles, including the Raval-shot portrait of post-Katrina lives "Trouble the Water."

"All I can think of is sleeping," Brown said earlier in the day. "I know I should be socializing, but ... "

"But" means three hours of slumber in three days. It means completing her movie two days ago, in the nick of time. It means a murky mash of thoughts and emotions, not excluding anxiety and nausea and "Is this really happening?"

Brown arrived at Sundance late Thursday, opening day of the annual swarming confluence of filmmakers, deal-makers, distributors, studio honchos and movie lovers, which will run through Jan. 27.

Some 50,000 'Dancers have descended upon this mountain-hugged, snow-caked, ski-crazy town of 12,500 residents. That's up from 14,000 attendees when we last came here to follow Stekler and his documentary "George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire" in 2000.

Of the Austin films, "The Order of Myths" was the first to screen this weekend. It played Saturday morning in the sold-out, 350-seat Prospector Theater. Audience response was thumbs-up. A lively Q-and-A session followed with Brown and several of the film's subjects.

"It went really well," said Brown, rested and cheery. "It's always sort of an out-of-body experience, these screenings. People seemed to really love it. Some were crying afterward."

David and Nathan Zellner's bizarre dark comedy "Goliath," shot in Austin and starring David, will premiere Monday. Remarkably, this is their fourth year in a row with a movie at Sundance. But it's their first year here with a feature-length film, not a short film.

The goal, as it is with most filmmakers, is to get your movie seen and purchased for distribution.

"It's a great place to launch the film," said David, a UT film alum. "It's a whole other universe than being here with a short film, when you're sort of under the radar. We're learning as we're going this time."

This time they're equipped with a flotilla of publicists and a sales representative. Still, the Zellners are pinballing about, handing out fliers and buttons, getting the word out with do-it-yourself enthusiasm.

"The exposure we can get here is unbeatable," Nathan said. "It introduces us to a lot of people who can help us."

Besides part-time Austinites Dennis Quaid, Quentin Tarantino and UT alum Marcia Gay Harden — Tarantino and Harden are jurors in the Dramatic Competition — celebrities pepper Sundance.

But discovery is the Sundance clarion call. From all over the world, thousands and thousands of movies try to get into the festival. Only a couple of hundred are selected.

Most of the films die and disappear, but Sundance is best known as a rocket launcher for such smaller movies as "Slacker," "Reservoir Dogs," "The Blair Witch Project," "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Juno."

"Sundance is the gold ring everyone is trying for," Stekler, our Sundance veteran, said. "And it's one of the hardest competitions. It's the Olympics."

It's even tougher for documentaries, which tend to seek niche audiences and only rarely — see "Super Size Me" or "Fahrenheit 9/11" — find wide popularity.

"It's the buzz that comes out of it, the ability to generate interest in other projects, and sometimes, for those few documentaries that get theatrical distribution, a chance to make some money," Stekler said, hiking up quaint, boutique-lined Main Street.

For such a formidable film buff who circles the globe every year going to festivals, this is League's first Sundance experience. It's a prime opportunity for him to network, meet filmmakers and other festival heads and generate interest in Fantastic Fest, League said before scampering off to put on a chaotic karaoke show.

Dentler, SXSW producer, is also here to meet and greet, chat and exchange numbers. "Sundance is sort of the inaugural address of each year," Dentler said. "You're going to see the films that we're going to hear a lot about for the rest of the year. It's an important launching pad."

The movies by Raval, the Zellners and the Duplasses will screen this week, so the filmmakers for now can only wait and hope and pray.

Raval, for one, hasn't even seen the documentary he shot, which was directed by New Yorkers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal. This fact fuels his anxiousness.

"I think it will make it more fun," laughed Raval, who came to Sundance in 2004 with Austin director Kyle Henry's feature "Room," which he shot.

"Or at least more exciting," he said. "The suspense!"

But first, there are more parties to attend, brief oases where all the anxiety vanishes, happily and temporarily, in a poof of fake fog.