The Austin Film Society (AFS) is a non-profit film society based in Austin, Texas. Founded in 1985 to exhibit independent, experimental, foreign and various other non-mainstream art films, the film society has grown from just film exhibition to fostering independent filmmaking in Texas and has served as a cornerstone in building the film industry in Austin. The film society also owns and maintains Austin Studios, hosts the annual Texas Film Awards gala, and oversees the Austin Film Society grant program. The film society was founded by film director Richard Linklater, who currently serves on the board as artistic director. Other notable members on the board and advisory board include Tim McCanlies, Robert Rodriguez, Charles Burnett, Guillermo del Toro, Jonathan Demme, Mike Judge, John Sayles, Steven Soderbergh, Paul Stekler and Quentin Tarantino.
AFS was created in 1985 by film director Richard Linklater, [1] [2] cinematographer Lee Daniel, Austin Chronicle editor and South by Southwest (SXSW) founder Louis Black, University of Texas at Austin film professor Charles Ramirez-Berg and film programmer and professor Chale Nafus. Their original goal was to bring hard-to-find, sometimes obscure films for screening in Austin. Early screenings held in a makeshift projection room upstairs from a local coffee shop drew a moderate cult following. AFS eventually grew in scale and began developing various programs to boost film production and education.
In 2000, with a unique partnership with the City of Austin, AFS created Austin Studios on a section of land from the former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport. Former airplane hangars were converted into five studio production stages while several terminals were turned into production offices. Austin Film Society is currently located on the Austin Studios property, overseeing the daily operations of the studios, in addition to actively bringing in new film productions from small independent films to large studio pictures.
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Since its inception in 1985, the Austin Film Society has screened more than 2000 films. The 'Essential Cinema' series offers weekly screenings and range in monthly themes from director retrospectives, to regional or genre specific series. 'Doc Nights' is a monthly series which hosts groundbreaking documentaries usually with the filmmakers in attendance.
AFS also has hosted the Quentin Tarantino Film Festival, where Tarantino spent over a week in Austin screening some of his favorite films from his private collection and sharing his unique encyclopedic knowledge of obscure films. The Tarantino Film Festival first began in 1996 as a 10-day event at the Dobie Theatre (at which Tarantino showcased his favorite "sleazy genre films").
AFS has also hosted numerous regional and world premieres of films including: Sin City , Bad News Bears , School of Rock , The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl , Jackie Brown , and various other films usually directed by Austinite filmmakers like Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez.
The film society also hosts smaller screenings of independent films and rough cuts to private audiences at the AFS screening room. New artists services programs like the Docs-In-Progress series allow filmmakers to screen rough cuts to AFS members as a test audience. In 2005, the cast of The Real World Austin screened a rough cut of their SXSW documentary The Real SXSW.
In the spring of 2013, the Austin Film Society partnered with The Marchesa Hall & Theatre to create "AFS at the Marchesa," Austin's new home for classic, independent and art house film programming. The first Austin Film Society screening at AFS at the Marchesa was the 20th anniversary screening of Dazed and Confused . Other screenings and series made possible by the partnership include Richard Linklater's "Jewels in the Wasteland" series, the Old School Kung Fu Weekend, Matewan with John Sayles in attendance, Eggshells with Tobe Hooper in attendance, a Godard vs. Truffaut series, and more. [4]
In May 2016, Austin Film Society took over the lease of the space formerly called The Marchesa Hall & Theatre. The space was then renamed to the AFS Cinema. [5]
After a significant renovation, AFS opened the AFS Cinema in spring of 2017 with two screens, a full bar and café, and an event hall available for rentals. AFS curates a wide selection of films for its signature programs at the cinema, including repertory series, new restorations, documentaries, independent films and premieres. Additionally, the AFS Cinema offers a full schedule of first run films, featuring the best in international and independent films new to theaters. Signature film programs are often accompanied by introductions by the film programmers or other special guests.
Austin Studios is a 20-acre (81,000 m2) film and video production facility with 10,000 square feet (1,000 m2) of production office space and over 100,000 square feet (10,000 m2) of production space. The space includes five production stages converted from airplane hangars, two production office buildings, and numerous onsite vendors including Chapman/Leonard, Film Fleet, Gear, Miscellaneous Rentals, Great FX and Heartland Studio Equipment.
Austin Studios is also home to the Austin Film Society breakroom and screening room with 35 mm, 16 mm and video projection capabilities.
Various studio films shot at Austin Studios include: Miss Congeniality , The New Guy , The Rookie , The Life of David Gale , 25th Hour , Texas Chainsaw Massacre , Secondhand Lions , Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over , Man of the House , Friday Night Lights , The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl , The Wendell Baker Story , Idiocracy , A Scanner Darkly , Infamous , The Hitcher , The Return , Stop-Loss , and Grindhouse . Various TV shows, commercials and music videos have also been shot at the studios. The Flaming Lips video "Psychic Wall" from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie was shot in one of the stages and shows a behind the scenes look at the hangars. Austin Studios is also the former home to the Thunderdome, headquarters and skating facility of the Texas Rollergirls, as seen in the A&E reality series Rollergirls .
In November 2006, the city of Austin voted in favor of Proposition 4, which allotted a $5 million bond to improving Austin Studios. Planned renovations include soundproofing the stages, climate control, and improving the digital infrastructure of the facilities.
In 2005, The Austin Film Society recently sponsored the cast of The Real World Austin to produce a documentary on SXSW. In several episodes, AFS facilities and staff can be seen.
The Austin Film Society Grant (AFS Grant) is a grant program for emerging Texas-based filmmakers. The program was created in 1996 in response to the lack of public grant funding for filmmakers. As of 2023, the film society has given out over $2,400,000 worth of grants to over 500 filmmakers since its inception, providing the seed money for several projects that went on to screen at festivals like Sundance, Cannes, and SXSW. [6]
The Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund changed its name to the Austin Film Society Grant (AFS Grant) in the spring of 2013.
The Austin Film Society hosts the Texas Film Awards, an annual awards gala inducting legends of cinema and television into the Texas Film Hall of Fame. The Texas Film Awards were founded in 2001 to honor the best in Texas film and to raise funds for the year-round programs and services of AFS. Each year, the event has grown to become the most glamorous night in Austin. Honorees have included Morgan Fairchild, Marcia Gay Harden, Matthew McConaughey, Billy Bob Thornton, Farrah Fawcett, Amber Heard, David Gordon Green, Horton Foote, Terrence Malick, Jack Valenti, Woody Harrelson and music acts such as the Dixie Chicks, ZZ Top and Lyle Lovett. Each year, the Awards also honor a film made in Texas. Past recipients include Dazed And Confused , From Dusk Till Dawn , Rio Bravo , Rushmore , State Fair , Easy Rider , Giant and The Last Picture Show .
Slacker is a 1990 American comedy drama film written, produced, and directed by Richard Linklater, who also stars in it. Filmed around Austin, Texas on a budget of $23,000, the film follows an ensemble cast of eccentric and misfit locals throughout a single day. Each character is on screen for only a few minutes before the film picks up someone else in the scene and follows them.
Dazed and Confused is a 1993 American coming-of-age comedy film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film follows a variety of teenagers on the last day of school in Austin, Texas in 1976. The film has no single protagonist or central conflict, rather following interconnected plot threads among different social groups and characters, such as rising ninth graders undergoing hazing rituals, a football star's refusal to sign a clean living pledge for his coach, and various characters hanging out at a pool hall. The film features a large ensemble cast of actors who would later become stars, including Jason London, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Cole Hauser, Parker Posey, Adam Goldberg, Matthew McConaughey, Nicky Katt, Joey Lauren Adams, and Rory Cochrane.
Louis Black is an American journalist and businessman who is the co-founder of The Austin Chronicle, an alternative weekly newspaper published in Austin, Texas, and was the newspaper's editor from its inception until his retirement on August 8, 2017. He has written over 600 articles in his column in that newspaper. Black is also the co-founder of the South by Southwest Festival, also located in Austin, although the festival operates separately from the Chronicle. He also is a founding partner in Toronto's North by Northeast music and film festival.
Richard Stuart Linklater is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for making films that deal thematically with suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993); the Before trilogy of romance films: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013); the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003); the adult animated films Waking Life (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood (2022); the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014); and the comedy film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016).
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and June 2020. In addition to the annual festival, Hot Docs owns and operates the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, administers multiple production funds, and runs year-round screening programs including Doc Soup and Hot Docs Showcase.
The Texas Film Hall of Fame honors Texans who have made a significant contribution to film or filmmaking, as well as non-Texans who have made significant strides in the advancement of the Texan film industry. Classic Texas films are also honored, with a member of the cast or crew accepting on behalf of their colleagues. New inductees are announced at the annual Texas Film Awards, organised by the Austin Film Society.
SFFILM, formerly known as The San Francisco Film Society, is a nonprofit arts organization located in San Francisco, California, that presents year-round programs and events in film exhibition, media education, and filmmaker services.
John Pierson is an American independent filmmaker. He is best known for helping to produce the first works by filmmakers Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Michael Moore, and Kevin Smith, which he wrote about in his 1995 book Spike, Mike, Slackers, & Dykes.
Chicano/Latino Film Forum was an association of Latino filmmakers, students, academics, and audience members that was active in the Austin, Texas area from 1993 to 1999.
The Marfa Film Festival is a film festival occurring annually in Marfa, Texas.
Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.
Austin Studios is a 20-acre (81,000 m2) film and video production facility with 10,000 square feet of production office space and over 100,000 square feet of production space established in 2000. The space includes five production stages converted from airplane hangars, two production office buildings, and numerous onsite vendors including Chapman/Leonard, Mobile Production Services, and Miscellaneous Rentals, among others.
The Cine Las Americas International Film Festival is an annual film festival based in Austin, Texas, featuring Latine and indigenous films from the Americas and the Iberian Peninsula. Patrons of the festival are offered a wide variety of films to choose from including narrative and documentary features, short films, music videos, films made in Texas, and youth films. Discussions and networking with visiting filmmakers, parties, and resource fairs are also featured throughout the 5-day event.
Tracie Laymon is an American screenwriter, producer and film director. Laymon was raised in Houston, Texas, and studied film at the University of Texas at Austin. She began her film career with work in the Texas area, and several of her music videos and short films were recognized with film festival awards. Laymon moved to California, and continued film production work there, serving as production assistant on Blades of Glory in 2007. Her short film Inside premiered in 2009 at the Milan International Film Festival in Milan, Italy, and won the award in "Best Short Film" from the Women's Image Network. She also directed the first ever half-hour comedy for the internet entitled "Goodnight Burbank", which premiered on Hulu.com in April 2011 and was personally acquired by Mark Cuban that same day. The shows then aired on Cuban's HDNet in the fall of 2011. Her short film "A Hidden Agender" premiered at the Dallas International Film Festival and received the Jury Award for Best Dark Comedy at the Houston International Film Festival. Laymon was also named to the Independent Film Channel's list of emerging "Icons" and "Film Innovators".
Reel Women Media is a filmmaking non-profit organization in Austin, Texas, USA, that provides support to women in the film industry.
Kyle Henry is an American independent filmmaker, editor, and educator. Henry teaches film production at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, while also spending time in Los Angeles and Austin.
Geoff Marslett is an American film director, writer, producer, animator and actor. His early career started with the animated short Monkey vs. Robot which was distributed internationally by Spike and Mike's Classic Festival of Animation on video and Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation in theatres. More recently he directed several successful narrative feature films including MARS, as well as producing and acting in the experimental documentary Yakona. He appears onscreen in Josephine Decker's Thou Wast Mild and Lovely which was released theatrically in 2014. He currently resides in Austin, Texas and splits his time between filmmaking and teaching at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Everybody Wants Some!! is a 2016 American teen comedy film written and directed by Richard Linklater, about college baseball players in 1980s Texas. The film stars Blake Jenner, Zoey Deutch, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Glen Powell, Will Brittain, and Wyatt Russell. It had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 11, 2016, and was theatrically released in the United States on March 30, 2016, by Paramount Pictures. The film grossed $5.4 million against a $10 million budget, making it a box-office bomb, but was critically acclaimed.
Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood is a 2022 American animated coming of age comedy-drama film set during the events preceding the Apollo 11 Moon landing, loosely based on the childhood of writer, director, and producer Richard Linklater. It presents a fictional tale of a fourth-grader who becomes the first person to land on the Moon and stars Glen Powell, Jack Black, Zachary Levi and Josh Wiggins.
Aaron Hillis is an American writer, film critic, director, film festival programmer, and curator.