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.
The Austin Chronicle is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demographic. In 2001, the newspaper reported a weekly readership of 545,500. It is part of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and it emulates the typical publications of the 1960s counterculture movement.
KLRU, branded on-air as Austin PBS, is a PBS member television station in Austin, Texas, United States, owned by the Capital of Texas Public Telecommunications Council. In 2022, KLRU moved into its "Austin Media Center" studios located on the Austin Community College Highland Campus, which was redeveloped from the former Highland Mall. KLRU occupies 45,000 square feet (4,181 m2) in what was previously the mall's Dillard's department store. The station's transmitter is located in the West Austin Antenna Farm in unincorporated Travis County. In addition to airing program content from PBS, it produces original programming including the national music series Austin City Limits.
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.
South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has continued growing in both scope and size every year. In 2017, the conference lasted for 10 days with the interactive track lasting for five days, music for seven days, and film for nine days. There was no in-person event in 2020 and 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Austin; in both years there was a smaller online event instead.
Paul J. Stekler is a political documentary filmmaker, a professor, and former chair and head of the production program in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin College of Communication. Known for his documentary films about American politics, he was also the on-camera advisor to the cast of The Real World Austin during their attempt to create a documentary about the South by Southwest Music Festival (2005–2006). Among other major filmmaking awards, he has earned two Peabody, three Columbia/duPont, three national Emmy awards, and a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Michael Ventura is an American novelist, screenwriter, film director, essayist and cultural critic.
Edmund Ward was an American writer and radio commentator, the "rock-and-roll historian" for NPR's program Fresh Air from 1987 to 2017 and one of the original founders of Austin's South by Southwest music festival.
Marilyn Buferd was an American film and television actress as well as the winner of both the Miss California and Miss America pageants of 1946. During the latter half of the 1940s and throughout the 1950s, she performed in nearly two dozen American, Italian, and French films, including Touchez pas au grisbi opposite Jean Gabin (1954). Buferd also appeared in several television series originally broadcast in the 1950s, such as The Millionaire, Highway Patrol, Schlitz Playhouse, The Ford Television Theatre, and Orient Express.
Benjamin Jeffrey Steinbauer is an American director, showrunner, writer, and producer who directed the feature documentary Winnebago Man (2009). Steinbauer also directed the documentary Chop & Steele (2022), which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and was the showrunner and director of the episodic television show High Hopes for Jimmy Kimmel's Kimmelot. He also directed the PBS show Stories of the Mind and the CBS docuseries Pink Collar Crimes.
Eagle Pennell was an American independent filmmaker. His film The Whole Shootin' Match (1978) is often credited with inspiring Robert Redford to start the Sundance Institute.
Black Joe Lewis is an American blues, funk and soul artist influenced by Howlin' Wolf and James Brown. He formed Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears in Austin, Texas, in 2007. In March 2009, Esquire listed Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears as one of the "Ten Bands Set to Break Out at 2009's SXSW Festival."
Chad Jeremy Holt was an American writer, actor, and performer in Austin, Texas. He was the subject of the independent documentary film Total Badass by director Bob Ray about his struggles with drug use and the criminal justice system.
Robert Byington is an American film director, screenwriter and actor living in Austin, Texas. He is most noted for his films RSO (2008), Harmony and Me (2009), Somebody Up There Likes Me (2012), winner of The Special Jury Prize at the 2012 Locarno Film Festival, 7 Chinese Brothers (2015) starring Jason Schwartzman, Olympia Dukakis and Tunde Adebimpe, Infinity Baby (2017) starring Kieran Culkin, Nick Offerman, and Martin Starr, and Lousy Carter (2023) starring David Krumholtz, Olivia Thirlby, and Starr.
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.
Gabriel Isaac Luna is an American actor and producer. He is known for his roles as Robbie Reyes / Ghost Rider on the ABC action superhero series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Tony Bravo on the El Rey Network drama series Matador, Paco Contreras on the ABC crime drama series Wicked City, Rev-9 in the Terminator film Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), and Tommy Miller in the HBO post-apocalyptic drama series The Last of Us. He has also starred in the films Bernie (2011), Balls Out (2014), Freeheld (2015), Gravy (2015), and Transpecos (2016).
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.
Tower is a 2016 American mostly-animated documentary film about the 1966 shootings at the University of Texas at Austin directed and produced by Keith Maitland.
Boys State is a 2020 American documentary film directed and produced by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine. It follows a thousand teenage boys attending Boys State in Texas, coming to build a representative government from the ground up.
Duane Graves is an American film director, writer, producer, cinematographer and editor who has produced a body of work spanning multiple genres. In 2023, Deadline Hollywood announced he was named one of Coverfly's best up and coming screenwriters. His career began with the documentary Up Syndrome, which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2001. A portrait of his childhood friend born with Down syndrome, Up Syndrome won numerous awards, including the National Media Award from the National Down Syndrome Congress in 2002, and the Grand Prize at the 2006 Movies Askew Film Festival hosted by Clerks (film) director Kevin Smith. He formed Greeks Films with film school peer, actor and filmmaking partner Justin Meeks in 2001.
