By Example

The Austin Film Society has announced its Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund 2005 panelists and will be screening their films – for free – at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar (1120 S. Lamar) on Sunday, Aug. 14, and Monday, Aug. 15. The panelists are sifting through the hundreds of applications that the TFPF received this year, and at the screenings on Sunday (7pm: Dominic Angerame's shorts "Anaconda Targets" and "In the Course of Human Events"; Joceyln Glatzer's The Flute Player) and Monday (7pm: Rose Troche's The Safety of Objects), you'll be able to judge their own work your own self. I think you'll be impressed, but, should you not be, it's too late, anyway, as winners – who should be "emerging film and video artists in the state of Texas" – will be announced next week and then awarded grants that since 1996 have totaled about $473,000 to upward of 165 projects. For more details, see www.austinfilm.org.

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Dominic Angerame

Managing to make some 35 films since 1969 – while also heading avant-garde and experimental distributor Canyon Cinema and teaching at the likes of the San Francisco Art Institute, Cal-Berkeley, Stanford, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago – Angerame is best known for his devastating 16mm studies of urban expansion and emptiness. "To see the city through the eyes of Dominic Angerame," wrote SF Weekly's Silke Tudor, "is to see an organic beast of concrete that sifts and breathes in rich shades of black and white." His most recent work, 2004's "Anaconda Targets," is a chilling look at the 2002 air raids of Afghanistan, while "In the Course of Human Events" concerns itself with the 1990 demolition of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway. Tudor again: "Like a moving gallery installation, the 23-minute piece is composed of individual shots so precise and emotionally evocative that each could stand on its own as testimony to Angerame's astounding talent."

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Jocelyn Glatzer

During South by Southwest 2003, we said this of Glazter's Documentary First Film Audience Award winner: "Arn Chorn-Pond ... shouldn't be here ... considering that his most vulnerable years, as a kid growing up in Cambodia, were spent in the violent darkness of Pol Pot's shadow. As 2 million were tortured and, more often than not, killed, Arn was spared because he could play the flute in the regime's band. Well-liked and respected by his peers, teacher, and even the highest-ranking of S-21 officers, he was nonetheless forced to tithe on his second chance – by helping to erase anyone else's. He would strip detainees in preparation for their deaths. He would watch them die. Three decades later, then, long after escaping to Thailand and being adopted by an American, Arn is torn in two different directions: whether to languish in his guilt or revel in his renewed spirit. The archival footage that Glatzer mixes in with that of Arn's alternately depressing and enlightening visit does much to convey the desolate feeling of a culture almost vanished."

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Rose Troche

The Go Fish writer-director – who also helmed Bedrooms and Hallways, as well as episodes of The L Word and Six Feet Under – reprises her memorable 2001 adaptation of A.M. Homes' short story collection. Here's what we wrote about the "study in suburban soul-suck" upon its release a few years ago: "any illusions of normalcy are shattered. Simply put, these families are fucked in the head. ... [Their] stories continue to intertwine in surprising ways. ... At first, the film's start-and-stop progression is awkward, but once all the stories get going, The Safety of Objects produces a quiet rush – where will they go next? How much can they hurt the ones they love? How will they ever recover from all this heartache? ... The terrific ensemble acting and Troche's genuine, nonjudgmental interest in exploring the weird places wounded people go, both internally and externally, amount to an insulated but moving portrait of the real nuclear family – kinda nuts, hanging by a thread, but bound by love nonetheless."