SXSW Film
Daily reviews and interviews
By Kate X Messer, Fri., March 19, 2010
Documentary Shorts
Shorts Program, Documentary ShortsD: Various
This finely curated cluster of shorts runs the gamut. While David Wilson's "Big Birding Day" never really delivers the birds, nor a big day, per se, its focus on the nerdery of speed-birdwatching still manages to charm. The disappearing rural Texas landscape is handsomely portrayed in Jeff Bednarz's "6," a sports epic about one of three crucial small-town staples: "Water, food, football." Austin filmmaker Bradley Beesley's "Mr. Hypnotism" expands on Jennifer Sharpe's NPR story about grifter "Dr." Ron Dante (for a short time, Mr. Lana Turner). Local gal Amy Grappell examines more than one side of family drama (as it turns out, her own) with deftly split screen in the disquieting yet tender "Quadrangle." Jessica Edwards' "Seltzer Works," about the last hand-filled carbonated water bottler in New York, works its placid pace to defy "how it's made" made-for-TV roteness. And lastly (and mos defly), the birth of hip-hop comes alive, ironically, in Travis Senger's sad tale of the unseemly demise of its top remix master in "White Lines and the Fever: The Death of DJ Junebug." ("Quadrangle" won the Jury Award for Documentary Short and the SXSW Wholphin Award at the SXSW Film Awards; "White Lines and the Fever: The Death of DJ Junebug" received the Jury's runner-up award.)
Thursday, March 18, 11:30am, Lamar 1
