SXSW Film Conference Adds Christine Vachon, Ryan Gosling

The SXSW Film Conference complete lineup has clicked into place, with more than 240 sessions to choose from, including the just-announced final Film Keynote speaker, the legendary producer Christine Vachon of Killer Films.

A defining figure in the independent film movement, Vachon has collaborated with Todd Haynes on every project from 1991’s Poison on; she won an Independent Spirit Award for 2002’s Far From Heaven and was nominated for an Emmy in 2011 for their HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce. Vachon has also produced works by such varied filmmakers as Todd Solondz (Happiness), Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol), Larry Clark (Kids), Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry), John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), and Sebastián Silva (the upcoming Nasty Baby), among many, many others. (Read more about her career in Marjorie Baumgarten’s 2005 interview.)

Vachon joins three previously announced Film Keynote speakers: director Ava DuVernay (Selma), actor/writer/producer Mark Duplass (HBO’s Togetherness), and actor/composer/martial arts enthusiast RZA (The Man With the Iron Fists).

Also announced today were a slew of new Conversations With... participants, including Guillermo del Toro interviewing Ryan Gosling, who’s bringing the U.S. premiere of his directorial debut Lost River to SXSW; Sally Field, supporting Michael Showalter’s Hello, My Name Is Doris; actress/writer/producer Amy Schumer, who’ll talk about Trainwreck, the Judd Apatow-directed comedy screening as a work-in-progress; Henry Rollins (He Never Died); and writer/director Jeff Nichols and actor Michael Shannon, whose fourth collaboration, Midnight Special, comes out in the fall.

A few new films and film events were added to the roster as well, including the director’s cut screening of Dean Stockwell and Neil Young’s 1982 New Wave curiosity Human Highway, costarring Dennis Hopper, Russ Tamblyn, and Mark Mothersbaugh, and the full unspooling of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, an Eighties-made super-lo-fi shot-for-shot remake, a decades-long project that itself became the subject of a film, the SXSW world premiere Raiders!

Find more of the expanded film lineup and full conference slate at sxsw.com/film.