Experimental filmmaker Bill Daniel says of his traveling mini-fest, Seven
Underground Films Tour 13 Cities in 13 Days in One `65 Chevy Van, "I think it's
kind of a deal for filmmakers who wish they were touring rock stars instead."
Daniel (brother of local cinematographer Lee Daniel) will be presenting the
short films in person with San Francisco filmmaker Greta Snider, whose
contribution to the tour,
Portland, a stylized documentary road movie
filmed with a "rundown Super-8 camera" that solves the problem of the lack of
actual trip footage by merging recollection and imagination, shares the bill
with six other shorts of various lengths and subjects. Aimee Pavey's
Angels? is a deadpan dramatization of a religious cartoon booklet;
Monica Nolan's
World of Women is formatted as a trailer for a lesbian
pulp fiction film from the Fifties; Kim Wood's
Advice to Adventurous
Girls documents the filmmaker's search as a private eye to find Lilly La
France, a female daredevil who rode the Wall of Death in carnivals of the
Twenties and Thirties; and Steve Bade's short
Texaslovakia is a
"mockumentary" about a town with an identity crisis. Daniel, who has been
making personal documentaries in Super-8 and 16mm since 1988, has two shorts in
the program:
The History of Texas City and
Hokey Stoke, a
sensational documentary of Texas sand drag racing with music by the Hickoids.
This "if you left here you'd be somewhere else now" evening of traveling
experimental programing (sponsored by the Austin Film Society) will screen at
the Dobie, this Friday Aug. 16 at 7:30pm; admission is $5... Last week's AFS
Tarantino Film Fest was a great success; the director created a casual
atmosphere at the Dobie where he shared over 30 of his favorite films and a
hotdog or two with audiences whom he seemed genuinely glad to be hanging with.
If that wasn't enough, the series also generated over $10,000 for AFS and the
Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund (look for sidebar announcing the very first
grant winners). Say you missed the whole event? Visit http//:www.real
time.net/~rodan/quentin.html for one fan's play-by-play of the off-beat
series... Several Austin films are heading to New York this fall to participate
in the Independent Feature Film Market (see sidebar) with hopes of garnering
additional funding or a distribution deal. Jacob Vaughan's short Jesus of
Judson made the short list, but before the filmmaker peddles his wares in
the big city, he is hosting a free screening of the movie at Dobie on Saturday,
Aug. 17 at noon. Vaughan, along with writer Bryan Poyser and producer Amy
Thompson will be on hand to answer audience questions... Resident Hollywood
script doctor Aubrey Horton is offering another 8-week screenwriting class
starting Sept. 24 to meet on Tuesday nights. One of the scripts he mended just
made the quarterfinals in the Nicholl Fellowships awarded by the Academy
Foundation. Classes will meet from 7-9pm at St. Ed's; writers must apply by
Sept. 10 and the fee is $280. For more info. call 835-7639... Our own Mr.
Smarty Pants must be feeling extra bright, or should we say Wired? His
back page column of "utterly worthless yet irresistable" facts got a mention in
the "net surf" section of the flashy pop-business magazine's September issue.
