Short Cuts

Why You Should Go to the Austin Film Festival, No. 137 in a Series, Collect 'Em All Dept.: Congratulations are in order for a pair of students from the Eagle Charter School of Austin -- that would be J.C. Rieser and Shea Warton -- who have been chosen to receive full scholarships to attend the AFF's Kids 'N Film Summer Camp. Rieser and Shea were chosen out of a group of 200 hopefuls on the merit of their essays on that time-honored chestnut "Why I Should Go to the Austin Film Festival" (a far better topic than the hastily rejected "Why Spike Lee Doesn't Make Good Movies Anymore" and "Woody Allen: Dude, You're Like, So Old"). The AFF summer program is a co-production with UT-Austin's Department of Radio-Television-Film, and will give kids ages 9 to 12 and 13 to 16 hands-on experience in the often-arcane logistics of coming up with something even half as funny as either She's Gotta Have It or Love and Death, and consists of one- and two-week workshops at UT that focus on writing, editing, animation, and, presumably, the ever-popular "Understanding Craft Services: What's Good, What's Nasty." The workshops run from Monday, July 8, through Friday, Aug. 2, and full registration information is available online at www.austinfilmfestival.com. In other AFF news, its Students Short Screenplay Competition is currently accepting submissions until Wednesday, Sept. 4, and is open to kids in grades 7 through 12. Scripts should not exceed 10 pages, and if you've already got an option on that sucker, you're out of luck (or really lucky, depending on how you look at it). For more information, including rules, regs, and gobs of resource materials, check the above Web site.