Good Grades or Good Reviews?

It's official: Austin is now the filmiest place in America this side of a Houston windshield in August, barring heavy-hitter Hollywood, of course. The launch of the brand-new and altogether revolutionary University of Texas Film Institute, which happens today, Friday, Sept. 5, will revitalize both the already widely revered UT Film Program and, much more satisfying for native Texans, make NYU's famed film program look downright down-at-the-heels in comparison.

The institute will provide UT students with the means to produce actual feature films through the recently formed Burnt Orange Productions LLC, headed by president and CEO Carolyn Pfeiffer, a veteran film producer in her own right who until recently served as vice-chair, master filmmaker-in-residence, and head of the producing discipline at the famed American Film Institute Conservatory.

On the practical side, the new institute is slated to deliver eight to 10 "high quality, low-budget independent feature films" during its first three years for Burnt Orange Productions. Those films -- created entirely by UT film students -- will then, hopefully, find distribution outside the usual collegiate and festival distribution networks. UT President Larry Faulkner has already gone on record as saying that the establishment of the institute is expected to stimulate economic development in Austin, and no less than the Motion Picture Association of America head (and native Texan) Jack Valenti calls the venture "a revolution in the shape and form of a film school with a boldness worthy of D.W. Griffith."

Announcements regarding the first wave of institute-sponsored film projects will be made in the coming months, but with budgets ranging from $500,000 to $1 million for Burnt Orange's in-house productions, and from $1 million to $3 million for co-productions involving "third-party financing and outside talent in key creative roles," it appears as if Austin may well suddenly need -- say it with us -- even more local film festivals to program the raft of incoming productions in the next several years. Park City, Utah? Lightweights, baby, lightweights.