SXSW Film

Reel Shorts I

D: various

In "LOOPS: a Portrait of Caddie Life," directors M.R. Dahr and Stephen McFarland present a poignant documentary short portraying the hopes and dreams (or lack thereof) of caddies at the Winged Foot Golf Club in New York. Caddyshack this isn't. The booze and drugs taken by real-life caddy Brenden O'Toole don't provide any laughs… Craig Butta's "Coney Island, USA" is a beautifully shot black-&-white that tells the story of a barker at the famous amusement park. Featuring a superb musical score of old blues, it follows the barker's romantic interest in a heavily tattooed-and-pierced fire eater, who is also working in a park that is past its heyday… "Buttercup," by Simon Hawkins, provides some laughs via a suburban family spiraling downward, as a wife convinced she has mono begins seeing an "herbalist," who prescribes her cocaine… Cecily Rhett's "Forward" is a cute yet earnest look at love and relationships gone wrong in the lives of a Civil War re-enactor and an older woman who has just split with her younger boyfriend… "Trout," by Johnny Barrington, is a very funny film about two young lovers sharing a small caravan in the Scottish Highlands. As both struggle with dead-end jobs, an absurd chain of events involving a superhero outfit, a cow, and a live wire unfolds… Keith Bogart's "The Rapture of the Athlete Assumed Into Heaven" is an adaptation of a play written by bestselling novelist Don DeLillo. In this short film – which any lover of language will enjoy – John Larroquette plays a reporter interviewing a tennis player who dies on the very day of his greatest athletic triumph… In "Heavy Metal Drummer," co-directors Toby MacDonald and Luke Morris tell the story of a Moroccan teen who is obsessed with heavy metal, particularly the album Killers by Iron Maiden. Stuck in a band that plays something like elevator music, he longs to really rock out, which he finally does at the band's next gig.

11am, Alamo South Lamar