SXSW Film

Texas Shorts

Shorts Program
D: Various

It's true what they say: Texas is a whole nuther country, and that independent spirit of whatever-goes is present in spades in this collection of Lone Star shorts. One of the most affecting of the lot is Keeley Steenson's "Alexander Family Farm," an enlightening, smartly edited microdoc on Austin's Alexander family-owned and -run chicken farm. (Full disclosure: We eat their eggs with alarming frequency.) Morrissey would likely hate this film, but as a portrait of regional, sustainable family farming, it's a minirevelation. (Who knew you had to clean "the poo" off grade As before selling them at Whole Foods?) Also excellent is Vicky Wight's "Coffee," a single-character meditation on love, loss, and java – featuring Amy Locane as the heartbroken headliner – that brims with empathy. Chronicle sports writer Thomas Hackett's locally shot boxing doc "Tough Love" is another knockout. Juxtaposing the stories of young 512 tough-lovers with those of their elder hooligans, it deftly and poetically makes the case for fisticuffs (no small feat in today's world). And then there's Jerin Crandell's supersaturated ode to the fan-dance, "Ventilo": simple, gorgeous, and utterly transfixing.

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Friday, March 20, 11am, Alamo South Lamar