Austin is the home to more locally-curated film festivals than any other city, so the closure of cinemas during the coronavirus lockdown has had a disproportionate impact on the local film scene. However, just as theatres are adopting the virtual cinema model, so festivals are following – starting with the Indie Meme Film Festival.

Indie Meme was the first smaller film festival in Austin after SXSW to announce that it would be postponing this year’s screenings to a date to be confirmed. However, as the coronavirus lockdown continued, and rescheduling for all events – not just film festivals – became more challenging, the festival team has decided to run this year’s event online.

Originally scheduled for April 2-5, the rescheduled online fest will now shift and split over two weekends: May 1-3, and 8-10. The whole event will be available to all Indie Meme members: Annual memberships begin at $35, and you can join now at www.indiememe.org.

The exact schedule and lineup for the festival is still to announced, but IMFF confirm that there will be 10 films, including narrative and fiction titles, both features and shorts.

The virtual option is increasingly becoming the fallback position for festivals that do not see a way to reschedule this year. SXSW has announced that it will be running an online festival for some of its feature titles with Amazon, while several of the episodic pilots have been curated by Vimeo, and Oscilloscope Laboratories and MailChimp Studios are hosting many SXSW-selected shorts.

IMFF has already successfully experimented with an online screening, having hosted a virtual screening of Indian animated romance Bombay Rose, complete with a Q&A with director Gitanjali Rao. Now there’s going to be an opportunity for more films and filmmakers to get that kind of connection to festival audiences.

Find more details at www.indiememe.org

This article appears in April 24 • 2020 and April 17 • 2020.

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The Chronicle's first Culture Desk editor, Richard has reported on Austin's growing film production and appreciation scene for over a decade. A graduate of the universities of York, Stirling, and UT-Austin, a Rotten Tomatoes certified critic, and eight-time Best of Austin winner, he's currently at work on two books and a play.