by Jen Scoville
What’s cooking besides turkey dinner this holiday week? Movies, movies, movies.
Though the beefed-up film season now officially starts somewhere around
Halloween, the noticeable glut from now through Christmastime is about to be
unleashed. Be sure to check out Chronicle film editor Marjorie
Baumgarten’s preview of seasonal releases in “Screens,” and choose your
servings wisely from the cinematic smorgasbord to avoid Hollywood heartburn and
indie-gestion…
Among the things I’m thankful for is the Austin Film Society,
whose newest screening series Gangsters and Outlaws kicked off last
Wednesday. This week, (Wednesday, December 4, 7:30pm, Dobie Theatre) the
bad-guy feature is Raoul Walsh’s grim 1947 western Pursued, starring
Robert Mitchum as a vengeful son out to find his father’s killers. Pursued
will screen a second time on the following Saturday at noon. The final
installment of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy is showing on Tuesday,
November 3, 8pm at the Union Theatre. The World of Apu (1959) follows
the now-adult Apu trying to make it as a writer in Calcutta when events force
him to return to the Bengal village of his heritage. The AFS Fall Free Cinema
Series, The Masterworks of Satyajit Ray, will continue to present the
brand-new 35mm re-released prints of the accomplished Indian filmmaker’s works
through February 4…
Image and Identity, the program of video by and
about African-American women at the Austin Museum of Art’s downtown location
continues on Tuesday, December 3, 7:30pm, with three shorts: English
videographer Maureen Blackwood’s Perfect Image? (1988), a piece that
exposes stereotypical images of black women and explores how they view
themselves and each other; Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson’s A Litany of
Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1995), a portrait of poet Audre
Lorde and the socially and politically oriented visions visited in her
writings; and Leah Gilliam’s Now Pretend (1992), an experimental investigation
of race issues using language, personal memories, and the 1959 text of Black
Like Me. Only one more installment of the series remains; admission is
$4…
Connect 5, a low-budget, independent feature project written,
produced, and directed by Austinites John Bryant, Jay Duplass, and Andrew
Fisher of Tough Love Productions finished shooting at the end of last month and
is about to go into post-production in December. Connect 5 is the story
of what happens when the lives of a disillusioned tanning salon employee, a
gang, an intellectual, a grandmother and her tenant, and a reuniting father and
son become intertwined “when an incarnate evil comes to town.” An early 1997
release is expected…
Earlier this fall, Humanoid Grannies From the
Deep, a short 16mm horror spoof co-written and directed by UT alumni Jeff
Stolhand (writer/director Seeking the Cafe Bob), Merle Bertrand, and
Todd Spencer was awarded first place at the Sony Pictures ImageWorks Film
Festival. The writers recently completed a feature-length script based on the
short.
Send info regarding local film projects, multimedia development,
contests, special screenings, industry gatherings, unique websites and any
interesting rumors to: “Short Cuts,” PO Box 49066, Austin, TX 78765 or
scoville@auschron.com
This article appears in November 29 • 1996 and November 29 • 1996 (Cover).