AFS @ LAFF

This weekend, AFS Communications Manager Agnes Varnum and I went out to LA for the Los Angeles Film Festival. Two projects that each received two TFPF grants from AFS over the years were having their world premieres at the festival - Spencer Parsons' I'LL COME RUNNING and PJ Raval & Jay Hodges' TRINIDAD. We set up a Sunday night party to celebrate those films, as well as a couple films from AFS pals playing at the festival that had already premiered at Sundance this year - Margaret Brown's THE ORDER OF MYTHS and Jay & Mark Duplass' BAGHEAD.

The festival mostly takes place in Westwood Village, kind of an upscale version of the Drag just outside the campus of UCLA on the west side of LA. There are about five big movie theaters in a three block radius, with allows a surprisingly pedestrian-friendly experience for festival-goers in the midst of the most car-centric city in the country. The festival has developed some significant Austin connections in lately, with projects like Steve Collins' GRETCHEN, Mike Akel's CHALK and Chris Eska's AUGUST EVENING each taking home awards in recent years. Two of those films took home the festival's biggest prize, the one folks are probably gnawing their fingers raw over right now - the $50,000 Target Filmmaker Award. Also, one of last year's TFPF panelists was none other than the festival's Director of Programming Rachel Rosen.

Spencer's movie premiered first on Saturday night at the Regent in Westwood with a sold-out show. His film is a Danish-American co-production and was shot in Austin and Aarhus, Denmark, in 2006. A couple of the excellent Danish actors came out for the premiere, as well as the star of the film, up-and-comer Melonie Diaz, who has been getting excellent notices for her performance in places like the Hollywood Reporter.

PJ & Jay's film premiered the next afternoon at the Majestic Crest and several of the transgendered subjects of their documentary came out for the screening. Unfortunately I missed what must have been a fantastic Q & A since I had to hoof it over to the Westwood Brewing Company to get ready for our party. It went off very well, with a lot of ex-Texans coming out to say hi and mingle. Even the LAFF staff came out to take a short breather from their festival, which is definitely the mark of a good party. Check out Matt Dentler's blog and Agnes's flickr page for some sweet pics. Agnes had managed to secure a couple of pretty sweet door prizes, like badges to SXSW and the Austin Film Festival, in addition to our ever popular T-shirts & caps, so a good number of folks went away happy.

In addition to seeing the awesome Austin-centric films at the festival, I also managed to catch up with a couple films that have been burning up the festival circuit - namely Barry Jenkins' fantastic MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY, which wowed folks with good reason at this year's SXSW and James Marsh's incredible doc MAN ON WIRE, which played to great acclaim at Sundance. Barry's film has a very simple and mumbly-familiar premise (two young twenty-somethings wander through the city, leaning toward a possible romance), but the warmth and wit of the script and his performers make the film stand out. MAN ON WIRE tells the story of French art-prankster Phillippe Petit's infamous 1974 tightrope walk across the Twin Towers with all the suspense and intrigue of cinema's best caper movies. Both of these films will be coming to theaters later this year, so don't miss 'em!

Tomorrow night is the big Awards Ceremony, where not one but two $50k prizes will be given out, one for the Documentary Competition and one for the Narrative Competition. Both PJ & Jay's and Spencer's films are up for the big prize, so let's keep our fingers crossed that the Austin-love at LAFF continues in 2008!