
Selected Shorts Bonus Round: Ruben Östlund’s Favorite Nature Documentary
Going back through some of Swedish filmmaker (FORCE MAJEURE, PLAY) Ruben Östlund’s past interviews, I found one where he references a nature documentary that has been very inspirational to him. It makes a lot of sense that a filmmaker so concerned with instinct and herd behavior should like this film. Warning: predatory animal on animal […]

Selected Shorts: Emily Hagins Presents a Short Film About an Awful Man & a Dog
Emily Hagins, who just turned 22, has been making films for the past 12 years, including four features. Making films has been a part of her life for nearly as long as she can remember and she has the distinction of being the youngest ever recipient of an AFS Grant for film production. We asked […]

Frederick Wiseman is Watching Us
If we are fortunate enough as a species to survive for another few thousand years, future generations who seek to understand who we really were will have an ally from our era. Frederick Wiseman has been making documentaries for nearly 50 years now. His films are acutely observed, seemingly fly-on-the-wall documents on subjects such as […]

Zack McGhee’s ‘My Favorite Movie Podcast’ Is On The Air
Zack McGhee is an AFS member who can frequently be seen at film events around town. He is a man of immaculate taste and one of our favorite people to talk movies with. He has started a podcast called ‘My Favorite Movies’ in which he interviews knowledgable parties, all of them from Austin so far, […]

Selected Shorts: Louis Black Presents Henry Griffin’s TORTURED BY JOY
Our ongoing Selected Shorts series continues here with a choice from AFS Board Member, Austin Chronicle Editor and Austin film legend Louis Black: The first time I was shown Henry Griffin’s 2004 short film narrated by John Lurie was by the always brilliant Nicky Katt in one of the only 30 houses actually on the […]

Half an Hour of Pauline Kael Talking About Movies and Writing? Yes please!
A lot of today’s cinephiles don’t know the name Pauline Kael, or if they do, they have some mistaken impression of her. For everyone who is ooh-ing and aah-ing over the first couple of Tarantino-programmed New Beverly calendars, or about his work in general, you must look to Kael. She provided the intellectual basis of […]
Horror Host Zacherley’s 1967 Halloween Dance Party Show Is WILD
Zacherley The Cool Ghoul (aka John Zacherle, born in 1918 and still alive!!!) hosted late night Chiller Theater broadcasts of classic horror movies in New York and Philadelphia in the ’50s and ’60s. His monster schtick followed him around to his next job too, hosting a teen dance party show called Disk-O-Teen in Newark. Here […]

Selected Shorts: Mondo’s Justin Ishmael Presents GIANT GOD WARRIOR APPEARS IN TOKYO
Our ongoing Selected Shorts series presents different short films presented by creative luminary types. This time we have a short provided for us by Justin Ishmael, CEO of Mondo, the world’s leading purveyors of specialty printed posters and more. Here’s Justin: I took a trip to Japan a few years ago and happened upon […]
NYC to lose last film processing lab
The bad news keeps on coming for lovers of celluloid. Technicolor and Deluxe’s joint film lab venture, Film Lab NY, just announced that it is closing its doors in December. It’s important to note that here that Film Lab NY was one of the few places that made film processing affordable for independent filmmakers. Due […]

You Can’t Love Someone In A Void: Philippe Garrel’s Wild Art
From AFS Associate Artistic Director Holly Herrick: JEALOUSY comes to Austin next week with two screenings at the Marchesa (November 2nd and 3rd), and while Philippe Garrel continues to be considered as the almost satirical epitome of art house in the United States, his films demand a more thorough investigation by US cinephiles. This is […]

Lav Diaz’ Interview Responses Are Almost As Long (& Great) As His Films
Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz, whose 4-hour-plus NORTE, THE END OF HISTORY screens as part of our Essential Cinema series on December 4, was interviewed by Andrea Picard of Cinema Scope last year and it’s one of the best interviews we’ve read in a long time. Here’s a sample: On the impossibility of submitting a list of […]

Selected Shorts: Zack Carlson Presents a “10-Fisted Masterpiece Of Sex, Cake, Self-Loathing & Hot Dogs”
In our Selected Shorts series we’ve been asking some AFS Friends for their favorite short films and posting them here for all of you to enjoy. Zack Carlson is an author (his Fantagraphics book DESTROY ALL MOVIES is the definitive reference work about punks on film), screenwriter, film producer, former programmer for Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, […]