Here's the latest Austin and Texas film news.
Austin Film Festival announced its 2012 film competition awards, which includes the locally made short documentary, See The Dirt. Chelsea Hernandez's and Erik Mauck's film, about a Georgetown teen who collects vacuum cleaners, won Best Documentary Short. Director Jamie Meltzer's documentary Informant, about Austinite Byron Darby's turn from left-wing protestor to FBI informant, won Best Documentary Feature at this year's festival.
Austin Film Society is hosting a member mixer with beer, snacks and short film clips from local filmmakers on Friday, October 26 from 5:30-7:30 pm at Austin Studios. The mixer is also providing info about the Love Austin initiative, which supports the municipal bond on the Austin ballot in November. Proposition 18 includes provisions to expand Austin Studios by transforming the neighboring National Guard Building into 50,000 square feet of office space for creative media professionals.
In more festival news, SXSW has announced its first wave of 2013 Film Conference programming, which includes a session with Turk Pipkin (The Nobelity Project) about "The Power of Film (To Change the World)" and a panel organized by local filmmaker Karen Kocher and UT Austin called "Storytelling Devices in Interactive Documentary."
Speaking of SXSW, fest staffers Claudette Godfrey and Jarod Neece won a Partners in the Arts Award for their assistance with the Faces of Austin short film program. The annual awards are presented by the City of Austin Cultural Arts Division and the Austin Arts Commission to individuals and organizations that have made a valuable impact on the work of the division.
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