Viewing entries tagged
SXSW
Standing near the entrance of the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse, waiting to get into my next screening, I noticed something odd. On the street right in front of the theater, where a lone curb forms to separate cars from pedestrians and street from sidewalk, a large, black SUV swiftly pulled up and a flurry of activity followed. The SUV stopped about thirty feet from where I was standing; there was a direct line from the vehicle to the theater doors.
I branched out a little this year at SXSW by attending my first of the many discussion sessions available during the fest, which are held in the Austin Convention Center ballrooms. It wasn’t a movie, but the conversation was certainly movie related, as it was an interview with actor Kyle MacLachlan, hosted by Jenni Kaye, who is a contributor to Letterboxd.
There were a few bad omens trying to tell me that my fate with the mobile Criterion Closet was a doomed one. I decided to try to get into the closet on Sunday morning, the penultimate day of its appearance at SXSW 2025. The plan was to try again for Death of a Unicorn, at it’s second and final screening, then pop across the street after that movie was over to try my luck with the Criterion Closet.
There’s something familiar yet exciting about showing up in the morning waiting for a new day of screenings to start at a film festival. I got to the Lamar Street Alamo a little early on day two of SXSW 2025. The volunteers of the fest have been instructed to start handing out queue cards for each movie an hour before each screening starts. I arrived with about 90 minutes to spare before my chosen first screening for the day, The Spies Among Us, was to begin.
As soon as I dialed into one of the many conversations that was happening around me in theater three of the Lamar Street Alamo Drafthouse, I knew I was in the right place. Waiting for my first screening of South By 2025 to start, I heard one festival goer ask a few others what brought them to the fest. They responded that one of their children was celebrating his impending college graduation. The family celebrated graduations by gathering for an event of the graduate’s choice. This child studied film in college, so his pick was for the family to attend the festival together.
Next week, for the third straight year, I’m heading down to Austin, TX to cover the Lone Star State’s biggest multi-hyphenate festival and conference, South by Southwest. I’ll be honest, I really wasn’t expecting to get in this year, but I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago when I received confirmation that I had been approved for press credentials. In 2023, I was gifted a pass by a friend. In 2024, I was sponsored by, and primarily wrote for, a website with a bigger reach than mine in order to cover the fest. This year, I applied on my own, thinking there was no way my little 2800-visitor-a-month website would secure me a press pass.
I stood in the dining room of Melody, the gracious host for my SXSW 2024 adventure. She had asked me the day before how the fest was going. I had issued a boilerplate response about how it was tiring, as fests always are, but that I was having a good time. Later I realized that she was probably asking about the quality of the fest; how good were this year’s crop of movies?
As we chatted the next day, I admitted that the movies I had seen this year weren’t quite as good as what I had seen at last year’s South By. Upon further reflection, I don’t think that sentiment is entirely the fault of the movies or the SXSW programmers. There were a few other factors at play that made me feel this way.
If you’re reading this within the first few hours of its publication, that means I’m making final preparations for my coverage of South By Southwest 2024 in Austin, TX! I’m partnering with an outside website this year, which means you’ll have to do some clicking for my reactions to what I’m watching at this year’s fest. The good folks at The Cosmic Circus are sponsoring my press credentials, so anything I write will be posted there.
If you need any X-mas gift ideas for me this year, here’s one: a custom-made shirt that says, “I went to SXSW in 2023, and all I got was a case of covid.” After successfully avoiding that spikey little bastard for three full years, it finally got me. Unfortunately, that means it got my wife, too, since I didn’t know I was sick until after I returned home. She says she’s not mad at me. I believe her, because, frankly, she’s a better person than I am.
It was probably the one music show I attended at South By that got me sick. It was a small venue, fairly tightly packed, and I didn’t wear a mask at all for it. (My only defense is, after a trip to Ebert Interruptus, Fantastic Fest, and Las Vegas last year, I was clearly under the mistaken assumption that I was invincible.) When Melody, my friend and couch-provider-for-the-week, told me that Tangerine Dream was playing after my last screening for the day, I was all in. I audibly gasped when she told me about the show.
My first South By Southwest experience has been dominated by documentaries so far. Over my first two days of the fest, I’ve seen five films, and four of them were docs.
I arrived in Austin at a little after one in the afternoon on Monday. After checking in at the convention center to obtain my badge and any pertinent information I needed, I headed straight to the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar Blvd. As soon as I realized that the S. Lamar Alamo was one of the seven venues showing films for SXSW, I knew that’s where I should start, since I was already familiar with the location. I spent eight days there for Fantastic Fest 2022, after all.
Through the generosity of a benefactor – which makes it sound like I’m Pip in Great Expectations – I’m happy to announce that I’ll be attending the South by Southwest 2023 Conference and Festival. I have scored a complimentary badge to the film festival programming for this year’s SXSW celebration.
Running March 10-19, the fest has already started, and, due to the short notice that a badge was coming my way, as well as a few prior commitments, I’ll be down in Austin to see as much as possible between Monday, March 13 and Friday, March 17, a solid five days of screenings. This will be my first time attending SXSW, and I’m excited to find out if it lives up to the hype.
