Pictured from left to right: Lance Myers (Subsidized Fate), Mike Woolf (The 72 oz. Steak, Something's Brewin' in Shiner), James Webb (Comfort), Marc Pilvinsky (Night Dawn Day), Austen Menges (Toward the Near), Courtney Davis (Milton is a Shitbag), Scott Rice (Perils in Nude Modeling), Chris Eska (Doki-Doki) .
This
year nine film/video projects from the state of Texas have been chosen
for the two-hour screening. The filmmakers and their films follows:
Comfort (21:00 min., Mini-DV)
A young man with a troubled history returns to his childhood home. Over the course of a cold Texas night, his reunited family struggles to come to terms with a past full of pain and future full of uncertainty.
- James Webb - Austin, Texas
In the past twenty years James has made a living as musician, photographer, 3D animator, and videographer. He began filmmaking in 2000 and two years later teamed up with writer/director Evan Torchin to form Enormous Apparatus Films. Together theyÕve collaborated on numerous projects, including COMFORT. COMFORT screened at the 2003 Santa Fe Film Festival and will be showcased at the 2004 Dallas Video Festival. Panasonic recently acquired the rights to distribute their most recent DV short as part of PanasonicÕs 2004 Demo. Webb was Director of Photography on a 2003 Texas FilmmakerÕs Showcase selection (Jason and the High Cost of Electricity) and his DP work has been featured in top finalist entries for the 2003 and 2004 HBOÕs Project Greenlight and the 2003 Chrysler/Hypnotic/Universal Million Dollar Film Festival.
Enormousapparatus.com.
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Doki-Doki (30:00 min., Mini-DV)
In suburban Tokyo commuters find themselves waiting every day for the same train with the same group of strangers but never talking...until one day, things change.
- Chris Eska - Gonzales, Texas.
Chris Eska was raised in Ottine, Texas (pop. 98). He studied sociology and art at Rice University before attending UCLA's MFA film directing program. His short films have screened on PBS, at the Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker's Competition, the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, the Texas Filmmaker's Showcase, and at numerous film festivals. After taking a one-year leave of absence from UCLA to backpack across India and Asia, Chris returned to Japan to produce Doki-Doki, his master's thesis film. Doki-Doki won the UCLA Spotlight Award, Honorable Mention at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival, Finalist at the Ozu Film Festival of Japan, and has screened at film festivals around the world. It was recently selected for Independent Lens, a new series airing nationally on PBS.
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Milton is a Shitbag
(4:17 min., Animation)
Milton is a small orange kitty. He works for Pat Buchanan. He hates your guts. Why do you love him so?
- Courtney Davis - Austin, Texas
Courtney Davis has held many jobs, including radio DJ, pizza flipper, PhD student, and Barbie impersonator. She also likes to write, act in, and direct movies. She co-wrote and directed the award-winning independent feature film My Name is Buttons, and co-produced the feature film A Yeti in the City, which is currently in post-production. She just finished her MFA in Film Production at the University of Texas at Austin, and needs a job.
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Night Dawn Day (9:00 min., Mini-DV)
A woman wishes the world would go away one day, and it does. But is it the end... or just the beginning?
- Marc Pilvinsky, Bare Ruined Films (www.bareruinedfilms.com) - Dallas, Texas
Marc Pilvinsky read Stephen King's Thinner at the age of 12 and has had a love for horror fiction and films ever since. He got his journalism degree from the University of Georgia in 1995, and has written for Rolling Stone Online, Flagpole Magazine, and Film Threat. He has directed 10 short films (including the multi-award winning Indefinitely) and is now concentrating on getting his feature projects off the ground, even if he has to make them on his own. Night Dawn Day is not a horror film, but the bleak, apocalyptic tone was directly inspired by George Romero's zombie trilogy, especially Night of the Living Dead. Pilvinsky looks to the careers of Steven Soderbergh and John Sayles for inspiration. His website is bareruinedfilms.com.
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Perils in Nude Modeling
(10:00 min., S 16 mm)
On the verge of expulsion, a hapless art student must decide between life-long ambition and love when an audacious nude model makes a dangerous demand in the middle of class.
- Scott Rice - Austin, Texas
After studying film theory and analysis under world-renowned film scholar, David Bordwell, Rice built a successful career as an art director for Activision before entering graduate film school in Austin, Texas. He just became the first person in history to be awarded two Student Academy Award Nominations in two different categories in the same year. Scores of international film festivals and showcases have featured Rice's work including HBO's U.S. Comedy Arts Festival (Best College Short, Perils in Nude Modeling), Slamdance, New York Comedy Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, and the Texas Filmmakers Hollywood Showcase. His short film Pillowfight can be seen on Showtime. Rice currently teaches screenwriting and production at the University of Texas at Austin while writing features, directing commercials, and working on his first book, Small Stories, Big Ideas: Demystifying the Short Film. He is represented by The Brant Rose Agency.
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Something's Brewin' in Shiner
(25:30 min., Mini-DV)
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Subsidized Fate (4:55 min., Animation/35mm)
A man is instructed to burglarize another man's house by mysteriously placed commercial messages. Are the messages all in his head, or has capitalism become an omnipotent force?
- Lance Myers - Austin, Texas
Lance Myers is a professional artist/animator living in Austin, Texas. He has contributed animation to several feature films including Warner Brothers' Space Jam and Quest for Camelot, Don Bluth's Anastasia, and Dreamworks' Prince of Egypt. Myers has also provided animation for such clients as Disney Interactive, THQ, and Sony Music. His award-winning original shorts have shown on PBS, MTC, Canada's Movieola, and HBO Europe as well as screenings at the Director's Guild Theatre in Los Angeles and the Houston Museum of Modern Art. Myers is currently an art director at Acclaim Studios. His third original short, Subsidized Fate, was awarded a generous grant from the Austin Film Society. For more information visit Lancefever.com.
A roaming musician happens upon a pair of street performers while waiting for his bus to arrive. As the story unfolds from finish to start, the musician realizes that the eccentric-looking juggler is not what he seems to be.
- Austen Menges - Austin, Texas
Austen Menges makes his directorial debut with the experimental narrative film
Toward the Near. Created with fellow student Jef Greilich, Austen directed,
co-wrote, edited and composed and performed the soundtrack. This film was
produced for under $20. As an undergraduate student at the University of Texas
at Austin, he spends all of his free time working in several diverse areas of
the Austin film scene - as a composer, co-founder and communications director
of the McGuffin Film Festival, and editor on the new independent feature length
documentary entitled Slam Channel. He is currently in post production on his
new short entitled Symmetry which was shot in Eastern Europe.
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