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Bubblecraft (6:00 min., HD + Animation)
Bubblecraft is a story of everyday people. Workdays are okay. School is so-so. Life isn't bad, but it isn't that good either. What does it take to pull them out of their humdrum day-to-day worlds? In this case an extraterrestrial water sphere widens the horizons for a businessman, an office worker, and a fourth grade public school student. This short animated film utilizes a unique combination of hand drawn environments, monochromatic backgrounds, and a rotoscoping technique developed by the director Geoff Marslett for his upcoming feature film. The entire piece is set to an atmospheric new song by the band Pilotdrift (who are also featured in the visuals).
- Geoff Marslett - Austin, Texas
Geoff Marslett, a native Texan, studied mathematics, philosophy, physics, and painting at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM and returned to Texas to continue his studies. He earned his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000 and now teaches Digital Animation at the University but is best known for a short film about monkeys and robots fighting. Go figure. Geoff has directed and co-directed fourteen live action/animated shorts in the last seven years with a variety of them having been screened in festivals, theatrically, on broadcast/cable television, streamed online, and distributed on DVD and VHS worldwide. Geoff is currently working on his first feature, an animated sci-fi musical.
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Full Metal Slacks (5:00 min., Mini-DV)
On August 7, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing the massive use of U.S. military force in Vietnam. Over the next ten years, over 50,000 American soldiers and 1,000,000 Vietnamese civilians would be killed. Two days later, on August 9, 1964, President Johnson ordered a pair of pants from his tailor in Dallas, Texas. This is the recording of that call.
- Scott Calonico - Austin, Texas.
Scott Calonico is based in Austin, Texas, where, interestingly enough, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library is also located. Scott's favorite exhibit in the library is Robot LBJ. When he's not making films, Scott is half of the comedy duo “Scott & Stacey” who have performed all around the country and were featured in “Emerging Sketch Night” at the prestigious San Francisco Sketchfest 2005. Scott and Stacey have four cats, a Yellow Naped Amazon parrot and recently acquired two goldfish named Mr. Magoo and Ms. Peabody. Scott just completed a screenplay for a period film set in 1999 and his dream project is a shot by shot remake of C.H.U.D.
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JO FM
(17:00 min., s16mm)
An obsessed fan kidnaps a radio DJ. Tina wants Star to make her one last tape, one tape to remind her of the way radio, society, and her life once were.
- Jenn Garrison - Austin, Texas
Jenn Garrison's first film, the feature length documentary PrizeWhores premiered at the prestigious South-by-South-West film festival in 2001. Since then Jenn has directed several documentary and narrative shorts while freelancing as an assistant director, editor and sound mixer/designer. Jenn has earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Media Studies in 2000 and a Masters of Fine Arts in Film Directing in 2006 both from the University of Texas at Austin. Jenn looks forward to a continued career in directing.
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North of Ojinaga (24:16 min., s16mm)
Two young immigrants, a Chinese woman and a Mexican man in search of their dreams, are smuggled across the US border from Mexico and abandoned in the vast unforgiving Texas desert. Lost and struggling to survive, they discover hope in each other.
- Rommel Eclarinal - Austin, Texas
Rommel Eclarinal is a Filipino filmmaker based in Austin whose primary interest are the stories of the third world, particularly the Philippines. His films have screened at numerous film festivals in the U.S. and Europe. He is currently the Director of Programming for the 2006 Austin Asian Film Festival and he will be joining the faculty at Saint Andrew's Episcopal School this fall to develop the school's new filmmaking program. Rommel holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin.
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Redemptitude
(10:00 min., CGI/Mini-DV)
A preacher ventures deep into the Australian Outback to save the soul of a man who's abandoned his faith.
- David and Nathan Zellner - Austin, Texas
David and Nathan Zellner (32, 30) are Austin based filmmaking brothers who have written, produced, and directed many live action/animated short films and music videos, with two feature films, Plastic Utopia (1998) and Frontier (2002), both released nationally on DVD. In 2005, two of their short films, Flotsam/Jetsam and Foxy and the Weight of the World, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and Slamdance Film Festival respectively, and both have been official entries in numerous festivals including the Edinburgh Film Festival, the 2005 ResFest tour, the Florida Film Festival, and CineVegas. In 2006 they were back at Sundance with their "Outback odyssey" Redemptitude, which went on to screen at SXSW and Florida among others.
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Room 314
(20:00 min., Mini-DV)
With a last minute cancellation, Elliot Renfield counts himself as quite fortunate that he's found accommodations in the hotel's last vacant room. That is, until a man comes calling, dead set on delivering to Elliot the same fate that was intended for the guest in room 314.
- Kyle Bogart and Paul Michael Merryman - Austin, Texas
Director Kyle Bogart's introduction to cinema came at age six: perusing the horror section of a video store, he gravitated to the tapes with the most frightening images inciting a passion that continues to this day. As a University of Texas at Austin undergraduate, Kyle began production on Room 314 two weeks after his 20th birthday. He will graduate in December 2006 and immediately start on a horror feature. Producer Paul Michael Merryman started in film as an actor but eventually found his passion in writing and producing. Recently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in film, he will soon relocate to Los Angeles to continue work in the film business and seek financing for his first feature.
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Roslyn (8:00 min., 16mm)
Two misfits celebrate their destined love by exchanging very unusual, but perfect, gifts.
- Brad Stokes - Fort Worth, Texas
Brad Denton Stokes was born in the cattle town of Hereford, Texas. Developing a love for movies early, he would frequent the local cinema to watch double features and began making short films with his parentŐs camcorder at the age of twelve. He graduated from Wayland Baptist University in religious studies then moved to Fort Worth to begin work on a Masters Degree. In 1997 Stokes joined the Family Net Studios and with them is still producing award winning campaign spots and thematic vignettes. His last four short films, including Sole Mates, have all had festival success. Stokes lives in Fort Worth with his wife Sara and their three children Ethan, Addison and Honor.
On a whimsical Sunday afternoon, Noel Howard lures Joey Rail out of church and into the sprawling backwoods of East Texas to take a closer look at the big picture.
- Matt Robertson - Austin, Texas
Matt Robertson was born in Orange County, California. In spite of his parents' selfish plans to ruin his life by moving to Midland, Texas in 1992, Matt made the most of his time there, channeling boredom and daily frustrations into short stories and home movies. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005, Matt moved to Burbank, CA where he currently works for Pro8mm film labs and is developing more short films and writing a feature.
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Vincent Valdez: The Art of Boxing (9:00 min., Mini-DV)
This short documentary profiles the work of Vincent Valdez, an acclaimed San Antonio Artist. The filmmaker explores an alternative interpretation of Valdez' visual work, which often features the sport of Boxing, by focusing on the way that Valdez places the subjects of his paintings within frames, "Boxing" them. The video also provides a look at Valdez' overall artistic development.
- Ray Santisteban- San Antonio, Texas
Ray Santisteban has had many of his award winning documentaries broadcast around the world. He won a 1990 Student Academy Award for Passin' It On, a 1996 "Faculty of the Year" Award from the Chicano Studies program at the University of Wisconsin, and is a 2005 recipient of the Rockefeller Film/Video Fellowship. In 1994 he was Associate Producer of the acclaimed PBS series ÁChicano!: The History of The Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, in 2005 he produced two episodes of the PBS program Postcards From Buster and most recently completed Voices From Texas, a documentary on poetry/spoken word traditions in the Texas Mexican-American community. Ray has a BA in Film/TV Production from New York University-Tisch School of the Arts.
When a 12 year-old drug dealer hands over a crack rock to a pushy addict without getting paid he must find a way to retrieve his money by any possible means.
- Will Canon - Arlington, Texas
Will Canon is a 2001 honors graduate of New York University's film program. While there he wrote and directed the award-winning short films Roslyn and Doctor Muffins, which have aired on Showtime, The Sundance Channel, and HBO International. Roslyn was selected as a semi-finalist in Chrysler's Million Dollar Film Festival allowing Will to travel to France to make his third short, Air Jesus, for Chrysler, Hypnotic, and Universal Pictures. Will was recently selected to participate in the new directors program Fox Searchlab. Will now has a first-look deal with Fox Searchlight Pictures and finished his latest film, Youngster, as part of the program. Will is currently developing feature versions of Roslyn and Youngster.
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