U
30 p.m. The Intervention • FRIDAY • 7 p.m. Night of Shorts • 9:30 p.m. Dancer TX, Pop. 81 • Midnight
■^ r y$e% t Origin of the Species • SUNDAY • 2 p.m. Afternoon of Shorts & Ted
Texas Film Festival rolls in with screenings, lectures
undance, Cannes and Col
lege Station. For the final
week of February, Holly
wood is relocating to Ag-
gieland, bringing with it a
slew of new movies, cine
ma workshops and aspir
ing media moguls. The
Texas Film Festival is entering its sixth
year of entertaining, enlightening and ed
ucating film-goers.
As one of the largest volunteer student-
operated film festivals in the country, the
festival has not only been the target of crit
ical acclaim, but also the pivotal point for
numerous beginners in the film industry.
Beverly Anderson, chair of the MSC
Film Society, said the film festival is among
the elite of student operated events.
“It’s the largest student film festival,”
Anderson said. “Most festivals are not five
days long. Also, it is unusual for some
thing of this size to be all volunteer. ”
Although it is student-operated, the
Texas Film Festival is readily supported by
the University.
“Being a member of the MSC commit
tee is a big help,” Anderson said.
Most of the films featured at the festival
are independent movies made away from
the contracts with large corporate studios
and production companies. The featured
independent films are selected from a pool
of over 150 productions, guaranteeing a di
verse mix of the absolute cream of the
8mm, 10mm and 35mm crop. The basis on
which movies are selected reads like the
awards categories at the Oscars: scripting,
lighting, directing, acting and so on. Al
though the festival is purely for the purpose
of education and not competition, it is def
initely a grueling task to out-perform oth
er films and to secure a feature spot.
Aside from independent movies, the
Texas Film Festival has graced audiences
with screenings of larger, more publicized
studio productions with larger budgets.
Such notable films that have been shown
include Oliver Stone’s Platoon, Spike Lee’s
Do the Right Thing and John Landis’s tes
tament to college life, Animal House.
Although most of the festival’s fea
tured, non-independent movies have been
in circulation for awhile, the experience of
viewing them in the festival’s artistic set
ting and the opportunity to reflect on them
with noteworthy film critics and experts
provides an insight that one simply can
not attain at the theaters on premiere
night.
A new speaker is invited to address the
festival every year, providing attendees an
opportunity to obtain a professional’s un
derstanding of the film industry. This
year’s speaker is Tim McCanlies, director
of the movie Dancer, TX. Pop. 81. Approx
imately 20 short films (40 minutes or less)
and eight feature films will be shown Feb.
24-28. Showtimes are 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
The primary purpose of the Texas Film
Festival is to educate audiences about the
film industry with the screenings being ac
companied by lectures. Wednesday’s
workshop is “Engineers in Film,” and in-
depth study of the role of engineers in
modern movie-making. Thursday offers
the workshops “Remakes” and “Film Con-
siousness and Poetry.” Friday’s workshops
are “Films on Film,” a look at films about
filming, and “The Female Body on Film,”
an examination of the portrayal and treat
ment of the female body on film. A special
Saturday workshop on screenwriting will
be led by McCanlies.
The first two evenings of the festival
will be held at Hollywood 16 in College
Station. Lindsay Hearn, general manager
of Hollywood 16, said the Texas Film Fes
tival is welcome.
“We’re doing this to show that we sup
port both the University and independent
films,” Hearn said.
Wednesday’s screenings are stories
about the perseverance of hope, courage
and the coming of age in Andres Heinz’s
Origin of the Species and William Roth’s
Floating. Thursday’s features are the ac
claimed Naturally Native, by Jennifer
Farmer and Valerie Red-Horse, and The In
tervention, a comedy by Glen Freyser. Af
ter Thursday, the festival will be held at
Rudder Theater. Friday’s festivities begin
with a series of shorts, followed by Dancer,
TX. Pop. 81 and a special midnight pres
entation of Sundance-veteran Neil
LaBute’s Your Friends and Neighbors, star
ring Ben Stiller and Natassja Kinski. Fea
ture films continue throughout the week
end with Saturday’s feature. The Dry
Season, by Brian Blotner, a graduate from
A&M Consolidated High School. There
will also be a rescreening of Origin of the
Species. Sunday brings the festival to a
close with Gary Ellenberg’s Ted, a mocku-
mentary comedy based on the life of the
infamous Unabomber, and another series
of shorts.
Festival tickets, which will provide ac
cess to all screenings and workshops, are
$15. Individual movie passes are $3.
Dancer, TX director returns to old stomping ground
ggieland is not a usual
stop on the path to Hol
lywood stardom, but it
was for Tim McCanlies.
Carol Jackson, Texas
Film Festival director
and a junior English ma-
kjor, said having McCan
lies involved will give a much needed boost
to Texas filmmaking.
“We’re really excited to bring him in be
cause we wanted to focus on the booming
film industry in Texas, and he used to be an
Aggie,” Jackson said.
McCanlies should know a thing or two
about searching for the Hollywood dream.
He spent the better part of his life doing just
that.
After graduating from Bryan High School
in 1971 (then known as Stephen F. Austin
High School), McCanlies went to the Uni
versity of Texas for a couple of years where
he found the film school to be less than ad
equate.
“They had this big, snazzy film school,
but I wasn’t impressed,” McCanlies said. “I
frankly didn’t leam much about writing films
there. It seemed like the teachers were teach
ing what they learned in classes, not from ac
tual experience. It wasn’t till I moved to L.A.
and took courses from professionals that I
actually learned anything.”
McCanlies said he went through UT’s
four-year film school in about two years and
he decided he wanted to try something else
— returning to Bryan to attend Texas A&M.
McCanlies majored in theater at A&M and
also directed for the first time. He spent one
and one half years at A&M before leaving for
his third school. Southern Methodist Uni
versity.
While at SMU, McCanlies finished his un
dergraduate degree and then earned a Mas
ter’s Fine Arts from the Graduate Cinema
program and made several short films. One
of them, Nicole et Claude, tied for first place
at the University of Southern California’s
prestigious Student Film Awards.
Because his options were limited in Texas,
McCanlies said he went to Los Angeles look
ing to break into the film industry.
“Before [Dazed and Confused director
Richard] Linklater and [Desperado director
Robert] Rodriguez, you had to stay in Texas
and do industrials or go to L. A. and try to
make it,” he said. “I didn’t know anybody
who went to L.A., but I started making
progress and got an agent.”
McCanlies’ screenplay “Harlem” was op
tioned and helped him land an agent. He
then began receiving writing jobs.
“The accepted procedure for my genera
tion was make it as a writer first,” he said.
Walt Disney Studios signed McCanlies to
a writing/producing/directing deal, and he
script doctored Shoot to Kill, Little Giants and
My Fellow Americans.
But it was his work on Dancer, Texas Pop.
81 that has received the most acclaim. Mc
Canlies said he began working on Dancer
when he moved to Los Angeles. Dancer is
the story of four boys and their vow to leave
the West Texas town of Dancer upon gradu
ation from high school. The story is semi-au-
tobiographical.
“Bryan wasn’t as small as Dancer, but it
was pretty small,” he said. “I had friends,
and we talked about going to L.A. It’s a
whole new world out there. ”
Dancer was originally supposed to be a
low-budget independent film, but it was
purchased by Tri-Star one week into pro
duction.
Dancer became somewhat of a cult phe
nomenon, playing in Austin, Dallas and
Houston for seven months before going to
video.
Although he directed Dancer, McCanlies
said he does not really have much passion
for directing.
“Directing is really hard work. It’s harder
than writing,” he said. “I did it to protect the
writing. I don’t want to be a director for hire
and not have a life.”
McCanlies said he has a lot more job of
fers now, but he turns many of them down.
“They’re mostly bad versions of John
Hughes’ movies,” he said. “If the material is
n’t great ... I can’t see myself doing bad
stuff. ”
Despite his recent acclaim, McCanlies in
sists he is the same, regular guy.
“I’m a private guy, but I’m getting a lot
more requests for my time,” he said.
After living in Hollywood for awhile, Mc
Canlies did the opposite of the boys in
Dancer — he moved back to Texas. He still
maintains a home in Los Angeles out of ne
cessity, but now owns a 250-acre cattle
ranch, the “High Lonesome,” 40 miles out
side of Austin in a town is smaller than
Dancer.
McCanlies will host a screenwriting work
shop in conjunction with the Texas Film Fes
tival Saturday, Feb. 27 at 2 p.m. in Rudder
701.
Although the workshop is supposed to
concentrate on writing, McCanlies said dis
cussions about breaking into the film indus
try will probably dominate.
» oke " ,(■
, Annex • 4 p.m. "The Film Consciousness and Poetry" 417C Library Annex • FRIDAY • 2 p.m. "Film on Film
•' n "Film Making Workshop" 417B Library Annex • 2 p.m. "Screenwriters Workshop" 701 Rudder