Austin American-Statesman – Tobin Levy – ‎Jun 24, 2009

Sandlot baseball requires a certain amount of trash talk, and there was plenty of it at Parque Zaragoza earlier this month.

Austin’s Texas Playboys were facing off against their favorite Texas rival: Marfa’s Los Yonke Gallos. But despite the brash talk during the afternoon double-header, the competitors were chatting in the other side’s dugout and the fans seemed to be cheering for both teams at once.

In fact, the amity seen at the East Austin baseball diamond reflects a larger camaraderie between the two communities, the effect of Austin’s ongoing love affair with the tiny West Texas town of Marfa.

Take Austin architect Jack Sanders, the founder and captain of the Playboys. He’s currently project manager of Marfa’s El Cosmico, which is “part yurt and hammock hotel, part residential living, part art-house, greenhouse and amphitheater” and is the latest project of Liz Lambert, who was the creative force behind the Hotel San Jose and Jo’s coffee house on South Congress Avenue and Hotel Saint Cecilia just off South Congress Avenue.

Read the rest of the article here.

UT: The Daily Texan – Emily Macrander – ‎Jun 19, 2009‎

“The kids at the Austin Film Festival Summer Film Camp do quite the opposite: They go back to school to learn how to make the programs their peers may…”

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/dt-weekend/cameras-roll-after-bells-toll-1.1764546

The Austin Chronicle – June 19, 2009 – Kimberley Jones

If you want to impress Austin Film Festival Film Program Director Kelly Williams, dangle a good-looking movie theatre at him. The underused Texas Spirit Theater at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum was at least in part the inspiration for AFF’s ongoing Made in Texas film series, and now a new AFF series, the New Directions Summer Film Series, is setting up shop just down the street in the Blanton Museum of Art’s newly completed auditorium in the Edgar A. Smith Building. The gleaming 299-seat theatre boasts state of the art A/V technology, not to mention no scuffed floors or gum jammed under the seats – that is, jokes Williams, until a rowdy crowd amasses for this month’s Silent Light screening.

Read the full article here.

Examiner.com – ‎Jun 16, 2009‎

“But this place is completely normal.” So says David Byrne, writer, director, and narrator of the 1986 movie, “True Stories”, the ironically named chronicle of the fictional Texas town of Virgil on its 150 year anniversary. Byrne claims all the stories in the movie are based on things he read out of the newspaper; banal stories about the oddities of small town life in Texas. But the dream-like sequences and wacky characterizations make this movie seem like “Our Town” on acid. The movie stars John Goodman, the late Spalding Grey, and at least 50 sets of twins (eat your heart out, Doublemint gum).

“True Stories” will be shown at the Bob Bullock Texas State History museum as a part of the Made in Texas film series, a program of the Austin Film Festival sponsored by the Texas film commission. This is the fourth in a series of six films that will be screened throughout the summer which were either made by a Texas filmmaker or shot in Texas (“True Stories” was filmed primarily in Dallas and Red Oak).

Read the rest of the article here.

The Austin Film Festival is pleased to announce its 2008 audience award winners. Votes were cast by ballot following all film screenings. Winners by category follow:

Out of Competition Feature: