Results tagged “afs”

Typical (and typically fantastic) of Austin Film Society’s selections, The Windmill Movie is difficult to explain in one breath. It’s a bittersweet tale&mdas;a creative spirit named Richard P. Rogers is born into a world of wealth and prominence and spends a lifetime attempting to document, illustrate and explain his own existence, yet he never finishes the self-assigned project. He amasses hours of video footage (lavish parties, pretty women, personal interviews) and simultaneously earns a reputation as a respectable documentarian and professor of experimental film, yet his true life’s work remains unfinished at the time of his death.

Astra Taylor's Examined Life makes use of a few brilliant minds in order to tackle the biggest questions of modern existence. From the ethics of consumerism to the similarities between jazz and philosophy, this film boldly ventures into an intelligent realm where mall cops and shopping divas dare not tread.

The Austin Film Society is closing out their celebration of Fredric March's comedic films with this poignant number at the Alamo Downtown tonight. Certainly a few aspects of The Best Years of Our Lives seem dated, but overall the film still packs a powerful dramatic punch.

Tum (Lalita Panyopas) is having a totally crap week. She has lost her job as a bank teller, but can't bring herself to tell her family, as they are all depending on her for survival. For a brief moment, Tum contemplates pulling the trigger on her hopeless life, but thinks better of it, and soon thereafter discovers a noodle box on her doorstep, filled with cold hard cash. Now, you would think that the first thing she would do with her windfall is fix that stupid number on her door that keeps swinging around, but she is soon distracted by more, um, pressing matters.

Tonight at the Alamo South Lamar, the AFS is screening “Private Fears in Public Places,’ Alain Renais’ acclaimed collection of vignettes about loneliness of six strangers in modern-day Paris as they search for love. Originally written as a stageplay, the film takes a humorous but intimate look at each character, exploring the emotions and circumstances they share, sometimes without even knowing it.

Award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Fox spent four years documenting her own life in an attempt to better understand the female condition. As she juggles relationships with two men (one of whom is married), she struggles to come to grips with the definition of womanhood, and the limits of morality. In her quest for knowledge she travels to more then seventeen countries and interviews countless women about their own lives, passing the camera around to whoever is willing to ask questions. The result is a complex yet intimate mini-series that sometimes seems more like a real-life soap opera than it does a documentary.

Starting tonight, the Harry Ransom Center, The Austin Film Society, The Austin Chronicle and, err, Austinist (so many "Austins"!), will be presenting a weekly series of rare and rarely screened films from the era of Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs. All told, there'll be 16 films jammed into four nights at the Alamo Downtown, where you unfortunately won't be able to smoke, but will definitely be able to wear a beret and not work.

Beaufort, an Academy Award nominated narrative, follows the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Southern Lebanon, 18 years after the occupation began. As opposed to rooting out terrorists and massively destructive (and non-existent) weapons, the Israelis had come to Lebanon in 1982 to secure their purported birthright—the land of their forefathers, or, the Abraham side of the coin—and did so by bombing the hell out of Beirut and anything else they could hit, forcing their mortal enemies, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, to retreat. Granted, Lebanon was not necessarily the land of Abraham, but since the PLO was camped out and had attempted to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to the UK, we suppose Israel figured that whatever place Palestinians chose to inhabit was fair game for bloodshed. Clearly, we are oversimplifying this and depending on which side of the strip you stand on, the view may be very different.