The Films of SXSW

Before the fast-food documentary "Super Size Me" hit theaters last year and proved that man cannot exist on McDonald's alone, the South By Southwest (SXSW) festivals and conferences in Austin, Texas, screened the film for hundreds of industry folk and reviewers. It garnered a ton of praise on the streets of Austin, greasing its entry into the national press and, eventually, theaters nationwide. That buzz helped make it one of the most popular documentaries of 2004. The odd part of it all: music, not movies, was and still is the big draw at SXSW.

Record industry folk, artists and critics all came late this week to SXSW to discover new acts, and hundreds of unsigned bands came to be discovered. It's where musicians like Beck, The Fugees and Los Lonely Boys showcased their talent early on and impressed rock critics and major record labels. But slowly SXSW has become a new platform for launching independent film. It's still a much smaller film festival than Sundance or even the Toronto International Film Festival, but as those have become more and more commercial, Austin has embraced the indie films edged out of Sundance by Kevin Costner's newest project or Paris Hilton's mere presence. Festivalgoers are more likely to spot someone like director Jim Jarmusch, who once came to Austin to offer a surprise sneak of his "Coffee and Cigarettes."

This year, the SXSW "programming team" fielded 2,500 submissions and ended up with 200 films to show thousands of attendees. The films chosen ranged from short films by high-school students to feature films by celebrities turned directors like Owen and Luke Wilson and Paul Reiser. Lauren Bacall, Dennis Quaid, Marcia Gay Harden, Irma P. Hall and Robert Rodriguez were all honored at an inaugural event downtown. But the documentary premiers grabbed most of the attention, perhaps due to the 2004 success of "Super Size Me" and other hits like "Fahrenheit 9/11 " and "Control Room," the film about Al-Jazeera. Here are a few of the documentaries that premiered here without distributors; it's doubtful they'll remain so for long:

"The Boys of Baraka," directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, follows a group of 13-year-old boys from their Baltimore ghetto to a special school for at-risk youth in Kenya. The stark contrast between environments challenges everything the boys know, and the results are a mixed bag. It's an emotionally charged and beautifully made film that is filled with despair and hope.

"Troop 1500," directed by Ellen Spiro, is another documentary about kids on the brink. It focuses on a Girl Scout troop in Texas whose frequent field trips are visits to the local prison to see their mothers. The girls were all given cameras to conduct interviews of their own: "Mom, why did you do it?" (Note to Spiro: if this gets picked up, ask Kleenex to sponsor it.)

On the lighter side, "Cowboy Del Amor," by director Michele Ohayo, is the story of a self-proclaimed cowboy Cupid named Ivan who runs an international matchmaking service out of New Mexico for lonesome good ole boys and Mexican women. When a date goes wrong, Ivan knows just what to say: "It went down like horse poop in a punchbowl."

Politics also played a large part in the documentaries. Two films in particular focused on the war in Iraq: "Occupation: Dreamland" is the experience of eight young U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but "The Dream of Sparrows," the first documentary film out of Baghdad by an Iraqi filmmaker since Saddam's ouster, is the one with buzz. Hayder Daffar, 32, was a film student at the University of Baghdad, but he had no camera to work with during his country's years of oppression. A clerk at the Palestine Hotel, Daffar eventually hooked up with some American filmmakers who provided him with the equipment he needed to shoot real life on the streets of Baghdad and Fallujah. His partners in the United States did the editing of his film.

"Sparrows" is super amateur, sloppy even, but the footage is like none other. He asks cab drivers, artists, former Republican Guards and even schoolgirls their opinions on the "new Iraq" and how they feel about the U.S.-led intervention and occupation. There are as many different answers as there are people interviewed: the general consensus is that there is no consensus--only chaos. The footage is often difficult to watch, especially in Fallujah, where too many innocents have been killed. One of his cameramen was fatally wounded during the filming of the documentary in crossfire between U.S. troops and insurgents. Though it was one of the festival's more slapdash works, it was easily one of the most haunting.

The most potentially successful film to premier at SXSW this year? It'll likely be the feature film by native sons Luke, Owen and Andrew Wilson, "The Wendell Baker Story." It stars known actors such as Luke Wilson, Eva Mendez and Eddie Griffin, and it's already getting write-ups in the Hollywood trades. But this is a movie that would probably have had no problem getting distribution regardless of where it premiered. Here's hoping it doesn't pave the way for Hollywood's invasion of the SXSW film festival. Sorry, Paris, but BBQ and Blahniks just don't mix.