Not surprisingly, you can see more foreign films in Austin than anywhere else in the state. Nearly every cinema in town devotes at least one screen to something off Hollywood's beaten track. In the university area, the largest concentration of art films can be found at the Dobie Theatre, 2025 Guadalupe St., on the Drag (tel. 512/472-FILM), and at the two venues of the Texas Union Film Series, UT campus, Texas Union Building and Hogg Auditorium (tel. 512/475-6656). If you'd like something a little more substantial than popcorn with your flicks, check out the Alamo Drafthouse, 320 E. 6th Street. (tel. 512/476-1320; www.originalalamo.com), offering an inexpensive casual menu nightly as well as such specials as Chinese food and Chinese beer to accompany kung fu films. In addition to films (generally of the alternative or cult variety) and food, there are lectures by celebrity guests -- anyone from James Ellroy to Pauly Shore -- as well as the live film spoofs of Mr. Sinus Theater. There are three newer locations: Alamo Village, 2700 W. Anderson Lane (north central), and Alamo Lake Creek, 13729 Research Blvd. at Highway 183 in the Lake Creek Shopping Center (far north), and 1120 S. Lamar Blvd. (South Austin). These do variations on the downtown themes (all can be reached at the same number as the downtown branch).
Celluloid Austin
Austin has long had an undercover Hollywood presence. During the past 3 decades, more than 90 films were shot in the city and its vicinity. But you'd be hard-pressed to identify Texas's capital in any of them. Because it has such a wide range of landscapes, Austin has filled in for locations as far-flung as Canada and Vietnam.
The city has less of an identity crisis behind the camera. It first earned its credentials as an indie director-friendly place in 1982, when the Coen brothers shot Blood Simple here. And when University of Texas graduate Richard Linklater captured some of the loopier members of Austin's denizens in Slackers -- adding a word to the national vocabulary in the process -- Austin arrived on the cinéaste scene. Linklater is often spotted around town with Robert Rodriguez, who shot all or part of several of his films (Alienated, The Faculty, and the Spy Kids series) in Austin, and with Quentin Tarantino, who owns property in town. Mike Judge, of Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill fame, lives in Austin, too.
Of the many cinematic events held in town, October's Austin Film Festival is among the more interesting. Held in tandem with the Heart of Films Screenwriters Conference, it focuses on movies with great scripts. For current information, contact the Austin Film Festival, 1604 Nueces, Austin, TX 78701 (tel. 800/310-FEST or 512/478-4795; fax 512/478-6205; www.austinfilmfestival.com). And the come-lately film component of SXSW gets larger every year. Panelists have included Linklater and John Sayles, whose film Lone Star had its world premiere here.
