Life kind of got in the way of me attending a large portion of Other Worlds Austin 2014. With wrapping up my final week on a production job and a childbirth class all running right through the festival, I still managed to take in 3 films across two nights, and get a general sense of the thing.
Since interviewing OWA founder Bears Fonté in the weeks leading up to the fest, and hearing that sales were going well enough to add a second screen to their fest, I figured that things were going pretty well for the festival. And my observation was that it seemed to be successful. I know I enjoyed myself.
A festival like this, focused entirely on indie sci-fi cinema, needed to know its audience in order to succeed. And it felt to me that the fans in attendance were real sci-fi fans, excited to take in a curated selection of previously unseen stuff. Headquartered at the Galaxy Highland theater here in Austin (where countless press screenings over the years have occurred), the whole thing felt targeted properly. This wasn’t an enormous endeavor with hordes of costumed fans packing in theaters in swarms. The OWA team kept lines, badges, and seating very orderly and organized. And while most of the time the programming happening in the two theaters was identical, at times choices were offered. And often start times between the two theaters were smartly staggered to allow in person Q & A sessions for both theaters if there happened to be visiting talent. After years and years of both Fantastic Fest and SXSW Film attendance, I felt that OWA did a nice job of handling logistics and shot for just the right size and scope to be successful while not being even remotely enormous.
I was only able to catch 3 total films, as I mentioned. I’ve already written up both The Well (OWA’s opening night film), and Time Lapse (the Centerpiece film). You can also see Cinapse teammate Sharon Mineo’s OWA coverage where she too wrote up Time Lapse, but also caught The Perfect 46 and short film The Sun Devil And The Princess. My final piece of coverage below will be a brief review of Apt. 3D, which was easily my least favorite of the three films I was able to catch. So out of the three films I saw, I definitely strongly recommend Time Lapse, was passingly glad to have seen The Well, and wouldn’t really recommend Apt. 3D. A mixed bag, but to have enjoyed Time Lapse as much as I did out of only three titles is also rather impressive. Bring on Other Worlds Austin 2015, I say!
Apt. 3D
Shot on a much lower budget (or at least it felt that way) than the other features I saw at the festival, Apt. 3D has a real mumblecore vibe to it. An upper middle class white couple in their 20s move to New York City and bring all their baggage with them. They start to encounter a number of strange and inexplicable occurances revolving around their apartment. A neighbor may or may not be involved, and it could be some kind of conspiracy. It is all kept pretty intentionally vague and, in the end, is never properly explored enough for me to have really cared. It felt clear to me that the film was using its sci-fi/mystery element as a way to shoehorn a movie about white New Yorkers dealing with career pressures, relationship strain, and lousy neighbors into a genre category. Or, at the very least, I was far more engaged by the real world issues being explored than I was by the half-hearted thriller elements that never quite seemed to fit into the movie, even though it was ostensibly what the movie was about. Writer/Director/Star Zack Imbrogno has displayed at least some promise in the ability to get the real life pressures of a very specific subset of humanity to feel authentic… but all of that falls apart with his inability to create an engaging sci-fi/thriller hook. In the end this likely would have been more successful as a straight drama, although I don’t know that the world needs another NYC-set drama about 20-somethings trying to find themselves amidst the hustle and bustle.
And so our Other Worlds Austin coverage comes to a close. Sharon and I both are pleased to have another film festival headquartered here in Austin and highlighting a specific genre which appears to be in a boom phase right now as far as Hollywood is concerned. Here’s to hoping for many more years of sci-fi goodness playing on the big screen right here in Austin, TX.
And I’m Out.