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Featured Films

Check out these featured films playing at the festival.

80 Blocks From Tiffany’s

Feature Documentary/WORLD PREMIERE

click to rate 3.6 | 6

This documentary masterpiece from 1979 chronicles the lives of two South Bronx street gangs, The Savage Nomads and The Savage Skulls. Directed by Gary Weis (The Rutles, Saturday Day Night Live) and beautifully photographed by Joan Churchill (Punishment Park, Gimme Shelter), the film follows the gang members, community activists, and the cops who chase them through the mean streets of Fort Apache, the South Bronx. Produced by Lorne Michaels and based on an Esquire article by Jon Bradshaw, the film is a poignant slice of life in the toughest ghetto in the US, and filled with a remarkable amount of levity. This screening will be the World Premiere of the newly restored master of the film, which has not seen the light of day since its completion in 1980. The director Gary Weis will be at the screening for a Q & A following the film. Note: While this film is not rated, it contains language that is is explicit, harsh and vulgar, and may be considered shocking and offensive. It is not recommended for children. Program curated by David Hollander. Special thanks to Broadway Video and Traffic Entertainment.

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Chameleon Street

Feature/TEXAS PREMIERE

click to rate 4.4 | 3

This legendary film written, directed and starring Wendell B. Harris arrived like a lightening bolt in the dark twenty years ago and disappeared just as quickly. After years of (equally legendary) banging on studio doors and countless meetings suffering actors from Arsenio Hall to Will Smith trying to remake his movie -- Smith has repeatedly "borrowed" from a rubik's cube scene in this film -- Harris finally packed his bags and headed back to Michigan, cementing his status as a cult hero. The film tells the mostly true story of Detroit con artist and high school drop-out William Douglas Street, Jr. who successfully impersonated professional reporters, lawyers, athletes, extortionists, and surgeons (he performed more than 36 successful hysterectomies!). A biting satire, it was one of the first films to examine how race, class, and role-playing morph into the social fabric of contemporary America, and perhaps the first film ever to spotlight an African American man deftly skating over the strange ice of white guilt (here, professional), a prescient precursor to our "post racial" culture. Chameleon Street won the Grand Jury Prize at 1990 Sundance Film Festival. Director Wendell B. Harris will be in Marfa to show his film for the first time in the state of Texas. Thanks to Jon Ausbrook for his assistance with this program.

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show details Audience Buzz

The audience buzz provides you with details on the films people are looking forward to and talking about. For more buzz, click here.

Highest Rated Films

	386
	15

Cruzando

click to rate 4.6 | 9

	203
	14

Chameleon Street

click to rate 4.4 | 3

Most Visited Films

	386
	15

Cruzando

click to rate 4.6 | 9

	278
	14

God Is American

click to rate 0.0 | 1

Most Scheduled Films

	227
	24

The Last Picture Show

click to rate 4.2 | 3

	386
	15

Cruzando

click to rate 4.6 | 9

entries read all from the blog

Tickets for McMurtry Dinner on Sale!

Steak dinner catered by the Gage - check. Open bar with Patron Tequila, Barefoot Champagne/Wine and Alamo Beer - check. Larry McMurtry receiving first ever "Texas Screen Legend" award - check. Tickets 100.00. See EVENTS.

Posted: Apr. 21, 2009 at 4:46PM by Pecos Jones

Steak Dinner with Larry McMurtry!

Would you like to join Pulitzer prize and Oscar-winner Larry McMurtry -- writer of Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, Horseman Pass By (aka: HUD) and Terms of Endearment -- for a steak dinner from the great and famous Gage Hotel while Larry is presented the first ever Texas Screen Legend award? Oh and would you like an open bar of Patron Tequila, Champagne, Wine and Beer along with that? Check the site soon for tickets!

Posted: Apr. 15, 2009 at 1:04PM by Pecos Jones

2009 LINEUP ANNOUNCED!

How-do friends, Marfa year two arrives with an even more diverse and selective lineup of new films, new-old films and great classics for the cineaste in you.

Opening the festival is the World Premiere of “80 Blocks from Tiffany’s” a rarely seen gem from 1979 (30 year anniversary!) about street gangs in the Bronx. Director Gary Weiss, who made a handful of legendary shorts for Saturday Night Live during the same period, will be on hand to introduce and discuss the film.

During the fest, Wendell B. Harris will be present to screen the 20 year anniversary of his classic “Chameleon Street” for the first time in the state of Texas. Harris’s legendary and rarely seen film, based on a true story about an African-American con-man, won the Special Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1989.

Other highlights include a searing new feature “Viscious Kind” starring Adam Scott, a sweet-hearted, border-crossing adventure from South Texas, called “Cruzando,” and a wonderfully eclectic doc called “God is American,” about a South Pacific island that still worships an American GI.

The outdoor lineup projected by the great Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow includes “The Last Picture Show” (presented in person by writer Larry McMurtry!), a 40th anniversery screening of “Midnight Cowboy,” and the great Powell and Pressburger classic, “The Red Shoes” in glorious technicolor.

Closing the festival will be “William Kunstller: Disturbing the Universe” a riveting account of the famous civil rights lawyer directed by his two daughters.

If that's not enough to wet your appetite we'll be announcing a few more choice additions to the lineup in the coming days!

Posted: Apr. 07, 2009 at 11:12AM by Pecos Jones

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