Lone Star International Film Festival 2008

Twelve years have gone by since the sensitive and silent Jacob Hunter suffered through a traumatizing rite of passage at the hands of his primitive father. He was eleven years old. Now he’s an expelled Marine, medically discharged from his duties in Iraq following a mysterious incident, traveling by home surprise to his beloved sister, Candice, on her birthday. But when Jacob arrives at Candice’s apartment he discovers that she is not who he thinks she is, he is forced to exorcize the inherited violence, rage, and hatred he is surprised to find within himself. To do this, Jacob must painfully revisit the day his innocent was lost and cathartically take it back.

Anne is lonely. She lives with her mother, has no friends, and is fighting cancer. Her escape from reality exists in the form of THE AVIATRIX, an intergalactic superhero alter ego who rockets through space to fight the powers of evil on distant planets. Anne’s fantasy world is her only way of experiencing the adventure and romance that remain painfully absent from her life – until Miles shows up. Toddy Burton made her first movie when she was 12 and has been pursuing filmmaking ever since. The Aviatrix is her Masters Thesis from her MFA in Film/Video Production from the University of Texas in Austin.

Anna needs money. Not for herself; for her son. The father says no. Swears he’s got none. Some men show up. They have a gun.

Love’s labor is lost at an auto dealership when misplaced affections lead to tragedy and self-discovery. This is a modern day tragedy that ends with a twist the audience never sees coming. Beautifully shot and well crafted, this film has garnered many festival awards and a studio deal for the director. A must see!

City of Cranes takes the viewer on a journey high up in the sky to look at the world through the eyes and words of crane drivers. A visual and poetic insight into the drivers’ lives, City of Cranes is a must see for anybody who has ever wondered what it is like to work hundreds of feet above the ground, only surrounded by a small metal cage. Originally made for Channel 4’s 3-minute wonder strand, the film is divided into four different chapters: “The City Above”, “The Last Topman”, “Ballet of Cranes” and “Solitary”. Each chapter highlights a different aspect of a crane driver’s life.

An experimental comedy about tennis, dancing cars, and God. Before reaching spiritual enlightenment, one sweater-vested young man must face a dancing Oldsmobile, endure a boozy encounter with God on a frozen tundra, and brush his teeth, comb his hair, floss, Q-Tip, lather and shave simultaneously. Doxology combines groundbreaking stop-motion animation techniques and unusual storytelling with the time-honored quest for spiritual awakening.

On a dark night, what seems to be a routine shift for taxi cab driver, Ricardo, turns out to be a night where questionable morality and loneliness collide. Norma, a beautiful stranger gets in the cab and what follows changes the course of their lives forever.

Set on the coast of a prehistoric New Orleans and narrated from the bottom of the ocean by a dead little girl, the film tells the tale of a group of shell-shocked residents who rediscover a sense of hope after a man thought lost to the storm washes ashore. He immediately starts building a raft, to return to the sea and find his waterlogged love. For reasons as elemental as they are inexplicable, the townspeople decide to join him in this effort, and together they turn his driftwood dinghy into a grand patchwork vessel, hewn together out of old memories and keepsakes: a rusty automobile, a janky upright piano. A bathtub and a bed. Hints at former lives laid to waste by the hand of God. A new community forms there on the beach. Everyone brings something, everyone does their part, including the local preacher, who joins the crew after his church is accidentally torched during a rather Dionysian Mardi Gras parade. Presented with a special award just for this film, the Wholphin award for Best Short, SXSW stated that it was going to a film that demonstrated everything a short film can be. The key word is can; a short film doesn’t have to go this far to be great, nor should it. But it is possible, and Zeitlin and his cast and crew did it, and I’ll be darned if I’ve ever seen a film of any length with the same scope as this one. It may be less than half an hour, but it’s just as much a feature as anything else at the festival. - David Lowery

A geriatric, recreational drug 'addik' mother and her twenty-something, totally straight son go on a road trip to meet some dastardly drug dealers in order to replenish a supply of certain herbs.