The vitals:
Wednesday, 1/15
7:00 ~ Doors
7:30 ~ BLOOMIN MUD SHUFFLE with ANDREW BUJALSKI

Indie filmmakers have to be adaptable to survive--hence the best exploitation films, the best genre films, and a handful of visionaries who smuggled some personality into the studio system. We celebrate those auteurs all the time. But then there are a vanishing few who do what they do, do it exceptionally well with absolutely minimal support, and don't really seem to give a fuck if or when the world is going to catch up--Frank Ross fits (or broke?) that mold and as such he's one of my personal filmmaking heroes, a no-bullshit prose-poet like no other, and to my eye the truest fulfillment of the promise of the 'digital revolution.' I am thrilled to be co-presenting the Austin premiere (!) of Bloomin Mud Shuffle a decade after he made it.

- Andrew Bujalski

Wringing subtle wit and hard-won honesty from humdrum life has become something of a trademark in the work of Frank V. Ross, a perennially under-appreciated talent of American independent cinema. Bloomin Mud Shuffle focuses on Lonnie—a lonely, often-drunk house painter who’s yet to leave the Chicago town in which he grew up. Sixteen years on from high school and stuck in a never-ending rut, Lonnie falls under the spell of a college-aged coworker who’s hesitant to take him seriously. With pitch-perfect performances by James Ransone (The Wire and Tangerine), Natasha Lyonne (Orange is the New Black, American Pie and Slums of Beverly Hills), Alex Karpovsky (HBO's Girls) and a keen eye for the ordinary, Ross takes a slice of Midwestern life and crafts yet another wondrous film from it.

-Factory 25

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