Inside the The Ballroom at Spiderhouse on March 13th, far removed from any Amazon Prime activation or La Croix pop-up, the ATX Short Film Showcase drew in an audience that packed the venue and took their seats underneath dangling, gold cupids. And although this wasn’t a brand-sponsored event at SXSW, it did amplify the voices of independent filmmakers living and working in Texas. A person in attendance said that they were a SXSW platinum badge holder, but that they chose to be here on this Monday night. The presence of another city-wide festival outside did not go unacknowledged, but it never eclipsed the energy and the attitude of the people in the room. This was an event with its own identity.

The irreverent tone of these introductory comments positioned the showcase as somewhat of an outsider, an underdog. There is a certain degree of gatekeeping in the film festival circuit that determines which filmmakers are allowed to screen and exhibit their work at the regional and international levels. In response to this, the ATX Short Film Showcase has carved out its own space in the landscape of short film presentation: it hosts a monthly screening, does not have a caveat of premiere exclusivity, and asks that one person from the creative team is a local filmmaker who must be present. This event allows artists to share their work in an intimate setting, network, and engage with audiences—twelve times a year.

Justin Wayne, the showcase founder and organizer, shared that the March 2023 event was the nineteenth iteration of the program, started in 2021. At the time of the screening, the showcase had received 650 submissions and played 127 short films by 114 directors.

Kayla Lane Freedman’s short The N.D.E. opened the program with a class-conscious comedy taking aim at productivity culture and corporate elitism through one woman’s near-death experience. An onboarding training module in purgatory is the vehicle through which a millennial girlboss must take accountability for her actions, exemplify integrity, and demonstrate vulnerability. Upon completion of the module, the protagonist has the opportunity to resume her life, but in order to leave limbo, she must vow to stop shoplifting at Sephora and start tipping on DoorDash. A delightfully poisonous ending suggests that disdain for service workers runs too deep for the salaried elite to correct. I hope they serve plant-based coffee creamers in hell.

Punching the Clock by director and fight choreographer Val Turner brought a different rhythm to the varied block of shorts. During the introduction of the film, Turner said that she shot the film in under twenty-four hours, as part of a challenge in which she and her colleagues made five films in five days. And born out the limited resources and the constricted timeframe for production, the passion from those involved in making this project shone clearly. The conflict of the film centered around an agent from the Time Displacement Bureau working to apprehend a group of thieves and retrieve a time dilation device. The clever usage of found objects when incorporated into sword combat—characters reaching for whatever is near to defend themselves—kept the audience engaged. Tight editing serviced the speed and precision of the fight choreography, allowing the characters to jump through dimensional space and utilize time reversal for crowd-pleasing takedowns.

Lucy Owens’ The Magician won the award for best film, voted upon by the audience. A Tarot reading serves as the framework for a young man’s dissatisfaction with his monogamous relationship and stagnancy in life. The protagonist, Neil, seeks out psychic consultation from Wanda, but Wanda has to work to chip away at his skepticism toward her methods. Her guidance through the powerful exhalations of lion’s breath and breath of fire breathing practices effectively disarm Neil, causing him to venture further into the mystical experience. Wanda’s reading, beginning with the openness of The Fool and the archetypical mold of a journey laid before him, illustrates a vivid identity crisis and a character’s on-screen unraveling which must take place in order for them to make a change. Each card builds off the next, from the blindfolded Two of Swords, to the King of Wands ordering the Fool to remove his blindfold, to the collapse of The Tower, to Death, and to ultimately The Magician—a full realization of one’s untapped potential.

Bodies of Water, directed by David Lykes Keenan, stars Ellar Coltrane (Boyhood), as Marsh, a closeted twenty-four-year-old who falls for a stranger on the tennis court. An undercurrent of desire exists through Marsh’s non-verbal communication and observations of people around him; a slap on the chest to congratulate a tennis partner may seem like masculine bravado or team-building rapport, but unknowingly, inside the closet, there’s an acceptance of another person’s touch that is affirming. Marsh’s unspoken gestures, his interior processing of those around him carry a yearning—wanting so badly to communicate something about yourself, but being unable to express it openly.

Katie Folger and Justin Arnold starred in Mother Fucker, written and directed by Arnold, a Texan dramedy about a mother’s walk to Piggly Wiggly after her husband forgot to pick up an item. A country-ballad-singing, daytime beer-guzzling, acoustic guitar-playing, neighborhood ne’er-do-well cruises alongside the pissed-off mother on a bicycle, remarking about her body and saying that her husband doesn’t have what it takes to please a woman like her. The dialects and sharp-tongued insults were rich with regional specificity.

In the Q&A which followed, Arnold said about his own personal history which informed the narrative, “I got seventeen year-olds on my birth certificate… I got passed around between the Oklahoma and Arkansas border, hung out with a bunch of outlaws. They called ‘em skidders… I was a scared child, soaked up a lot of shit,” and that the learned behavior he processed was seeing adults “sword-fighting with words.”

In an evening that included both linguistic sword-fighting and time-reversed combat, the energy and enthusiasm of the audience demonstrated that there is an appetite for short-form filmmaking in Austin. And just as The Magician laid upright represents a call to action, this event too felt representative of the creative hunger and potential in this class of filmmakers.

The next ATX Short Film Showcase takes place on Monday, April 10th at The Ballroom at Spiderhouse, located on 2906 Fruth St. Doors open at 7:00; show begins at 8:00 pm.

ATX Short Film Showcase (March 2023)