MFAH Film Special Presentation: Jonathan Demme Presents: Made in Texas

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents an MFAH Film Special Presentation: Jonathan Demme Presents: Made in Texas.

Directed by Various directors
1980/2015
USA
118 minutes

Introduced by Louis Black, Austin Chronicle editor and SXSW cofounder.

These early-1980s Austin shorts were variously influenced by the punk and New Wave music scene.

Death of a Rock Star (directed by Tom Huckabee, 1981, 12 min.), Invasion of the Aluminum People (directed by David Boone, 1981, 30 min.), Speed of Light (directed by Brian Hansen, 1980, 30 min.), Fair Sisters (directed by Louis Black, Missy Boswell, and Edward Lowry, 1981, 7 min.), Mask of Sarnath (directed by Neil Ruttenberg, 1981, 20 min.), and Leonardo, Jr. (directed by Lorrie Oshatz, 1981, 7 min.) were shown to filmmaker Jonathan Demme on a visit, inspiring him to present them at Greenwich Village’s Collective for Living Cinema in 1981.

Flashing forward, Demme and friend Louis Black have overseen the films’ restorations and launched the shorts on the film-festival circuit, beginning at Austin’s SXSW in March 2015.

In Black’s introduction, he shares anecdotes about the films and their makers, and discusses Austin’s film scene then and now.

About the Presenter
Louis Black is cofounder and editor at the Austin Chronicle and cofounder and director of SXSW. A founding board member of the Austin Film Society, Black was a producer on Margaret Brown’s documentaries Be Here To Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt and the Peabody Award-winning The Order Of Myths.

He produced the first-ever DVD release of Eagle Pennell’s 1978 indie classic The Whole Shootin’ Match.

Community Partner: Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP), whose Business of Film Conference takes place September 18–19 at Rice Media Center.