Texas Filmmaker Showcase

The Texas Filmmaker’s Showcase, a screening of short films by locals, is all about freaky families. Houstonian Jim Spanos’s Maidenhead tells the Texas Chainsaw Massacre-meets-Twilight Zone story of Martin, a guy who really loves his dad and spends his Sundays scouting out a church to find “a nice girl” for his bed-ridden father. Iskra Valtcheva, a Bulgarian native residing in Austin, offers up Iris Moon, her dark drama about a young girl living with her grandmother, and Bryan Poyser contributes Grammy’s, about two brothers who are given a strange yet profitable opportunity on a fishing trip.

Austinite Mike Woolf’s Life is Marbleous is something of a departure. It depicts brothers, couples and other relations literally trying to hold on to their marbles. To make the film, Woolf traveled to the rural lands of Tennessee for the National Marble Shooting Championship, where he met Cathy Runyan-Svacina, a.k.a. “The Marble Lady,” who’s trying to break her own record for the world’s largest marble tournament and keep the game alive. 7 p.m. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-639-7515. $6 to $7.
Sat., Nov. 10, 7 p.m., 2007