The Aurora Picture Show is digging up a buried Austin treasure for one last screening. Best of Cinematexas will feature gems from the internationally acclaimed festival, which ended its run last year (there were a couple of mock funerals in its hometown). Cinematexas started out as the hobby of a couple of University of Texas students and grew to become a premiere venue for avant-garde, genre–twisting short filmmaking.
Today, co-founder Bryan Poyser will introduce perhaps the festivalยs biggest undertaking: a chapter-by-chapter screen adaptation of Moby Dick called The Living Whale Part 1: Herman Melville Hoot Nite. Taking a cue from the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which conducts an annual marathon reading of the novel in its entirety, Cinematexas assigned 137 filmmakers portions of the novel to interpret on film. Sure, itยs been done on the big screen before, but (like Melville) these artists werenยt exactly banking, and the monetary restraint makes for more than a few interesting takes.
Poyser will show his favorite clips from the project and discuss the life and, sadly, the death of Cinematexas at 8 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Saturday. 800 Aurora. For tickets and information, call 713-868-2101 or visit www.aurorapictureshow.org. $7.
Fri., June 13, 8 p.m.; Sat., June 14, 3 p.m., 2008
This article appears in Jun 12-18, 2008.