Part of Sep 2012 by

Austin’s Fall Film Festival Season Delivers the Best in Genre and LGBT Films

Ever since the carnivalesque tomfoolery of the Fantastic Fest 2011 closing party, I have been anxiously awaiting Fantastic Fest 2012 (September 20-27). Year after year, Tim League and the Fantastic Fest programmers have blown me away with their impeccable curating of horror, fantasy, sci-fi and action films. Fantastic Fest has rapidly grown into one of the premiere international film festivals and it is certainly the most fun film festival in the world. If history serves, this eighth incarnation of Fantastic Fest will continue to expand upon its awesomeness and the 2012 festival will be ten times more amazing than last year’s festival. The announcements that Fantastic Fest has made so far with the first wave and second wave of programming have already solidified the fact that this will be the best damn Fantastic Fest of them all. First off, Tim Burton will be in attendance at the world premiere of Frankenweenie on the opening night of Fantastic Fest 2012. Sure, I have not been a fan of most of his recent work, but that makes him no less of a cinematic genius in my mind. And I still cannot believe that Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt will be coming to Fantastic Fest with their film Looper!

I will barely have time to recover from the eight sleepless nights of genre filmmaking at its finest when aGLIFF (Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival) kicks off on October 3 with their Opening Night film, Thom Fitzgerald’s Cloudburst. The third largest and longest running international LGBTQIA film festival in the United States,  aGLIFF25 will run through October 7. In addition to Cloudburst, Kyle Henry’s Fourplay has been announced as the Centerpiece film and the Closing Night film is Sally El Hosaini’s My Brother the Devil. The final aGLIFF25 schedule will be announced soon, but I can tell you that it will boast a slate of 96 films that will screen in downtown Austin at the Paramount, Stateside, Alamo Ritz and Violet Crown theaters. It is a major anniversary year and the festival’s new Program Director, Curran Nault, promises that this year’s festival will travel deep into uncharted waters, with innovative and daring programming. The theme for this year’s festival is “A Place For Us” (borrowed from the title of Noam Gonick’s experimental short film) which clearly communicates the festival’s dedication to inclusiveness; and — speaking from personal experience — “allies” such as myself have always been able to find plenty of amazing films in the aGLIFF program.

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