Like its well-fed folks, the Austin, Texas, gathering is swelling
SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST FILM CONFERENCE & FESTIVAL
High-profile studio films have been added to the lineup.
AUSTIN, Texas -- You see them uplinking everywhere: bloggers, techies and assorted Internet enthusiasts (don't call them geeks) hunched over laptops, tapping away at iPhones and wielding digital video recorders with the kind of abandon more commonly associated with Japanese tourism than film festival revelry.
To be sure, connectivity is everything at the South By Southwest Film Conference & Festival, which opened Friday in the tech-savvy state capital -- Texas' quintessential college town and its alternative hipster mecca.
Judging from the number of high-profile studio films in this year's lineup and listening to movie industry executives here, South By Southwest's film conference finally is coming out from under its reputation as poor cousin to its revered sister music fest. That's in large part because SXSW (as the festival is colloquially known) learned long ago to stop worrying and love the blog.
"We understand the power of the Internet," said SXSW producer Matt Dentler. "We embrace blog culture as much as we would the mainstream press, and we have from the beginning. We get it."
They were so determined to attract "digital creatives" and showcase new technologies, organizers opted to create a third companion event, the SXSW Interactive Conference and Festival, which also opened Friday and runs through today.
It's a deeply felt conviction but also a business model that other premier events including the Sundance Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival are beginning to study closely.
John Cooper, the Sundance Film Festival's director of programming, admitted that he came to SXSW to do reconnaissance. "Sundance is where industry meets film," he said at a party on Austin's main club drag, 6th Street. "Here, it's where Internet meets film. I'm here to try to learn how to try to reach that audience. It's amazing. It's like they imported all the interactive people from Williamsburg, Silver Lake and San Francisco's SoMa district."
Added Michael Pilla, IndieFlix's vice president of distribution and business development: "It's all about convergence. Here, you're exposed to a world of new ideas."
Hollywood comes to town
Last year, the Judd Apatow-directed, R-rated goofball romance "Knocked Up" premiered at the festival, and executives at the film's distributor Universal partly credit SXSW with creating an early viral buzz about the film that helped translate into a domestic box-office gross of nearly $150 million.
