Austin Film Festival Receives Grant Program Funding from TSLAC

The Texas State Library & Archives Commission (TSLAC) recently awarded funding to Austin Film Festival (AFF) and The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University under its TexTreasures Grant program. Starting September of this year, The Wittliff Collections is confirmed to host more of Austin Film Festival's vast audiovisual archive and feature materials preserved from Festivals and Conferences between 1997-2002.

The public will have the ability to visit the Archive at The Wittliff Collections free of charge in San Marcos, Texas, along with the option to view its contents online(www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu) - a vault that offers up past panel discussions, interviews, Q&A's, and more from Austin Film Festival's rich past of championing storytelling through film and television.

Some of the iconic events preserved during this period in the Festival's history have included:

· A Case Study: MTV's Bevis and Butthead, featuring Mike Judge

· An Experienced Writer/Director Tells All, featuring Richard Linklater & Steven Soderberg

· Building Characters that Last, featuring Robert Festinger, John Lee Hancock, Karen Lutz

· Free For All Q&A, featuring Dennis Hopper, Oliver Stone, moderated by Bud Shrake

· Getting More Than You Pay For, featuring Fred Williamson, Ron Peer

· Kings of Comedy featuring James L. Brooks and Buck Henry

· Local Heroes, featuring Bill Broyles, Tim McCanlies, Anne Rapp

· Reinventing the Wheel: TV Drama Series Development, featuring Marti Noxon, Rob Thomas

· Scripting Animations, featuring Chris Weitz, Greg Carter, Adam Beechen, Larry Doyle

· Suspense Writing-Whatever You Do, Don't Climax Too Soon!, featuring Guillermo Del Toro, Dan Petrie Jr., Joseph Stefano, Ted Tally

· Tender Mercies with Horton Foote

· The Actor's Eyes, featuring Buck Henry, Rachel Hunter, Matthew McConaughey, Jean Smart

· Up Close and Personal with David Chase

· You're Not Eighteen Anymore? Big Deal!, featuring CALLIE KHOURI, Gayla Nethercott, Polly Platt, Alan Trustman, Bill Wittliff

AFF's Archive aims to provide informative materials and curriculum to a wide range of audiences and consumers, including but not limited to film lovers, educators, students, filmmakers, screenwriters, scholars, and historians. Its contents are educational and informative, rooted in the intricacies of the art, craft, and business of storytelling, as relayed by working professionals in the media industries.

The grant for this project is just one of 67 made possible this year from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act. "Communities in every corner of Texas will benefit from the resources that have been made available through this list of forward-thinking grant proposals," said TSLAC Director and Librarian Mark Smith.

TSLAC awards competitive grants annually, as funding allows, and supported approximately $2.1 million in project funds for their 2018 fiscal year. Along with AFF's Archive project in conjunction with the Wittliff Collections, the TexTreasures Grants have offered assistance to 13 libraries across the state, thus providing more accessibility to their unique collections. The AFF Archive is currently available as physical and digitized content via TARO and The Wittliff Collections website, as well television, podcast, and radio episodes hosted on AFF's On Story site, at www.onstory.tv. A full funding aid is posted by the Wittliff website, TARO, and the Alkek Library's Institutional repository.

"The content captured at the Festival directly reflects its reputation for being an intimate, instructive, and inspirational experience," said AFF Executive Director, Barbara Morgan. "We couldn't be more thrilled for this incredible opportunity to provide these resources to the general public, free to anyone with an interest in storytelling through film and television."

Image via: http://www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu/about/history.html

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