Texas’ Marfa Film Festival is a five-day event that showcases cutting-edge filmmaking in an intimate, remote setting—standing out from the festival circuit not only for its quality of work but its relaxed atmosphere. A key factor in fostering this community spirit is Marfa’s location—a small West Texas artistic enclave where “we see great collaborations,” festival director Robin Lambaria notes.
The festival screens one film at a time, including outdoors at night, with some programming repeated in the neighboring town of Alpine, Texas, roughly 25 miles away. “If you want to see everything, you literally can,” says Lambaria. “The filmmakers like that they get the full attention of the attendees.”
This year’s festival introduces two submission categories: unproduced screenplays, and trailers & teasers. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry (“Lonesome Dove”) and his writing partner Diana Ossana will judge the screenplays, and the winner will receive a live table reading before an audience. The second category is for those who haven’t yet completed their film but have finished a trailer. Operations director Nathan Stueve is impressed by the humor and talent he’s seen in trailers online. “You can get a sense sometimes of having experienced an entire movie compacted into those few minutes,” he says.
The screenplay category in particular is part of a long-term vision of helping filmmakers develop work, much as the Sundance Festival does with its labs and programs, says Stueve.
“Film is the culmination of so many mediums of art,” Lambaria feels. The new categories will allow audiences to see the inner workings of film and understand that this is a “dance of different artworks.”
The festival’s submission deadline is June 21, 2015, at midnight CDT. The 2015 Marfa Film Festival runs October 14 to 18.
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