The 20th Austin Film Festival (AFF) which ran October 24 to 31, 2013, announced the 2013 Audience Award winners, voted on by festival audience members. 1982 written and directed by Tommy Oliver and starring Hill Harper, Bokeem Woodbine, Quinton Aaron, and Wayne Brady, won the Marquee Feature Audience Award. in the film, a father protects his gifted daughter from the insidious crack cocaine epidemic which has literally come home via her drug-addicted mother. BESIDE STILL WATERS won the Narrative Feature Audience Award and ALL OF ME tied with THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF DORIS PAYNE to win the Documentary Feature Audience Award. AFF also announced its dates for the 21st Annual Austin Film Festival and Conference for October 23 to 30, 2014.
Marquee Feature Audience Award:
1982
Writer/ Director: Tommy Oliver
Starring Hill Harper, Bokeem Woodbine, Quinton Aaron, and Wayne Brady
Narrative Feature Audience Award:
BESIDE STILL WATERS
Writers: Chris Lowell, Mohit Narang
Director: Chris Lowell
Starring: Reid Scott, Brett Dalton, Beck Bennett, Ryan Eggold, and Britt Lower
In this BIG CHILL for Generation Y, a group of childhood friends come together for the last time at the scenic lake house where they all grew up, to comfort each other, rekindle old flames and drunkenly stumble down memory lane. The house brings out the adolescence in all of them, and what follows is a weekend full of drinking and dancing. Laughter and secrets. Sex, drugs, mischief and regret. Equally full of humor and heartbreak, BESIDE STILL WATERS explores the past and getting past it.
Documentary Feature Audience Award: (tie)
(tie) ALL OF ME
Director: Alexandra Lescaze
The ‘Girls’ have been friends for years, bonding over hopes, dreams, food, and the shared experience of being very obese. They met via the Austin chapter of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) and partied together among Austin’s Big Beautiful Women community. Meanwhile they tried every diet and every pill. Now going through the life-changing process of weight-loss surgery, their center has shifted and upset everything they knew about happiness, friendship and love.
(tie) THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF DORIS PAYNE
Directors: Kirk Marcolina, Matthew Pond
Find out how a poor, single, African-American mother from segregated 1930s America winds up as one of the world’s most notorious jewel thieves. A glamorous 80-year-old, Doris Payne is as unapologetic today about the $2 million in jewels she’s stolen over a 60-year career as she was the day she stole her first carat. With Doris now on trial for the theft of a department store diamond ring, we probe beneath her consummate smile to uncover the secrets of her trade and what drove her to a life of crime. Stylized recreations, an extensive archive and candid interviews reveal how Payne managed to jet-set her way into any Cartier or Tiffany’s from Monte Carlo to Japan and walk out with small fortunes. This sensational portrait exposes a rebel who defies society’s prejudices and pinches her own version of the American Dream while she steals your heart.
Comedy Vanguard Audience Award:
THE GOLDEN SCALLOP
Writer: Kevin Harrigan
Director: Joseph Laraja
Starring: James Cosmo, Nicole Steinwedell, and Tobias Jelinek
Three fried-fish restaurants’ struggles, passions and eccentricities are documented at the ultimate short order cooking contest, The Golden Scallop Championship. A food truck, a novelty eatery, and old favorite all vie for victory, but all their practice cannot prepare them for their head-to-head-to-head showdown. For fans of BEST IN SHOW and WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, this mockumentary-style film is full of battles and battered cod.
Dark Matters Audience Award:
BLOOD PUNCH
Writer: Eddie Guzelian
Director: Madellaine Paxson
Starring: Olivia Tennet, Cohen Holloway, Ari Boyland, Milo Cawthorne, Adelaide Kane, and Fleur Saville
A mysterious “bad girl” checks herself into rehab to find someone who can cook meth for her. After breaking him out, she draws him into a dangerous love triangle with her abusive dirty cop boyfriend and their get-rich-quick drug score plan. Everything goes terribly wrong, and then the next day, they do it again in this genre-bending neo-noir time-shifting whiplash
Texas Independents Audience Award:
SOMBRAS DE AZUL
Writer/Director: Kelly Daniela Norris
Starring: Seedne Bujaidar, Yasmani Guerrero, Charlotta Mohlin, and Lieter Ledesma Alberto
In the wake of her brother’s suicide, a young Mexican woman, Maribel, books a one-way ticket to the place he’d always dreamt of going – Cuba. Wandering the streets of Havana, Maribel attempts to escape her grief, but the city’s rhythms and strangers just serve to trigger tortured ruminations and memories of him. It is only when she bonds with Eusebio – a petty thief and skilled woodcraftsman – that Maribel begins to face her demons. (In Spanish with English Subtitles)
Write/Rec Audience Award:
SPEAK NOW
Writer: Erin Cardillo
Director: Noah Harald
Starring: Rosie Mattia, Jason Drumwright, Jayme Lynn Evans, Eric Goldrich, Rane Jameson, Russell Taylor, and Erika Ward
SPEAK NOW is a romantic dramedy about a group of high school friends reuniting for a wedding. Setting aside their personal dramas to support the union of Tommy and Anna was the intention of the wedding guests, but as the night unfolds old offenses and newly mounting scandal plunge the group back into a pool of high-school drama. One wedding will challenge the beliefs and change the lives of all in attendance… forever. This feature film was shot in three days with all the dialogue improvised by the actors.
Narrative Short Audience Award:
MR. INVISIBLE
Writer: Richard Sainsbury
Director: Greg Ash
Narrative Student Short Audience Award:
COOTIE CONTAGION
Writer/Director: Josh Smooha
Animated Short Audience Award:
MIA
Writers: Wouter Bongaerts, Bert Vandecasteele
Director: Wouter Bongaerts
Documentary Short Audience Award:
THE GUIDE
Director: Jessica Yu
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