I’ve only snaped a few pics so far. Too busy sitting in the dark watching films. I’ll bring you more as I take them. Enjoy these.

Marquee of the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz

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This was taken just before I the Predators First Look, which I wasn’t able to get into.

Wow, South by Southwest (SXSW) is one helluva whirlwind event. Luckily, between screenings my schedule allowed for a quick chat with David Bond, whose film Erasing David had its U.S. Première here last night. The documentary, which the director concedes is something of a sensationalist thriller, deals with the issue of modern privacy in a world where we are obsessed with sharing so much of our personal information.

In the film, David opts to “drop off the map” as it were. Two of the best private investigators in the U.K. are given his picture and his name, but nothing else. While the film crew follows them around, they must find David who is doing everything in his power not to get caught. Within hours of them beginning their assignment, they gather more information than he originally thought was possible. They even started a fake Facebook account for David, spoofing his friends into giving them leads to move forward on.

Lucky for us (or for me, really), the U.S. ranks much higher in terms of privacy awareness than the U.K. Surprisingly, the U.K. is the third worst country in terms of availability of private data in the world. Their competition? China and Russia. This may seem startling, but the U.K. does have CCTV cameras all over the country recording almost every public area. With facial recognition technology slowly being integrated with the system, David purports, it is only a matter of time before our social networks become meshed with state infrastructure.

The fact that this film is receiving such a warm reception at a conference such as SXSW says a lot about how much of a paranoid Luddite the director isn’t. After all, the Interactive wing of SXSW is where Twitter and Foursquare, a geo-location social network, were launched. All day long people are sharing their location, their thoughts, and perhaps even more sensitive data than they realize on their mobile phones as they wander about the Austin Convention Center. But as I said, Mr. Bond is no Luddite. He is simply more aware of these issues after his experience of making the film. It is his hope that the film’s audience will be more aware as well.

Erasing David will be screening again on Tuesday, March 16^th at 11am in the G-Tech theater. The film is also available VOD through Amazon during the festival. For more information on both the film and issues of privacy and information, you can check out the film’s Official Website.

 
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Photo Credit: Amanda Lockhart

I am excited to announce that the candler blog is going to cover the 2010 SXSW (South by Southwest, for the uninitiated) Film Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas. With a shiny press badge and a dream in tow, I’ll be bringing you all the news and reviews from Austin, and I couldn’t be more excited.

Of course, trips like these are quite an expensive endeavor for a blog, so I’m asking for your help in getting to Austin. Please click through to my Kickstarter Project, where I am trying to raise $500 to defray the costs of the trip. You will find a longer explanation over at kickstarter (and in the video above), but this money will essentially cover approximately half of the expenses for the trip. The candler blog is (and shall remain) a free publication, but as you may guess it’s not free to operate. Any help you can offer is extremely appreciated.

I don’t expect you to give me something for nothing. Besides the coverage on the candler blog you’ll be getting, there are also some pretty nice rewards for different levels of giving. Everyone who donates $5 or more will be included in a “Thank You” post listing his/her name and a link to the website/charity of his/her choosing. Up the donation to $10 and you will get your name and link put in the candler blog’s blogroll, which runs up the side of the home page, for 6 months. For $50 or more, you can get a 30-day 200×200 ad on the candler blog that will run during SXSW. I can tell you that traffic will be significantly higher than usual during the festival, so this is a great opportunity to reach an extremely diverse, motivated audience.

I skipped a price on purpose. For $25 or more, you get a 2 DVD collection of all 8 published Candlercasts at CD Quality (I’ll mail you the discs with the files on them). When the podcast goes on the site it is in a highly compressed audio format so it can stream easily and download straight to your iPod/iPhone with ease. These master recordings are crystal clear, and really sound nothing like what is on the web. Maybe that’s not enough for you? On the second disc, you will get the full, unedited, epic Bests of the Decade podcast that I recorded with Sunrise Tippeconnie. Originally published as 4 trimmed down podcasts, this lengthy discussion features clips that were never broadcast online. Please check out the full roster of Candlercasts on the site to see what you’ll be getting.

Nothing has been more exciting for me than watching the candler blog grow over the last year. At this time last year, I never would have dreamed I’d be able to waltz into a fest like SXSW with a press pass in tow. But here I am. None of it could have been possible without you, the readers. I thank you for your visits, your comments, and your support. 2010 is off to an exciting start, and I can’t wait to bring all kinds of great content this year.

Late last night a press release from the 2010 South by Southwest (SXSW, duh) Film Coference and Festival dropped into my inbox. While we’re not usually in the business of delineating this kind of info, this particular document is just so chock full of goodies, I figured it was worth showing you the moment I could. This is the full list of shorts and panels for the eight day fest this year, and the panels in particular sound phenomenal. Quentin Tarantino, Michel Gondry and David Gordon Green are the headliners, but don’t forget there are tons of other amazing talks scheduled.

The panel featuring Tarantino, “Directing the Dead: Genre Directors Spill Their Guts” sounds particularly interesting. Actor Jeffrey Tambor will be teaching his trade in a talk that I hope will feel like something the Scared Straight talk on Arrested development. Gizmodo writer Joel Johnson will offer up some advice on music licensing for viral videos and friend of the candler blog Paul Harrill (whose award winning short Gina, an Actress, Age 29 recently landed on theauteurs.com) will be speaking about “Cinematography for Improvised Films”. For those in attendance, there certainly is a wide assortment of programming planned. I haven’t even mentioned the shorts, but check out the full list after the break (it’s a long one, be prepared). We still don’t know how much of the conference the candler blog will be following, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated with the news. Read on…