Steve Rose will be reporting from the SXSW film festival for theguardian.com. Read his daily diaries, reviews and interviews every day from Monday
Welcome to the indiest film festival on the planet!
Day one is all about filleting. Ostensibly it's about registering, getting your bearings, and trying to find somewhere to plug in your MacBook at the Austin Convention Centre, but the real task at hand is to separate wheat from chaff. And with a plugged-in, multimedia event like this, the chaff comes at you in all formats - text messages, emails, bags full of flyers, posters, magazines, stickers, people trying to shove things in your hands, not to mention a big thick printed programme. It's late evening and there are reams of discarded paper all over the place.
Somewhere within this sea of information lie some decent movies. But how to spot the good stuff? At Cannes or Venice, or even Sundance, there are plenty of veteran names to go by, but here, the programme is predominantly American, independent films, playing for the first time. That's what makes SXSW so relaxed and friendly - no red carpets or paparazzi or VIP cordons in sight. And there's little division between film-makers, press and ordinary punters. For example: I was just flicking through the programme and saw an interesting film called Wellness, directed by someone named Jake Mahaffy. I look up at the badge of the person in front of me, and it's Jake Mahaffy! He's talking on a phone so I don't get to explain my cosmic coincidence. I better go see his film now.
But SXSW's remit also means there's very little indication of what's going to be good and what's going to stink. There is no shortage of documentaries purporting to have unearthed the latest youth cult, for example. Bi The Way says it's bisexuality. According to Nerdcore Rising, it's geeky white-boy rap. Blip Festival: Reformat the Planet says it's "chip music", made from 1980s video games. But wait, We Are Wizards explores the "raging Wizard Rock scene" and profiles "power players in the underground Harry Potter creative community". I never knew I was missing out on so much.
To make life simpler for all of us, then, I've decided to draw up a hitlist of people to try and track down over the next few days:
Matt Dentler - The man who curates SXSW's film programme, which, for a festival like this, means he must have an awful lot of friends. And probably knows where to charge your MacBook. He's been doing this for four years and he's only 28. His MySpace profile says his hero is Suri Cruise.
Greta Gerwig - If there's one movement SXSW can lay claim to having not only discovered but helped create, it's mumblecore - loosely speaking it's a sort of slacker realism. Low budgets, minimal plot or technical finesse, naturalistic, improvised acting, generational truths. It has its sceptics but through movies like Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation and Hannah Takes The Stairs it's acquired momentum. The star of the latter, Gerwig, is the movement's equivalent of Chloe Sevigny, She's in three of this year's films, including one she's co-directed. Surely I'm bound to run into her?
Harold and Kumar - aka John Cho and Kal Penn, heroes of the underrated stoner comedy Harold And Kumar Get The Munchies. Being American-Korean and American-Indian , their narcotically induced antics revealed plenty about American attitudes to ethnicity. The title of their next film says it all: Harold and Kumar: Escape From Guantanamo.
Rosario Dawson - Now a veteran actress with movies like Kids, Death Proof, Sin City and, er, Pluto Nash under her belt. She's here in a movie called Explicit Ills, a study of bottom-of-the-barrel poverty in Philadelphia, currently America's murder capital. Looks challenging.
George W Bush - Well, he's Texan isn't he? Notoriously liberal Austin was the one district in Texas that didn't vote for him, and with a slew of anti-Iraq war films playing, he's unlikely to turn up here. The closest I'll probably get to him is Crawford, a new documentary about his presidential ranch, which is about 200 miles away, well out of earshot.
Terrence Malick - High priest of American arthouse, the Badlands director is another eminent Texan. He doesn't actually have a film at SXSW, but he is shooting his new "top secret" movie Tree of Life in nearby Smithville so he's about. It stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, and apparently involves aliens. What does Malick look like these days? Maybe that's him in a Stetson over at the Starbucks counter?
Goliath - Goliath is actually a missing cat. There are posters asking about him all over town. He's also the title of the festival's opening film. Shot locally, by the Zellner brothers, it's a tragicomic portrait of Goliath's frustrated owner, who spirals off course when the cat goes missing. I'm going in to see it now. I'll tell you what it's like, and whether I've tracked down any of my other targets, on Monday.
