The Austin Film Society is once again making a strong case for moviegoing at AFS Cinema rather than streaming from the couch. The Doc Days festival runs from April 30 through May 3 with a full lineup of new documentaries fresh from Sundance and other festivals. Then there's more to see this spring.
Whether it's cult horror, Japanese noir, the very specific Czech New Wave feminism, or the somehow even more specific Soviet sci-fi murder mystery you're after, AFS has packed its late spring calendar with the kind of films that just don't show up anywhere else in Austin; not even your favorite streaming platform.
Plus, there's popcorn.
Doc Days
There are nine films on the lineup for Doc Days this year. Some directors and other filmmakers will appear in person to discuss their work. Check the full lineup to see who's coming. Otherwise, here are some shortened descriptions from AFS for easy skimming:
- Who Moves America: As 340,000 United Parcel Service workers prepare for contract negotiations that could lead to a strike, younger members of the union turn to the lessons of the 1997 general strike that halted shipping in the United States.
- Bucks Harbor: In this unforgettable film, director Pete Muller combines portraiture and ethnography to capture the lives of a few unique characters: men who define themselves by their work in the remote fishing village of Machiasport, Maine.
- Shifting Baselines: Julien Élie heads to Boca Chica, Texas, the headquarters of SpaceX, to meet the people who dream of humanity’s next frontier, while exceptional scientists around the world warn about the existential impacts of the insatiable space race.
- Closure: In what is certain to become one of the most talked about documentaries of the year, a desperate father faces an interminable quest to find out what happened to his teenage son, who seems to have vanished without a trace.
- Fantastique: Fanta is a 14-year-old in Guinea with an incredible talent: she trains as a contortionist with a troupe of renowned acrobats who invite her to try out for an international tour. Torn between family pressures and her dreams, Fanta must light her own path.
- The Lake: Salt Lake City, Utah, imminently faces an unimaginable environmental catastrophe: the draining of the Great Salt Lake. The Lake embeds itself with scientists, government staffers, and politicians.
- Aanikoobijigan [Ancestor/Great-grandparent/Great-grandchild]: For many years, Native American repatriation specialists have worked to return ancestral remains that were stolen by Western museums and collectors. This revelatory film weaves in Native American history, science, and thought.
- The Voyage Out: With only pack goats and the gear they can carry, four people head into the Montana wilderness on a guided elk hunt. There, over bonfires and under the open sky, each hunter wrestles with what has driven them into the wild.
- Soul Patrol: The Vietnam War’s only all-Black special operations unit reunites to tell their stories for the first time. Entering the war at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, where they endured the double traumas of war and racism, these men hold a piece of that era’s history that is all their own.
Anyone who is interested in seeing the above films can buy an individual ticket, or they can bundle up with festival passes ($107). Seeing all the films with a festival pass adds up to a 15 percent discount.
The Maiku Hama Trilogy
May at AFS features a stunning series for Japanese cinephiles: the complete Maiku Hama Trilogy from director Kaizo Hayashi, newly restored and rarely screened stateside. Masatoshi Nagase, best known to American audiences from Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, stars as a hardboiled private eye who runs his detective agency out of a crumbling Yokohama movie house. Each film blends noir, pop-art style, and deadpan humor in ways that feel unlike anything else.
The striking black-and-white film to open the series, The Most Terrible Time in My Life, screens May 10 and 13. The Stairway to the Distant Past follows May 17 and 20, this time in vivid color. And The Trap wraps things up May 24 and 27 with Maiku Hama dodging a murder accusation while the city closes in around him.
The Corman Century
June at AFS belongs to Roger Corman, a famously low-budget filmmaker who launched the careers of Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, and seemingly half of Hollywood. Born in 1926, AFS honors Corman with a four-film Essential Cinema series appropriately titled "The Corman Century."
Kicking things off on June 2 and 6 is the original Little Shop of Horrors — not the musical with Rick Moranis, but the 1960 dark comedy that was famously shot in just two days. A very young Jack Nicholson shows up in one of his earliest roles as a masochistic dental patient. Then comes The Masque of the Red Death (June 9 and 14), a Poe adaptation starring Vincent Price, screening in 35mm. Also on 35mm, thriller Bloody Mama screens on June 16 and 20 with Shelley Winters leading a gang of bank-robbing sons and a very young Robert De Niro somewhere in the mix. The series closes June 23-29 with The Trip, where Peter Fonda drops acid.
AFS Special Events
Aside from Doc Days and themed showings in May and June, AFS has plenty of special events sprinkled in over the next two months.
On May 29 and 30, Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail Girl descend on AFS for a two-night, back-to-back double-feature event. For fans who've been mourning the end of The Last Drive-In, this is the reunion.
The Paper Cuts series — AFS's partnership with Alienated Majesty Books — returns twice. Claude Chabrol's slow-burn thriller La Cérémonie screens May 23 with a post-film conversation with critic A.S. Hamrah. Then on June 20, Med Hondo's West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty screens alongside a pop-up bookshop in the lobby.
On June 12, Paramount Theatre programmer Stephen Janisse joins AFS to co-present Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success in 35mm. It should be a timely tribute, given that the Paramount is going dark for renovations this summer.
Everything Else
Of course, there is even more. Dotted throughout the next couple of months are other gems like Bong Joon Ho's Memories of Murder, Věra Chytilová's anarchic Czech classic Daisies, Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller in 35mm, and a 4K restoration of Amadeus.
Tickets for each of these screenings run from $11 to $13.50 with discounts for AFS members. See the full (no, overflowing) calendar at austinfilm.org.
