AFS Announces Filmmaker Grant Panel

Aside from hosting some of the most audacious and interesting films on screens today, Austin Film Society also manages one of the largest filmmaker grant programs in Texas. This morning, the society announced who will be picking the recipients, including two noted filmmakers and David Lynch's biographer.

The panel consists of:

• Dennis Lim, Film Society of Lincoln Center programming director and author of David Lynch: The Man From Another Place;
• Grace Lee, director of the 2014 Peabody Award-winning documentary American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs and creator of the Sundance series The Grace Lee Project;
• Daniel Patrick Carbone, director of Hide Your Smiling Faces, SXSW title collective:unconscious, and the upcoming Phantom Cowboy.

AFS Head of Film & Creative Media Holly Herrick (who also administers the program) said Lim is "among our nation’s finest voices in film," while praising Lee and Carbone as "internationally recognized filmmakers who approach their work with the sensitivity and rigor that we are accustomed to experiencing among our homegrown Texas artists."

Since the AFS Grants were established in 1996 as the Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund, AFS has distributed $1.7 million in cash, in-kind services, film stock, and equipment, plus travel grants. That largesse has helped a total of 466 film and video projects to date. The recipient list has been a who's who of Austin and Texas filmmakers (most newsworthy may be David Lowery: AFS helped pay for his debut feature St. Nick, and now he's days away from releasing his take on Pete's Dragon for Disney).

The panel will meet in August to finalize decisions on the 2016 grant recipients, with the awards to be announced before Sept. 1. That'll be just in time for the 20-year celebration of the grant program, scheduled for Aug. 31.

Before then, Lim will be taking time out from the decision-making process on Aug. 16 to host a screening of Mullholland Drive, accompanied by a signing for his Lynch biography (tickets available at www.austinfilm.org).