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By Marc Savlov, December 7, 2001, Screens

Kodak: "Super-8 Is Dead! No, Wait, It's Alive. Damn. Sorry 'Bout That-- Dept.: It was just over a year back that we reported here that those Rochesterian overlords of indie-grain, the Eastman Kodak Company, were on the verge of phasing out several stripes of small-gauge film stock, due in large part to dwindling (read: nonexistent) sales in the wake of the digital video revolution currently in progress. The graffiti may be on the wall for film as we know it -- every month brings new strides in Hi-Def and digital film advancement -- but a recent chat with Cory Ryan of the Flicker Austin Film Fest revealed that Kodak, far from hedging its bets on the viability of microfilmmaking, has seen fit to award Flicker a sizable grant through their Emerging Filmmakers Program. "Norwood [Cheek, head of Flicker Los Angeles and founding member of the organization] hooked it up," explains Ryan, "and then sent all the Flickers a bunch of film about a month ago. Each Flicker got 17 roles of Super-8, which was quite a bit. It's a grant of film and not money, so you're hopefully a little more likely to use it toward a film project, you know?" That said, the sixth incarnation of Flicker Austin is right around the corner -- Wednesday, Dec. 12, 8pm, at the Blue Theater, to be precise. Ryan is enthusiastic about the lineup, which includes a mix of roughly half local productions and half outlanders. In other Flicker news, the next installment, slated for Feb. 17, will mark the Austin chapter's one-year anniversary. That date also marks a move from the funky-but-difficult-to-find-in-the-dark Blue Theater over to the non-GPS-necessitating Alamo Drafthouse Downtown. For more Flicker info (and a map!), check their site at www.flickeraustin.com... If you're in or around the Houston area on Saturday, Dec. 15, and want to get the poop on "Practical Film Production," check out the seminar of the same name led by big-shot Hollywood producer Michael Waxman, whose bio reads like a list of cinematic home runs (the upcoming Ali, Heat, The Insider). The seminar is sponsored by Indie Slate mag's "Indie-U: Continuing Education in Moviemaking" program, and further info, including costs, locations, and the ever-popular refreshment-availability factor, can be found at www.indieslate.com... Just days after Wes Anderson (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore) finalized plans with the Austin Film Society to screen his latest film, The Royal Tenenbaums, at the Arbor Theatre later this month, the filmmaker and UT grad had to pull out. Citing last-minute problems with the soundtrack and "a small catastrophe" with the sound mix department, Anderson sent AFS Artistic Director Richard Linklater a heartfelt apology for bowing out. However, the AFS still intends to hold an advance screening, sans director; look here next week or the AFS Web site (www.austinfilm.org) for dates and details.

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