Watch Online 75 Short Films from 2020’s South by Southwest Festival

South by South­west, one of Amer­i­ca’s biggest cul­tur­al events, won’t hap­pen this year. The cause, of course, is the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, its own sta­tus as an event unprece­dent­ed in our age evi­denced by the fact that South by South­west has nev­er in its 33-year his­to­ry been can­celed before. When SXSW, as it’s now known, launched in Austin, Texas back in 1987, it did so pure­ly as a music fes­ti­val; cin­e­ma came in 1994, when it became the “SXSW Film and Mul­ti­me­dia Con­fer­ence.” Since then quite a few movies have launched from Austin into inter­na­tion­al renown, includ­ing Jef­frey Blitz’s spelling-bee doc­u­men­tary Spell­bound, Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War thriller The Hurt Lock­er, and the entire genre of “mum­blecore.”

Spare a thought, then, for the film­mak­ers with work accept­ed into SXSW 2020 — or bet­ter yet, spare some time to watch their films online. While the fes­ti­val’s orga­niz­ers fig­ure out whether and how to resched­ule, e‑mail newslet­ter ser­vice Mailchimp and inde­pen­dent film com­pa­ny Oscil­lo­scope Lab­o­ra­to­ries “have cre­at­ed a dig­i­tal home for this incred­i­ble slate of short films, so you can watch them from wher­ev­er you are.”

That slate includes selec­tions from sub­cat­e­gories such as ani­ma­tion, doc­u­men­tary, the “pre­view of the next film­mak­ing gen­er­a­tion” offered by the work of Texas high-school film­mak­ers, and even the beloved “mid­nighters,” offi­cial­ly described as “bite-sized bits for all of your sex, gore, and hilar­i­ty crav­ings.”

One such mid­nighter, a piece of domes­tic hor­ror by Jan­i­na Gavankar and Rus­so Schelling called Stuc­co, appears at the top of the post. You’ll find it on this Youtube playlist of short offi­cial selec­tions from SXSW 2020, which also includes Zoe and Hanh, Kim Tran’s exam­i­na­tion of “girls, boys, and moth­ers,” a “tri­an­gle of ten­sion since… for­ev­er,” and Char­lie Tyrel­l’s Bro­ken Orches­tra, a doc­u­men­tary on a Philadel­phia com­mu­ni­ty’s effort to breathe life into a trou­bled pub­lic-school music pro­gram. There isn’t much over­lap between this playlist and the many shorts avail­able to watch free on Mailchim­p’s site, so if you want to dis­cov­er the film­mak­ers you would have at Austin this year — includ­ing the mak­ers of Grand Jury Prize win­ners No Cry­ing at the Din­ner Table, Regret, Just Hold On, and Wish Upon a Snow­man — head over there and have your own pri­vate SXSW Film Fes­ti­val.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Watch Curat­ed Playlists of Exper­i­men­tal Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miran­da July, Jan Švankma­jer, Guy Maddin & More

Stream Free Online 200 Films from Tribeca Film Fes­ti­vals

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.


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