Hico’s Billy the Kid Film Festival teams with Dallas’ Women Texas Film Festival for fest highlighting Texas productions and women filmmakers November 6-7
The Hico-based Billy the Kid Film Festival today announced for their second edition they will team with Dallas’ Women Texas Film Festival for a two-day virtual presentation November 6-7. With 5 short film programs featuring 18 films, the 2-day cinema experience will both put a spotlight on women filmmakers, as well as Texas-shot and produced films. BTKFF will also present a special work-in-progress presentation of Chris Zuhdi’s Hico-shot feature film, MEXICAN MOON.
13 of the 18 films have a woman in a lead creative role (director, producer, writer, editor, cinematographer, or composer) and 11 of the films were shot in Texas and/or from Texas filmmakers).
Festival founders and directors, Philip Vasquez and Luci DiGiorgio, along with lead film programmer Justina Walford, the Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed Women Texas Film Festival in Dallas, have continued the Billy the Kid Film Festival’s mission to connect audiences and film lovers with filmmakers with a Hico/Hill Country flavor as they did last year, but safely, in the virtual space for this edition. The added wrinkle is the team up with WTxFF and the emphasis on shining a spotlight on female filmmakers as well as Texas-made cinema.
Again, this year, Tarleton State University Department of Communications Studies is partnering with the film festival. This creates learning opportunities for the Tarleton students, allowing “hands on experience” in producing a major film festival.
Vasquez and DiGiorgio said, “We launched the Billy the Kid Film Festival last year because the thought of combining the unique personality of Hico with our love of film was a winner no matter how we looked at it. However, our audiences’ and our filmmakers’ safety is first and foremost, and this virtual presentation will also give us an opportunity to share these films statewide and hopefully introduce them to even more film fans.”
Walford added, “Celebrating the work of both women behind the camera as well as local, Texas-based film production adds a special – and we believe – necessary emphasis to these screenings. These aren’t just great films; they also highlight the great work of female filmmakers and also remind us of what filmmakers can accomplish in this state if they receive the support to do so.”
Chris Zuhdi’s cowboy tale, MEXICAN MOON, is a prime example of the locally filmed productions that the Billy the Kid Film Festival seek to give a boost. MEXICAN MOON was filmed in part in Hico, and had a female Director of Photography. Zuhdi will participate in a special sneak peek at a scene from the film followed by a discussion about the shooting process and current status of the film.
Among the films being screened include; David Feagan and Brian Elliott’s festival favorite, AGE OF BRYCE about a12-year-old pushed to the brink of pubescent revolution by his helicopter mom, and Jessica Wolfson and Jessie Auritt’s multiple award-winning documentary THE PAINT WIZZARD. The film, about a transgender housepainter who lives and works out of her bright yellow RV in Austin, was the Best Short Film winner at WTxFF and the Audience Award at the Sydney Underground Film Festival, among others.
Other highlights include; Enrique Novials’ Spanish production CALAMITY JANE 1882, (whose production team included a female editor, producer, and composer) in which the famous title character must face down a bad lawman and gang; Georgia Krause’s EBB & FLOW, which shows a South Texas community fighting to protect the hundreds of species of butterflies that live in duality between the US/Mexico border; Andrew Chen’s GHOST IN THE GUN, a thriller featuring a possessed firearm, which was another multiple award-winner; Lisa Belcher’s comedy JAVELINA RUN, about two idiot ranch hands who pretend to be fugitive train robbers to get attention from the ladies at an old west saloon; and M.r. Fitzgerald’s THE WOLF, which focuses on a damaged woman whose efforts to rescue prisoners at the cult she escaped is short-circuited when she reunites with a long-lost childhood forcing her to confront their cult leader’s abuse once and for all.
Film festival passes and tickets are on-sale now. For more information on the Billy the Kid Film Festival go to https://www.billythekidfilmfestival.com.
