Texas Cultural Artifact

Lost cultural artifact – The Texas Film Festival at TAMU, 1993-2005

It was what I liked to call the “poor man’s South-by-Southwest”, which remains the internationally famous Austin-based film and music festival held every year in the Texas capital. Austin is indisputably such a well-known live music and arts venue that it wouldn’t be the same without SXSW, of course, but the fact is, all that fame and fortune comes at a pretty steep price for the average Texan, and as much as I love Austin myself, I have never once attended SXSW, mostly owing to the high price tag, and the fact that I know a lot fewer single people these days in Austin I could crash with anymore.

But I always had a cheap alternative in the Brazos Valley, at my Alma Mater, Texas A&M University, proving it is not always the cultural backwater it is popularly imagined to be. Thanks to MSC Aggie Cinema (e.g. a student organization full of enthusiastic Aggies who are also film buffs), we had, for over 10 years (from 1993-2005) running, one of the best kept film-fest secrets in the Southwest, namely the Texas Film Festival, held every March around Spring Break time, right after the Oscars.

This was always a joy to attend, the films were always an eclectic mix, and I especially enjoyed staying at the MSC Guesthouse rooms, right in the Memorial Student Center complex on campus—always makes me feel like I’m living back in the dorms again when I stay there, and just like for dorm residents, the best bars and other assorted watering holes and eateries are within easy walking/stumbling distance of the MSC Guesthouse. I love it. You can be as wild and crazy as you want with no worry about DWI (within reason—of course if you get too crazy you risk getting a P.I., but mainly just don’t stop to pee in the bushes on your way back to the hotel).

The Texas Film Fest has also played host to a number of outstanding guests, particularly Robert Rodriguez, of El Mariachi fame (who later went on to direct Desperado and Spy Kids, both featuring Spanish heart-throb actor Antonio Banderas).

If it does not come back to TAMU next year and is lost forever, it will truly be a sorely missed Texas cultural artifact.