Lost River Film Fest underway, continues throughout weekend

Lost River Film Fest, the region's popular yearly gathering to uplift new independent cinema, began Thursday evening in San Marcos.

The vast majority of the festival's 72 films –– which hail from across the planet, from Myanmar to Michigan, from Iran to France –– will play in the downtown Price Center ballroom,  222 W. San Antonio St., the anchor for the four-day event.

Due to the pandemic, 2020's festival has changed in a few ways: limited seating for screenings; additional precautions with air-filtration systems, disinfectant aplenty and a temperature check at the box office; as well as the screening of films where large audiences are anticipated in more spacious venues in the outskirts of San Marcos.

Daily Record readers are able to attend these Price Center showings free of charge, where filmmakers will be present for Q&A, with use of the secret password "2020 is plenty plenty": Monster Mash Bloc: Friday at 12:30 p.m.; Twofers Bloc: Fri, Nov 6 at 3 p.m.; Down to Business Bloc: Saturday at 10 a.m.; Strange Justice Bloc: Sunday at 10 a.m.; Lone Star Showcase: Sunday at 12:30 p.m.

Filmmakers will be in town — and staying in local hotels, whose taxes are a fount of funding for the arts in San Marcos –– from California, Alaska, Louisiana, Florida, Arizona and far-flung locales across Texas.

Other highlights of the festival include the following screenings at Doc's Drive-In, 1540 Satterwhite Rd., a boutique theatre in east Buda that has been featured in recent months in New York Times and Time magazine:

Friday, 6 p.m.: Texas premiere of Missing in Brooks County, about the 3,000-plus migrant deaths since 2008 in the stretch of land 225 miles south of San Marcos — whose sheriff described it as "the largest cemetery in the U.S." Texas State University's anthropology department is featured prominently in recovering and analyzing human remains. Dr. Kate Spradley will speak to her experience in that work on a Q&A panel afterward, alongside activist Eddie Canales of South Texas Human Rights Center and co-director Lisa Molomot.

Friday, 9 p.m.: Texas premiere of John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster, the authorized documentary of the notorious serial killer with narration by Jim Belushi

Friday, 10 p.m.: Texas Trip,  a 2020 documentary funded by the French government to profile underground "freak culture" in the Lone Star State, with a deep dive into San Marcos by way of musician Grady Roper, of Attic Ted.

Sunday, 6 p.m.: I'm Gonna Make You Love Me, a gripping portrait of Brian Belovitch, who in the 1990s lived as Tish, a fun-loving downtown diva in NYC.

The festival's Closing Night film will be Bull, which premiered at the world's most prestigious festival, Cannes, in 2019 and was described by Hollywood Reporter as "one of the best films" there.

Bull is written by Texas State University film studies director Johnny McAllister, alongside his wife Annie Silverstein, who also directed. Both will participate in a Q&A following the film, 6:30 p.m. on Sunday at the Buda Drive-in.

A full schedule is available at TheLostRiverFilmFest.org, with cost ranging from $5 per film bloc to $20 for a four-day venue badge.  

Key funding for Lost River Film Fest is chiefly courtesy the San Marcos Arts Commission, as well as Mano Amiga and the Center for the Study of the Southwest at Texas State University.