Festival Watch: BAFICI Shorts

Just about two years ago I engaged in a long masochistic exercise where I wrote about every single short film that played at the Dallas International Film Festival. This was a defeated gesture – I knew that most of the films would be bad – and was mostly done in the spirit of bomb-throwing. In…… Continue reading Festival Watch: BAFICI Shorts

Encounters #3 – Paul Theiss

Here at Lucky Star, we are always on the lookout for points of contact with other cinephile cultures. We are hoping with this column, Encounters, to establish a dialogue, a line of communication. We get to know interesting cinephiles, critics, directors, etc., all as a way to interrogate our own positions, our own cinephilia. In…… Continue reading Encounters #3 – Paul Theiss

Festival Watch #2 – Asian Film Festival of Dallas 2024

The first images a film festival presents its audience don’t tell us much. The Cannes film festival, to name one example, routinely opens with films that are abhorrent and tell us nothing about the quality of the selection. This came to my mind when I sat down for the very first screening of the 2024…… Continue reading Festival Watch #2 – Asian Film Festival of Dallas 2024

Festival Watch #1 – Diary of a First Time Programmer

Dallas, Texas In August 2023, a 35-seat microcinema called Spacy opened in Dallas. It is located inside of Tyler Station, a factory built 100 years ago, that now operates as a “place where Oak Cliff Entrepreneurs, Creatives and Community Leaders meet and work.” There are two ways to get inside: the first is to go…… Continue reading Festival Watch #1 – Diary of a First Time Programmer