The Lone Star Film Festival heads to the Stockyards for three days of screenings and a gala celebrating local filmmaker Taylor Sheridan and others.
After hosting a virtual gathering in 2020 and a socially distanced festival in 2021, organizers are excited to return with a full slate of shorts, features and documentaries.
“As a film festival, we want to serve the filmmaker, serve our community,” Chad Mathews, the film society and festival director, said. “And we’re going to do our best to showcase those films that are available to us, whether it’s a filmmaker just starting out or a studio that has an indie film … and, you know, hopefully it continues to grow.”
The festival, which is a joint effort between the Lone Star Film Society and the Fort Worth Film Commission, gives filmmakers and producers the opportunity to network and shines a light on the support that productions get when filming in the city.
“We try to showcase Fort Worth in a light that is attractive to a filmmaker,” Mathews said. “So if they come and have a great experience and they see there’s a committed Fort Worth Film Commission and that there is actually production happening here and there’s a workforce here, why not consider your next project to be shot in North Texas or in Fort Worth specifically?”
Landing productions like Sheridan’s upcoming Bass Reeves series helps bolster that case. But Mathews also adds that the work the commission does to help crews secure permits, scout locations and find workers is another draw.
“The Fort Worth Film Commission is probably one of the strongest commissions in Texas. I mean, they work so hard for the filmmakers that are considering shooting here,” he said. “Not every community in Texas has that.”
In addition to attending screenings, audience members will also have the opportunity to attend question-and-answer sessions with select directors, producers and actors.
If you go
What: Screening of “The Colonel’s Playbook”
When: 6:30 p.m. Nov. 10
Where: Downtown Cowtown at the Isis
2401 N. Main St.
Fort Worth, TX
Tickets: Individual screenings start at $10; Find info on other ticket packages here. The festival is Nov. 10-12. For the full schedule and complete list of films click here.
Local filmmaker Tim Williams will host one such session after the screening of his documentary, “The Colonel’s Playbook,” on Thursday night.
The production is his ode to Lt. Col. R.C. “Rocky” Rosacker, who was hired as the director of the Fort Worth Country Day school’s fledgling athletic program and whom Williams credits with building his own leadership skills and those of his classmates.
“The actual story started off in many of the kids’ minds as a horror story,” he said. “We were scared of this guy. We didn’t know what he was going to make us do or ask us to do or put us through and he was very stern.”
But, over time, those feelings changed.
“It kind of became a comedy, because we worked unbelievably hard. He really took a bunch of scrawny, very unfocused kids and made us into, for lack of a better word, razors. He sharpened us in ways that we didn’t really understand … But once you go past the gauntlet, all of a sudden we discovered it was a love story because all of a sudden we became this very tight, highly functional group who loved each other. And consequently, we realized this guy loved us.”
Williams is excited to share this story with more people in Fort Worth who will appreciate the impact “The Colonel” had on several current local leaders. He plans to make the story into a full-length feature in the coming year.
“I love that it’s in Fort Worth, because there’s so much of Fort Worth in the documentary,” he said. “Fort Worth has a very strong can-do attitude … He believed that the slowest, the scrawniest … kid was capable of rising to great heights. And I think that’s very much what Fort Worth is about and what I continue to think of as why it’s such a great city.”
Marcheta Fornoff covers the arts for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at marcheta.fornoff@fortworthreport.org or on Twitter. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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