Monday's lineup at the AFI Dallas International Film Festival featured a strong music theme, with films touching on everyone from the composer Philip Glass to the influential English band Joy Division. The festival programmers also were smart enough to realize that North Texas has a pretty vibrant music scene of its own.
Enter Bowling for Soup.
The quartet walked the red carpet at the Magnolia Theatre in support of Bowling for Soup: Live and Very Attractive, a documentary by Dallas filmmaker King Hollis. So what can we stand to learn from a film about four unabashed cutups?
"It's educational, because we show people how to rock, and I think that's important" said the band's frontman, Jaret Reddick. "It's fun and educational, like Legos."
The film screens again at 10:15 Wednesday night.
Not everything on Monday was music-related, however. Dallas-based documentarians Cynthia and Allen Mondell attended the world premiere of their latest effort, The Monster Among Us, a film that looks at the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe.
World Cinema
The Monster Among Us
The pair originally intended four years ago to make a film about anti-Semitism in the U.S., but after talking to a French relative, they decided to head across the Atlantic. And during their travels in France, England, Holland, Belgium, Germany and Hungary, they found that their fears were legitimate.
They say it was a much different experience than making their last film, A Fair to Remember, about the State Fair of Texas, which Ms. Mondell said was fun to make and show around town.
"Showing this film tonight, I'm nervous about how it's going to be received, because you don't know how people will walk away," she said.
"We don't have answers in the film, so we hope people will talk about it and maybe come up with answers."
The filmmakers have set up a blog, themonsteramongus .blogspot.com, for viewers to share their thoughts and experiences on the subject.
The Monster Among Us next screens at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Angelika.
Expected on the red carpet Monday was superstar DJ Paul Oakenfold, who scored the animé film Vexille, which played on the giant outdoor screens in Victory Park. Alas, he couldn't make it; his flight from Los Angeles was diverted to Houston due to the nasty weather in Dallas. The film's publicist said Mr. Oakenfold was hoping to arrive in Dallas on Monday night in time to play a late-night gig at Ghostbar. ... Monday's red carpet was originally laid out in front of the Magnolia but was moved to what looked like a storage area behind the theater due to the threatening weather. Had they asked AFI Dallas artistic director Michael Cain, though, they would have known they could have kept the event as is. "We've had 100 percent weather cooperation," he said. "In 10 years of the Deep Ellum Film Festival and now this, we've never had an event rained out." ... As if the sun weren't shining on the festival enough, Mr. Cain also reports that through only five days of this year's event, ticket sales are already at 130 percent of last year's total.
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