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This week, KLRU Collective explores the art of graffiti.
Spray-can art started as an underground, street art movement. Today, graffiti is as relevant as any other art form, and Emerge ATX brings these artists into the gallery. With live graffiti painting and performances from DJs, MCs & B-boys, this annual art show uncovers the culture and process behind Austin’s street art.
Art Seen Alliance is a group of artists that come together to make art and produce events
Celebrate the new season of On Story with KLRU and the Austin Film Festival, airing Saturdays at 7:30 pm starting April 20th.
Austin Film Festival’s On Story is a half-hour series that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process of the country’s most beloved movies and TV shows. The show is a mash-up of footage of screenwriter and film-makers discussing their craft and films. Each episode is thematically paired with one or two short films, with an introduction from the film’s writer or director.
New episodes include:
4/20 – A Conversation With Chris Carter, Creator Of The X-Files
Legendary television writer Chris Carter reveals the secret behind the creation and success of The X-Files and how he stirred audiences using the power of mythology. Lost and Prometheus writer, Damon Lindelof, speaks with Carter on how his use of the paranormal and search for the truth have become staples of popular culture. Followed by Todd Somodevilla and Marysia Makowska’s surreal short film, Sea Pavilion, about a picnic outing by an abandoned seaside dwelling, that ends up encompassing more than just sand dunes and forgotten memories.
4/27 – Explosive Action!
The writers behind Wanted, The Bourne Ultimatum, Con Air, and Snitch discuss how they use action scenes to further the plot, convey tension, and build toward a satisfying climax. Followed by Lucas Martell’s animated short film, Pigeon: Impossible, about a trained CIA agent faced with an unexpected sudden threat to national security.
5/4 – Re-imagining the Classics
The writers of re-imagined classics and popular franchises such as Ghost, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Twins and Snow White And The Huntsman deliberate how to keep stories fresh while remaining faithful to the original version. Accompanied by Spencer and Lloyd Harvey’s short film Jack & Jill, a fresh take on the classic nursery rhyme that follows a young Australian girl who finds an inventive way to contact her father, a soldier stationed in New Guinea during WWII.
Discover the ways films influence how we think about energy, and in turn, how we influence energy policy with Energy At The Movies on April 18th at 9 pm. From the gushing geysers of Giant, to the plutonium-powered time machines of Back to the Future, Hollywood has entertained us with unforgettable, often iconic images of energy. Whether intentional or not, films frequently serve as a snapshot of society, capturing sentiments of each time period. Many films have themes that memorialize collective optimism, fears and observations about energy. Using film clips as a historical road map, Energy at the Movies is an entertaining lecture by energy expert and University of Texas at Austin professor Dr. Michael E. Webber.
This week, KLRU Collective focuses on photography in this week’s piece.
Turning your love of photography into more than a hobby is not an easy task. With the rise in popularity of apps like Instagram, everyone has the ability to be a photographer, but it takes more than just having the right equipment. We’ve got some tips from Austin professionals at the Texas Photo Roundup on how to develop your photography.
Discover, write, recite, and celebrate National Poetry Month with KLRU! Thanks to the Academy of American Poets and their initiative to highlight and introduce the pleasures of poetry, April has been dedicated to explore the art since 1996. KLRU works to support the local arts through our programming and partners with other local arts organizations. He
Spoken 4 All on Arts In Context
Austin’s spoken word performers take center stage as part of KLRU’s focus on the arts. Also known as “slam poetry,” spoken word is an oral performance of extemporaneous or composed pieces of free poetry. Austin has a number of venues that present spoken word, this program highlights the ranging styles of poets at an all-age program hosted monthly at Mitchie’s Gallery. This event features several artists who were involved with the Austin Neo Soul Team that placed 4th in the 2010 National Poetry Slam.
Austin Poetry Slam on KLRU Collective
Austin Poetry Slam events take place each Tuesday at the 29th Street Ballroom (located at 29th and Fruth Street). The Austin Poetry Slam (APS) is one of the longest running poetry venues in Texas. Founded in 1994 by Wammo of the Asylum Street Spankers and helmed for 15 years by former Poetry Slam, Inc. president, Mike Henry, Austin Slam is renowned for memorable and often raucous performances by many of the best poets in the slam poetry world. Get details about how to attend the next Austin Poetry Slam
Austin has three locally-made films in the 2nd Annual PBS Online Film Festival. You can vote for the audience award until March 22. Vote at pbs.org/filmfestival
The Longest Sun is a narrative short film inspired by the mythology of the Tewa peoples of northern New Mexico, and is told entirely in the endangered language of Tewa (less than 500 native speakers remain). A blend of fantasy, mystery, and historical fiction, The Longest Sun is a quest story that follows Tahn Pi, a young Tewa boy who sets out on a mythical journey to stop the sun from setting.
As the first film told entirely in the Tewa language, The Longest Sun is the culmination of nearly three years of collaboration with the San Juan, San Idelfonso, Santa Clara, Nambe, and Pojoaque pueblo communities and local governments. From conception to translation, the filmmaker and various Tewa community leaders worked together to document and preserve the oral traditions and language of the Tewa people through the medium of film. Peppered with colorful characters and rich in oral tradition, The Longest Sun explores universal perceptions of time, maturation, and death through a modern adaptation of an ancient Tewa origin story.
About the Filmmaker: Patrick William Smith (MFA in Film Production, UT Austin) works as a director and cinematographer between Austin, TX and Seattle, WA. He has directed a number of award-winning fiction and nonfiction films, web-series, and commercials. His documentary, Shades of The Border, toured at over two dozen film festivals worldwide (including SXSW, Media That Matters), garnering a number of awards and DVD distribution. Patrick went on to direct a reality web-series for internet mogul, Penny Arcade, and later developed a comedy web-series funded through a successful, front-page crowdsourcing campaign on Kickstarter (Kris and Scott’s, Scott and Kris Show), which drew national media attention. Patrick’s most recent endeavor, a narrative quest film told entirely in the endangered Tewa language, is currently touring festivals worldwide. Looking ahead, Patrick has begun development on his first feature.
Incredibly popular and talented operatic supergroup Il Divo will perform at ACL Live on May 15 and KLRU has special seats reserved for our donors.
When you make a donation of $400 we’ll thank you with two incredible floor seats to the performance. Or you can donate $200 to receive two balcony level tickets.
Watch their incredible Live In London concert tonight at 9pm KLRU and donate now to reserve your seat – Tickets are very limited!
We have other ways for you to enhance your experience with KLRU during this pledge drive, including passes to ACL: Vampire Weekend, tickets to the Fab Four: Beatles Tribute Band at the Paramount, and admission to the I Can Do It Conference featuring speaker Dr. Wayne Dyer.
Support KLRU and go beyond TV this March.
Austin has three locally-made films in the 2nd Annual PBS Online Film Festival. You can vote for the audience award until March 22. Vote at pbs.org/filmfestival
Mijo is an immensely personal documentary about the relationship between a young mother who is a professional dancer and her 6-year old son, as she undergoes treatment for breast cancer. The film is a delicate balance between the son’s innocence, the mother’s medical journey and its depiction through dance. Ultimately, the film is an affirmation of love and the purpose of life.
About the Filmmaker: Chithra Jeyaram is an emerging documentary filmmaker and educator with an MFA in Film Production from University of Texas at Austin. Her first exposure to filmmaking began in 2004 with a failed attempt to fund a film about an explosive water-sharing dispute between two southern states in India. Deeply affected by that experience, she quit a decade-long career as Physical Therapist and enrolled in film school.
A diseased human body is a chaotic system and as a filmmaker she is interested in telling stories of the disruptive consequences of illness from unique perspectives. Approximately 30% of women diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States have young dependent children living with them. In Mijo, she highlights some of the difficulties experienced by cancer survivors with young children.
Besides making non-fiction films, she loves to illustrate, animate, take spontaneous trips, cook exotic recipes and work as a physical therapist.
This week, KLRU Collective presents an artistic spiritual meditation. Compassion and wisdom are spread as a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery constructed a sand mandala at the Blanton Museum of Art.
The Sand Mandala is a Tibetan Buddhist tradition involving the creation and destruction of mandalas made from colored sand. Each step in its creation and destruction are accompanied by rituals, ceremonies and chanting symbolizing the Buddhist philosophy in the transitory nature of material life. During January 9-13, 2013, the monks constructed a sand mandala in the Blanton’s Rapoport Atrium. The monks believe it takes divine understanding to make art which is really powerful.
Austin has three locally-made films in the 2nd Annual PBS Online Film Festival. You can vote for the audience award until March 22. Vote at pbs.org/filmfestival
In the late 1800’s, tens of thousands of Czech immigrants settled farmland in Central Texas. They brought with them the tradition of the community dance hall, building over 1,000 halls in little towns from Temple to Anhalt. Fewer than half remain open today. Noc na Tanečku (Night at the Dance) profiles Sefcik Hall, in Seaton, one of the last true Czech dance halls in Texas, and the elderly folk that still come there each Sunday to wax the floor and dance the polka, even as they struggle with old age, illness, and in some cases, death.
About the Filmmaker: Annie Silverstein is an Austin based filmmaker and media educator. She directed the feature documentary March Point (Independent Lens 2008), in collaboration with three teenagers from the Swinomish Tribe and is Co-Founder of Longhouse Media, an indigenous media arts & education organization based in Seattle, WA. Annie has worked internationally as a Producer, Director, Cinematographer, and Editor on films ranging in theme from land access issues in Ethiopia to the experiences of LGBTI refugees living in South Africa. Most recently she produced/directed Noc na Tanečku (Night at the Dance), which screened at festivals internationally, and wrote/directed her first fiction film Spark, which screened at Slamdance and SXSW, where it won a Jury Award for Best Texas Short (2012). Annie is currently earning her MFA at University of Texas-Austin.
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