SXSWORLD

Tiny Furniture: Award-winning Film Completes Full SXSW Circle by Eric Kohn both categories. S ome movies get a nice publicity boost from premiering at SXSW; others are born there. Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture, which won the Narrative Feature com- petition at the SXSW Film Awards this year, falls into Dunham as Aura, a disillusioned college graduate crashing at her mom's house in New York City, the movie resulted from the filmmaker's earlier experiences at the festival. Her first feature, a similarly personal work called Creative Nonfiction, premiered in the Emerging Visions section at SXSW 2009. While in attendance, Dunham encountered several of the people involved in turning her next movie into the polished, highly acclaimed work that wound up in the SXSW Film Awards competition the following year. "It's where I met key collaborators who I hope to work with from here until eternity," Dunham says of SXSW. "I probably shouldn't admit this as a motivating factor, but one of the rea- sons I wrote a new script was in the hopes of returning to SXSW again in 2010." Of course, she knew at least two of her collaborators long before the An autobiographical story written and directed by and starring festival. In the movie, her mother and sister riff on their real personali- ties as thinly veiled characters in Aura's life. Despite this homegrown plot ingredient, however, Tiny Furniture retains a professional appear- ance, thanks to the sleek photography by Jody Lee Lipes. One of Dunham's key SXSW connections, Lipes has become a regular at the festival. He co-directed the cinematic ballet New York Export: Opus Jazz, which premiered at SXSW at the same time as Tiny Furniture, and also directed the documentary Brock Enright: Good Times Will Never Be the Same, a 2009 SXSW premiere. Taking the unique route of shooting the entire movie on a Canon 7D still camera, Lipes provided Tiny Furniture with a sleek, colorful appearance that fully captures Aura's urban life. Audiences responded to the character, precipitating Dunham's jury prize, which led to a complimentary pro- file in The New York Times and eventual distribution from IFC Films. (The company plans to release the film later this year.) Meanwhile, Tiny Furniture has other festival screenings in the works, including a New York homecoming at both Rooftop Films and BAM cinemaFEST. Still, "I was in heaven," she says. "The most meaningful aspect of SXSW is the film- maker community that forms around this festival." it all started in Austin. "The warm welcome I received as a returning filmmaker was so meaningful," Dunham says. "I truly felt like part of a community as I presented the film with the now-close friends I made it with." Regardless of all the attention, Dunham still refers to Tiny Furniture as her "teeny, rough-around-the-edges movie," which explains her affinity for the oeuvre of regular SXSW attendee, Andrew Bujalski. Calling him her "cinematic role model," Dunham excitedly recalls Bujalski attending her new movie's premiere. "I was in heaven," she says. "The most meaningful aspect of SXSW is the filmmaker commu- nity that forms around this festival." This observation extended to her cast, as she met filmmaker Alex Karpovsky (director of The Hole Story and Woodpecker) at the festival last year and cast him as a nomadic animator in Tiny Furniture. However, Dunham avoids drawing a con- nection between her newfound collaborators. "It's not about a specific style or movement," she says. "But rather about supporting efforts both small and large by people who all share a love of the medium." Her producer, Alicia Van Couvering, agrees. After writing a piece about the "mumblecore" movement for Filmmaker magazine, Van Couvering learned about the festival and realized that "SXSW is an annual benchmark of where everyone is at and where things are going, but it doesn't feel clubby or exclu- sive." Instead, she says, it's pretty amazing to come back every year and see how the filmmakers are growing. She lists Aaron Katz, Joe Swanberg, Frank V. Ross and Bujalski as some of those filmmakers — but now can add Dunham to the list as well. n Lena Dunham (right) accepts the Narrative Feature competition honor at the SXSW Film Awards. 36 SXSW ORLD / M AY -J UNE 2010 Scan the QR code at the top of the page to view the Tiny Furniture trailer. For instructions on how to install and use a QR code reader, visit sxsw.com/qrcodes. JONATHAN LACHANCE

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