THIRD WARD TX at SXSW
agarr
Even though this is not an East Austin Story, I wanted to let you know
that my new feature documentary, THIRD WARD TX will be premiering at
the SXSW Film Festival this year.
The film is about a community in Houston that shares some of the same
issues as many communities in East Austin. In one neighborhood of
Third Ward that had been left-for-dead by city services, a group of
local artists decided to draw attention to the issues with a "drive-
by" art exhibit at the site of two-blocks of abandoned shotgun
houses. Even though they started as a guerilla art project, more than
a decade later Project Row Houses is still there and has helped make
the neighborhood a safe and stimulating place to live. Today Project
Row Houses includes eight houses for rotating artists' exhibitions,
six houses for residences for single mothers going to college, an
after-school program, a summer program, and an annual African-American
Arts Festival. Their success though, has helped create a different
problem; it has attracted the interest of outside developers. THIRD
WARD TX shows all this and the creative response from Project Row
Houses to this latest and perhaps most devastating neighborhood issue.
As soon as I learn when and where the film will be shown, I'll send
another e-mail.
Thanks,
Andrew Garrison