Austin Film Society Richard Linklater: How One Filmmaker Built the Institution That Made Austin a Film City
In 1985, a 24-year-old with oil rig savings, an unfinished Super 8 feature, and an insatiable appetite for cinema founded a small film screening series in Austin, Texas. Richard Linklater had no business plan, no institutional backing, and no particular reason to believe that Austin a college town with no production infrastructure could become a filmmaking city. Forty years later, the Austin Film Society Richard Linklater created has awarded over $2.7 million in grants to filmmakers, operates 20 acres of studio space responsible for $2.6 billion in economic impact, runs the city’s only nonprofit arthouse cinema, and serves as the institutional backbone for a creative community that now attracts Netflix, Paramount, and every shade of independent production. For anyone working in Austin’s film ecosystem today from studio crew to professionals offering Austin videographer services the story of AFS is the story of how this city got here.
1985–1999: Screenings, Community, and the Indie Explosion
Linklater and his flatmate, UT Austin film grad and cinematographer Lee Daniel, launched AFS with a provocative screening series at the Dobie Theatre. Their first program was audaciously titled “Sex and Blasphemy in the Avant-Garde,” featuring works by Salvador Dalí, Kenneth Anger, and experimental filmmakers. The deal with theater owner Scott Dinger was simple: if they could bring in enough audience to generate decent concession sales, they could screen their programming. What Linklater was building was a community of practice. AFS’s co-founders included Austin Chronicle editor and future SXSW founder Louis Black, UT Austin film professor Charles Ramirez-Berg, and film programmer Chale Nafus a group that bridged academia, media, and exhibition from the beginning.
The 1990s transformed AFS from a screening series into an institution. Linklater’s “Slacker” (1991) put Austin on the national independent film map, followed by “Dazed and Confused” (1993), filmed at iconic Austin locations. Robert Rodriguez, still a UT student when Linklater started AFS, produced “El Mariachi” (1992) on a legendary shoestring budget and established his own production presence in Austin. The two filmmakers’ parallel commitments to the city created a gravitational field that attracted other independent voices and demonstrated to civic leaders that film production could be an economic engine.
2000: Austin Studios and the Institutional Leap
The pivotal moment came when Mayor Kirk Watson’s office began discussions about repurposing the hangars at the soon-to-be-closed Robert Mueller Municipal Airport. Rodriguez and Avellán had already proven the concept, converting nearby state-owned hangars into Troublemaker Studios. When AFS pitched the city on converting the airport hangars into a public studio facility, Watson had one requirement: it had to be run by a nonprofit. Linklater walked into AFS staffer Rebecca Campbell’s cubicle and asked if AFS would want to operate it. Nine months later, Austin Studios opened what Watson later called “lightning time in Austin.”
The opening of Austin Studios transformed AFS from a cultural organization into an infrastructure operator. “Miss Congeniality,” the first big-budget production to take a chance on the fledgling studio, proved the model. Over the next two decades, more than 600 productions would use the facility, building the crew base, vendor network, and institutional knowledge that define Austin’s production capabilities today.
Grants, Awards, and the Pipeline
AFS’s impact extends far beyond studio operations. The Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund, which AFS began administering as the AFS Grant program, has distributed over $2.7 million to emerging Texas-based filmmakers. These grants fund the kind of early-career projects that rarely attract commercial investment but often launch significant creative trajectories. AFS Grant recipients have gone on to screen at SXSW, Sundance, and international festivals, creating a visible pipeline from local support to national recognition. The Texas Film Awards, inaugurated in 2000, created a mechanism for recognizing Texas contributions to cinema. The associated Texas Film Hall of Fame has honored figures from across the state’s film history.
AFS Cinema and Austin Public
In 2017, AFS opened the AFS Cinema Austin’s only nonprofit arthouse theater. The venue programs a mix of repertory and first-run independent, foreign, and classic film, and serves as a regular satellite venue for SXSW Film & TV Festival screenings. In 2015, AFS expanded by acquiring the city contract for Austin Public, the city’s public access television station. Austin Public’s cable channel 10 is the longest continuously running public access station in the country. Under AFS management, the facility provides free and low-cost training, equipment, and production facilities to all Austin residents, creating a community-scale workforce development program for media production.
The Advisory Board and National Connections
AFS’s board and advisory board read like an index of American independent cinema. In addition to Linklater as artistic director and Rodriguez as a board member, the advisory board has included Charles Burnett, Guillermo del Toro, Jonathan Demme, Mike Judge, John Sayles, Steven Soderbergh, and Quentin Tarantino. These connections represent a network of creative relationships that has consistently channeled productions, talent, and industry attention toward Austin.
A 2024 economic impact study released at Austin City Hall quantified the scope: AFS is not just a screening organization or a grant-maker or a studio operator. It is the foundational institution of Austin’s creative economy, functioning simultaneously as infrastructure provider, workforce developer, exhibition programmer, grant administrator, and national connector. When Elizabeth Avellán recounted that crews in Spain were telling her they wanted to film in Austin, and when John Lee Hancock reported that every time he returns the crew base has improved, they were describing the cumulative effect of four decades of institutional investment that began with a 24-year-old showing experimental films at the Dobie Theatre.
