Christian Gaines, my colleague at WithoutABox, shares his first insights on the festival below.

With the SXSW film and interactive conferences officially in full swing, Austin is now completely overrun with badge holders dashing hither and yonder in search of enlightenment. And they’re actually pretty likely to find it in some form. Seating capacity permitting, that is. Fortunately, there are an abundance of choices, so SXSW-ers shut out of one oversold event just do a quick twitter check and find out about the scene down the hall at the Convention Center or across town at the Alamo Drafthouse Theatre, which is where I opted to spend this balmy early-early Spring Sunday.

Ask anyone from Austin about the Alamo Drafthouse – they’ll talk about it in hushed, reverence and for good reason – it’s movie going, all figured out. Steeply raked rows of comfortable seating feature narrow tables with neatly stowed menus, note cards and golf pencils. Peruse the offerings of heavenly Texan-style comfort food (think chips and queso, BLT’s, huevos rancheros, chocolate and peanut butter milkshakes) as well as an impressive selection of draft beer and wine by the glass, then wait staff dressed in black T-shirts glide discretely between the rows (and below screen level) to deliver your food. They have the formula down cold and let me tell you, it’s a pretty nice place to spend a Sunday.

First up in the morning was Narrative Shorts Program #3, a feature-length program of shorts from around the world. As I’m on the SXSW Narrative Shorts Jury this year (and you’re really only supposed to discuss the films with your fellow jurors), I’ll hold off on calling out any specific shorts, except to say that the three programs have seen have been quite exceptional and choosing a winner is going to be very tough. More on that process and some of the shorts we saw in later blog posts, when I can break my code of silence.

Film #2 of the day was the world premiere of the documentary Dirty Pictures from filmmaker Etienne Sauret. Sauret is best known for his meticulous and cathartic documentation of 9/11’s devastating toll on New Yorkers in a series of films, including Collateral Damages and WTC the First 24 Hours. In Dirty Pictures, Sauret reverentially profiles “the Godfather of Psychedelics” Dr. Alexander ‘Sasha’ Shulgin, whose rogue experimentation with the drug MDMA spawned the ecstasy movement of the mid-80’s, drawing parallels to the LSD youth culture of the ‘60’s. While he has often worked feverishly outside of the law, testing out his own concoctions along with this wife Ann, he has become an underground cult hero to many and a close friend and colleague to clinical psychologists, academicians and government researchers working in the field of psycho-pharmacology who consider him to have quite literally written the book on the subject. Dirty Pictures is a fascinating portrait of a brilliant chemist on a quest to unlock the complexities of the human mind, and the people whose lives have been forever affected by his work.

Playing some Sundance catch-up, film #3 of the day was Winter’s Bone, a brooding and bleakly moving portrait of determination and survival, set against the poverty of Southern Missouri’s Ozark country. Jennifer Lawrence plays 17-year old Ree Dolly, a young woman who must confront the secrets and lies of her extended backwoods family to find out the truth about her father, mixed up in meth cooking and dealing, who’s disappeared and skipped out on his bail bond. Winter’s Bone is a ravishingly shot and superbly scripted drama that reminded me why I love the movies. It’s no wonder that it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting awards at Sundance in January.