I worked multiple service level roles for Austin’s own Alamo Drafthouse for half a decade. And in that time, what I remember most, outside of the great friendships I made there, are the festivals. Mainly, their big event of the year, their Fantastic Fest Film Festival. It was here, working within the machine setting it up, that I learned how multiple well developed businesses can come together, celebrate a common love (in this example, genre films), and collaborate professionally on events that produce terrific experiences for their shared audiences.

With that in mind, I set out to create an event that centered around the partnership of predominantly local businesses to draw in an audience that each of these businesses benefitted from. The goal was maintaining the individual brand identities of those involved while still marrying their unique voices.

Austin Film Society (AFS) has been around since 1985 and in it’s time has helped to cement Austin as one of the biggest genre film communities in the world. They host events and screenings of harder to find, avant garde, and classic cinema to satiate the appetite of Austin cinephiles looking for movies outside of the mainstream cinema landscape.

Oddwood Brewery, while still relatively new to the Austin Beer scene, has a deep passion for classic and genre film. They host movie nights focused on the weird and esoteric cult classics of the 80’s and 90’s. They have a wall dedicated to a strong VHS collection and consistently reference their favorite movies through their can designs.

They share an audience of beer lovers, movie fanatics and more importantly, people who love to sit around talking about movies while having a great local beer.

This idea originally started as a simple beer label redesign.

Oddwood makes a Japanese style rice lager called Yuki-Onna, named after the legend of the Japanese snow witch(depending on your interpretation) that lures men into the snow to their death.

Rice lagers have become increasingly popular in the Austin brewery scene thanks in part to breweries like Oddwood and Zilker Brewing with their Icy Boys lager. But also in part because the style is lighter and quenches your thirst during a hot Texas summer without making you feel like you just ate have a bag of bread.

During my research process regarding the myth of Yuki-Onna, I came across a movie about the legend titled “The Snow Woman” by director Tokuzo Tanaka. Outside of it having a strong emotional interpretation of the legend, it laid the ground work for my design of the character and sparked the idea of creating an event that a redesign like this would play well at.

Enter the Film Festival concept.

While Alamo Drafthouse seems like the best place to hold an event like this, their event and community outreach to the community has not been the same since their corporate buyout during the pandemic. And I wanted this to feel like an Austin event, brought to life by Austin companies for an Austin audience.

I have always enjoyed the curated selection of films Austin Film Society offers year round as well as their intimate event space/lobby. Many hours of my life have been spent standing around in a movie theater lobby after just finishing a film, talking to other people who were in attendance about the film, drinking a good beer, creating a chosen community of fellow movie nerds.

That’s the experience I wanted for this event. And I knew that both AFS and Oddwood had the audience, love of film and passion for community focused events to make it happen.