Movie Making in Marfa (Texas)

 “I think when people come here they really feel the power of the land, which transcends beautifully on film.”
                                             Robin Lambaria, Marfa Film Festival founder

 

At the 2008 Academy Awards two of the films nominated for best picture were made in the same city. Los Angeles? Try Marfa, Texas. Is that a suburb of Dallas? Nope. It’s a little town of about 2,000 people in far West Texas. Really?

Yeah, really.

Parts of No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood were filmed in Marfa, but they aren’t the only connection to Hollywood. George Stevens shot for two months there back in the late fifties with James Dean and Rock Hudson for the film Giant. And though not shot there, the story for the Robert Altman film Welcome Back, to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean took place in Marfa.

 The Marfa Film Festival began last year and will be held this year April 29-May 3, 2009. How long does it take a festival to make a name for itself? Apparently, not long. Randall Roberts of the L.A. Weekly called The Marfa Film Festival, “The best little festival I’ve ever attened.”

The town of Marfa has been featured in Architectural Digest, The New York Times and MovieMaker magazine along with various other publications.

“Marfa is becoming a micro version of the art mecca that Santa Fe, N.M. has become. Blocks of the tiny downtown, where a blinking stop light easily handles the sparse traffic, have been taken over by the foundations established by renowned artist Donald Judd, who moved to Marfa in 1972 and died 22 years later.”
                                    Michael Graczk (Associated Press Writer)
                                    USA Today 

I don’t know if future Academy Award films will be shot in Marfa but the creative conditions seem to be ripe there for the thriving creative community to continue to grow.

Related posts: Screenwriting from Texas 

 

Scott W. Smith