Collections/April 2022

Texas Blues: Three Films by Eagle Pennell

Featuring the 2008 documentary The King of Texas Long before Austin, Texas, was an epicenter for all things indie, maverick filmmaker Eagle Pennell made his mark on the city with a handful of bittersweet, amiably lo-fi looks at the everyday oddballs populating the Lone Star State. Though he only completed a handful of films before his untimely death at age forty-nine, their rough-hewn charm and genuine feeling for working-class camaraderie set the template for a whole generation of off-the-grid auteurs (including fellow Austinite Richard Linklater and Quentin Tarantino, who cited Pennell as a key influence on Reservoir Dogs ) and inspired none other than Robert Redford to found the Sundance Institute in order to perpetuate the spirit of cinematic independence that Pennell embodied.

3 films — 0 on the Channel, 3 unavailable