I only moved to Austin a little over a year ago, and find myself learning more about the film culture here day by day. A few years back, Austinite Emily Hagins directed her own feature-length zombie movie here that touched most points of the local filmmaking and filmgoing spectrum. She posted a casting notice on a board that read: "12-15 year olds needed for feature-length zombie movie". Once Justin Johnson, Erik Mauck, and Aaron Marshall found out the director of said independent feature was a 12 year old girl, Zombie Girl: THE MOVIE was born.
Zombie Girl is a doc about her emergence as a filmmaker and the rise of "kid filmmakers" as a subset of the thousands of independent filmmakers out there in this era of YouTube.
Emily and her ever-supportive mom are the focus of the piece, littered with Austin film mainstays like Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League, Ain't It Cool News Headgeek Harry Knowles & one of his subordinate writers Christopher Cargill (Massawyrm). A couple of film festival pals I've made over the years showed up to my surprise as well, including Tony Vespe, the younger brother of AICN's Quint. Tony turns out to be one of the most entertaining parts of the movie, dropping in with hilarious one-liners from time to time.
Emily became a regular at the dearly departed Alamo Drafthouse Downtown off of Colorado Street, her mom always (according to Tim) at her side for all kinds of horror films. As weird or gruesome as the film may be, mom was happy to be there with her so she could see what she's most passionate about.
No less than Fantastic Fest fixture Nacho Vigalondo (director of the upcoming Timecrimes) mentioned during the post-show Q&A how many filmmakers (himself included) would have killed for a supportive parent doing everything they could to make their kid's "weird hobby" come to life. Megan (Emily's mom) does everything from help bankroll the whole thing to be a true production management swiss army knife.
Their relationship is understandably strained in places as the well-known strains of independent production weigh on them both, and contrary to how it seems Megan felt she came off in the film, her intentions are always to help Emily achieve her dreams.
As I understand there are no clear distribution plans at the moment for Zombie Girl, but wherever it goes, it'd be great to see it pop up on TV a couple years from now as Emily will certainly have a few more films under her belt by then. She wrapped her second feature (The Retelling) with a much larger crew this past summer, a ghost story set in a small town in Texas.
Emily's first feature, Pathogen, is available from her website for a solid $8.