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The documentary Trash Dance, which premiered at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival, will be available to rent online exclusively through the film's website (trashdancemovie.com) starting today. Dance, helmed by Andrew Garrison, centers on choreographer Alison Orr, who "rides along with Austin sanitation workers on their daily routes to observe and later convince them to perform a most unlikely spectacle. " The acclaimed documentary, which opens at the Violet Crown Cinema in Austin, TX today, was the winner of the Special Jury Recognition at SXSW and won Audience Awards for Best Feature at Silverdocs and Full Frame. Here's the full synopsis: Choreographer Allison Orr finds beauty and grace in...

Trash Dance opens Friday for a weeklong run at Violet Crown Cinema.

The adage that one person's trash is another person's treasure is relevant to Trash Dance, but doesn't apply in the strictest sense. In the Austin indie documentary and the dance performance it celebrates, the treasure isn't the trash -- it's the unlikely beauty of trash collection.

Director Andrew Garrison's film is an inspiring look at the Trash Project, Austin choreographer Allison Orr's ambitious dance performance featuring 24 City of Austin Solid Waste Services Department employees and 16 large sanitation vehicles. (That's right -- trash trucks.) The performance and the film find artistry in the mundane world of picking up garbage; more importantly, they show us there is dignity in even the hardest and least desirable jobs.

Creating the dance was a year-long project starting in late 2008. Orr knew that to choreograph such a work, she had to get to know the workers,...

Since its world premiere at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival, Andrew Garrison’s documentary Trash Dance has been a festival favorite, picking up audience awards at both Full Frame and Silverdocs. The film chronicles innovative choreographer Allison Orr’s attempts to wrangle a group of garbage men and turn them, and their trucks, into the participants in her latest project. Filmmaker spoke with the Austin, Texas-based Garrison, an experienced non-fiction director known for such films as Third Ward TX and The Wilgus Stories, about the process of making Trash Dance, which opens at the reRun Theater in Brooklyn today. Filmmaker: Why did …...

For choreographer Allison Orr, trash collectors can become contemporary dancers in a few simple steps. At least that is the case in the new documentary film, "Trash Dance."

Produced with director and cinematographer Andrew Garrison, "Trash Dance" is a celebration of unexpected beauty, inspired by Orr's fascination with the surprising grace of garbage trucks. The film follows the choreographer as she meets and interacts with sanitation workers in Austin, Texas, shadowing their daily routine for months while simultaneously attempting to recruit them for a dance performance. The project provides a tender portrait of community members whose hard work often goes unnoticed, and sparks a bit of dialogue on the boundaries of art and performance along the way.

Watch the trailer for "Trash Dance" above for a sneak peek at how Orr convinced two dozen trash collectors to perform a choreographed dance on an abandoned airport runway.

A screening of "Trash Dance...

Here's the latest Austin film news.

Take a trip back in time with the screening of Amos Poe's film Unmade Beds at 7 pm on Wednesday in the Austin Film Society Screening Room. It's 1976, New York City, and "Rico," a photographer, is searching for reality down the barrel of his camera lens to fulfill his innermost fantasies in this No Wave classic, starring Debbie "Blondie" Harry. The Austin documentary Trash Dance, which premiered at SXSW 2012 (Mike's review), is up for a Cinema Eye audience award ... and you can vote for it online right now. The film is about choreographer Allison Orr's project to create a "dance" performance based around Austin Department of Solid Waste staff and vehicles. The results will be announced at Cinema Eye's awards ceremony on January 9.The 2013 Sundance Film Festival has added a few more features to its lineup ... including El Mariachi, Robert Rodriguez's first...

One of the most rewarding experiences I've had during my tenure at the Austin Film Society is getting to serve as a projectionist for various filmmakers screening their work in our onsite screening room. Getting to see the products of Austin's film community in various stages, from very rough first edits to versions that are locked in as a final cut, is entertaining, educational and a sobering reminder that once you've actually shot everything, the real hard work begins.

I first screened a cut of Andrew Garrison's documentary Trash Dance in early 2011. The film, which had its gala premiere on Saturday afternoon at the Paramount Theatre, focuses on the work of Allison Orr, a dance choreographer who embarks on an unusual project: organizing a dance performance with City of Austin sanitation workers. In the interest of full disclosure, my first reaction upon hearing this premise was very similar to...

 

Saturday was a big day for Austin film, not just because of the SXSW super-secret screening of local C. Robert Cargill's horror debut Sinister (J.C.'s review), but also because it saw the world premiere of Austin-shot (and choreographed, scored, acted, and directed) Trash Dance, for an afternoon screening at the Paramount Theatre. Trash Dance was shot by Austinite Andrew Garrison as he followed choreographer Allison Orr creating the largest project of her life.

Orr spent a year working with employees of the Austin Department of Solid Waste Services: working their routes, learning their jobs, studying their movements and most importantly, gaining their trust as she designed and worked with them during their spare time to craft a performance including 24 workers with 16 of their work vehicles. While just ordinary people, they all demonstrate unique and wonderful talents, playing harmonica, breakdancing, or barbecuing. The level of time commitment was...

Find your second wind yet? I haven't, but I did manage to make it to three SXSW events on Tuesday. First up, I finally saw Trash Dance, which earned two standing ovations: first for director Andrew Garrison and choreographer Allison Orr, and then for two of the participants in the Trash Project, Tony and Orange, who had just finished their shift at work and had the audience in stitches. All the men and women who participated in the Trash Project will make you think differently about the people who help keep our cities clean. It may have been Bernie that won the Louis Black Lone Star Award this year at SXSW, but Trash Dance earned a Special Jury Recognition nod last night as well.

Even though we're halfway through the festival, the film conference is over, so most of the film awards were given out last night. Not all, as...

Andrew Garrison's Documentary Spotlight film Trash Dance will have its world premiere Saturday, March 10, at the SXSW Film Festival at 1:30 pm at the Paramount Theatre. THR here hosts the exclusive debut of the poster (see below for the full one-sheet) for the film. Choreographer Allison Orr spent months rehearsing with two dozen city sanitation workers and their trucks to perform a complex "dance" on an abandoned airport runway, with thousands of people looking on. Garrison, who teaches film and digital production at the University of Texas at Austin, will be on hand with Orr at the festival.

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In September 2009, I noticed an unusual special event in an Austin Film Society weekly bulletin about a unique performance piece. The Trash Project was meant to "educate audience members about waste reduction while acknowledging the hard work Austin’s sanitation workers." Choreographer Allison Orr of Forklift Danceworks had organized "the biggest dance of [her] life." It was almost a footnote that director Andrew Garrison (Third Ward TX) would be documenting the event, especially when it included 15(!) vehicles.

Now the film Trash Dance is set to make its world premiere at SXSW on Saturday. Andrew Garrison directed, shot, and produced the documentary, with editing by Angela Pires and sound design by Graham Reynolds. Steve Mims (Incendiary: The Willingham Case), Deb Lewis (Troop 1500, Crawford) and Nancy Schiesari (Tattooed Under Fire) provided additional photography. Here's what Garrison and Allison Orr had to say about their project.

Slackerwood: Describe Trash Dance for us in a couple of sentences.