Over the Weekend

It's culture season in Denton. Here's a quick rundown of things that you might have missed this past weekend: 

Earthwise

Saturday, February 11th, the first annual Denton Food Festival happened at the future location of Earthwise Gardens on Elm Street. Earthwise set up a winter produce stand featuring Texas organics grown in Tioga, Denton, Ponder, and Cedar Creek. Many other local food producers joined Earthwise-- including Denton Juice Co., Denton Vegan Co-op, Denton Community Market, Hudspeth Farm, and Ravelin Bakery. Ravelin served up hot and smoky Italian sausage rolls made with meat from Hudspeth Farm; it was a perfect lunch to enjoy on a biting cold morning.
To wash down my healthy portion of grass-fed sausage and fresh-baked bread, Independent Ale Works out of Providence Village provided free samples of their specialty amber ale. The men of Independent Ale came to raise funds for facilities so they can bring their delicious, crisp, and mellow beer to bars and restaurants all over the DFW. “We want to keep it personal,” said owner Stefen Windham when I asked how widely they were looking to distribute.
That’s what We Denton Do It likes to hear-- keep it personal.


Thin Line

2012 marks Thin Line’s fifth annual film festival in Denton. That’s five years of having our town filled with an abundance of critically acclaimed documentaries and shorts for a couple of weeks. It’s tradition to give someone a wooden gift on your fifth anniversary. Can somebody whittle them a plaque already?

While the opening night of Thin Line was well attended, Saturday and Sunday didn’t keep up the pace. During a screening of Down: Indie Rock in the PRC, we counted no more than 25 in attendance. Considering the fact that the subject matter was actually damned good Denton-bait -- it was a documentary about the underground rock music scene in China for crimmony’s sake! Where were all of you cultural planning junkies? -- either the marketing didn’t reach the right people or the cold kept the crowds at home under their respective Forever Lazies™.  Hopefully, this was just a fluke and Thin Line will continue to see crowds for duration of this year’s festival.

In addition, the incorporation of Denton Square Donuts (operating under the pseudonym Square Donut Theater) this year was a smart idea. We’re delighted to see DSD taking on more interesting cultural avenues in town (i.e. hosting shows and literary events) and Thin Line following 35 Denton’s lead and becoming another quasi-walkable festival will keep things interesting for moviegoers planning on taking in multiple documentaries within the same evening.

This time last year, we asked Thin Line director, Josh Butler a few questions. You can check out his answers here. 

Thin Line continues nightly through February 20th. Do yourself a favor and attend one (if not several) of these screenings.

Below are our “must-see’s” for the remainder of Thin Line:

• Buck - 8pm Wednesday
• Unsigned - 5:30pm Friday
• The DocuDenton 7k Films - 2pm Saturday
• The Other F Word - 8:15pm Sunday

Thoughts:
If 35 Denton is North Texas’ SXSW, then Thin Line is our SXSW: Film. Is anyone putting together our version of SXSW: Interactive yet?