Mark Duplass named keynote speaker at SXSW fest

PanARMENIAN.Net - The South by Southwest festival is turning to one of its longtime attendees to headline one of its four Film keynotes: Mark Duplass, the multi-hyphenate whose work includes this year's film The One I Love and the FX series The League. He'll speak on March 15, in the middle of the festival's March 13-21 run.

The keynotes were established last year to feature key creatives in film and television. Last year's speakers were The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb, prolific producer Jason Blum, Girls creator Lena Dunham and The Neistat Brothers creator Casey Neistat.

Duplass has been a regular presence at the festival for years. His writing-and-producing effort Creep, the first installment of a psychological thriller trilogy, premiered at the festival in 2014, where he also spoke with Rob Corddry and others about his webseries Wedlock. Safety Not Guaranteed, which he toplined and executive produced, screened at the festival in 2012.

His other works include indie favorites The Puffy Chair and Hannah Takes the Stairs, his own directorial efforts Jeff, Who Lives At Home and Cyrus and this year's Sundance hit The Skeleton Twins, which he executive produced. Upcoming he has the next two Creep films, which he's producing with Blum, and an HBO series with his brother and frequent collaborator Jay, Togetherness.

The festival on Tuesday, Oct 21 announced its first series of panels, which include a featured conversation with director Shekhar Kapur, a Golden Globe nominee for 1998's Elizabeth. Other highlights of the listings include "Meet the Creative Game Changers" with Silicon Valley co-showrunner (and SXSW alum) Alec Berg, "Acting & Performance: Directors Share Their POVs" with mumblecore icon Andrew Bujalski and the self-explanatory "Alfred Molina's Shakespeare Workshop for Everyone."