Richard S. Linklater

Richard Linklater is an award-winning independent director known for his realistic and natural humanist films which examine suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. Many of his films are noted for their loosely structured narrative, and several of them—the Before trilogy and Boyhood—feature the same actors filmed over an extended period of years. His 2014 film Boyhood, which took 12 years to make, received overwhelming critical acclaim. Linklater’s unique style involves the introduction of a number of cinematic innovations, including live-action rotoscoping (creating a distinctive “semi-real” quality), minimal camera movements, lack of narrative, and travel with no direction in mind. Linklater, a self-taught director, is notable also for establishing the Austin Film Society in 1985; it has grown from a venue for independent and foreign films to a cornerstone of the film industry in Austin.