The Austin Chronicle (Screens section)

The Austin Chronicle came out of a film society. CinemaTexas, run by graduate students in the University of Texas Radio-Television-Film department, screened films four nights a week alongside RTF classes, each with researched program notes. Marjorie Baumgarten, Nick Barbaro, Louis Black and Ed Lowry met there, and Baumgarten later recalled the CinemaTexas office as a hub for planning the paper. After a prototype in midsummer 1981, the first issue appeared on September 4, 1981, with Barbaro as publisher, Joe Dishner as co-publisher, and Black, Lowry, Sarah Whistler and Jeff Whittington on the editorial board. The Chronicle began as a biweekly and later went weekly.

Film was central from the start. Black's tribute to Sam Peckinpah ran as a cover story in January 1985. That fall the paper gave free advertising to Richard Linklater and Lee Daniel's experimental-film screenings at the Dobie Theatre, which led to the founding of the Austin Film Society. A March 1987 issue put Sam Fuller on the cover for a series co-sponsored by the Film Society, and the July 27, 1990 issue put Slacker on the cover the month it opened at the Dobie. Black, who appears briefly in Slacker, also cofounded South by Southwest in 1987.

Baumgarten, on staff since 1982, became film editor and chief reviewer in 1991 and ran film reviews for 25 years. Marc Savlov joined around 1989, and Anne S. Lewis covered documentaries from 1986. Sarah Hepola, a former Daily Texan entertainment editor, edited Screens around 2000. Kimberley Jones began as a proofreader that year, co-edited Screens, and in 2016 became the paper's Editor. Richard Whittaker later served as Screens editor before becoming the Chronicle's first Culture Desk editor, which merged arts and film coverage.

The Texas House honored Black in August 2017 as he retired after 36 years as editor and publisher. At the time the resolution called the Chronicle one of the few independently owned alternative weeklies left. Its Screens section still publishes film reviews and film-event listings.