South by Southwest (SXSW) kicked off yesterday in Austin, Texas. The SXSW Interactive takes place March 7 - 11, the SXSW Film between March 7 - 15 and the SXSW Music March 12 - 16. This means that by far the Film portion of the prestigious event, which has grown up to become one of the world's premiere film festivals which focuses on new talent, has the longest time span. The three sections of South by Southwest run as usual somewhat in parallel, nearly independently one of the others.

SXSW started out in 1987 as a music festival called the Austin Battle of the Bands. In 1994 it added its Film and Interactive conferences. Last year, more than 725 MP3s were made available for download for free via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer system.

Tomorrow, Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, will hold a keynote presentation on at 2:00 PM. Sarah Lacy, author, BusinessWeek columnist and co-host of Yahoo Finance’s "TeckTicker" will host the on-stage interview with Zuckerberg, SXSW announced.

Let's see what's on today on the Films section of the festival (only world or North American premieres, otherwise the list would be too long to type!):

At Austin Convention Centre:

11:00 AM     Shot In Bombay
 1:45 PM     We Are Wizards
 4:15 PM     Sex Positive
 6:30 PM     Bulletproof Salesman
 9:00 PM     Dreams With Sharp Teeth

Alamo Lamar 1

9:00 PM     Bi The Way  

Alamo Lamar 2

10:30 PM    Rainbow Around the Sun  

Alamo Ritz 1

11:00 AM     Of All The Things       
 1:30 PM     Wellness     
 4:00 PM     The Lost Coast     
 6:30 PM     Mister Lonely     
 9:15 PM     Explicit Ills
11:59 PM     Shuttle

Alamo Ritz 2

12:00 PM    Woodpecker
 2:30 PM     A Necessary Death
 5:30 PM     The Black List
 8:15 PM     The Marconi Bros.
11:00 PM     Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie

Dobie

11:30 AM    The Ostrich Testimonies
 2:00 PM     Tulia, Texas
 4:30 PM     Bootleg Wisconsin
 7:00 PM     Natural Causes
10:00 PM     Blip Festival: Reformat the Planet

Paramount

11:00 AM    The Order of Myths
 1:30 PM     The Toe Tactic
 4:00 PM     Crawford
 6:30 PM     Then She Found Me
 9:30 PM     Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay