The line-up for the wonderful South by SouthWest festival in March has been announced - you can see all the films being screened outlined on that page.

SXSW is a really important festival - it's the even-indier version of Sundance where people come to watch and talk about emerging film and music and get to go to crazy parties. Or so I hear - I've never got to go, and nor am I going this year, but I can idolise it from afar, can't I?

As docs people, you might like to first take a look at the docs feature comp where there's some treats, including Bulletproof Salesman and Some Assembly Required, which I've heard big things about. But the really big docs kahuna is Nanette Burstein's American Teen, which has been making the blogosphere rampage with excitement at its study of High School cliques. It's really quite ace apparently.

Also looking good are Beautiful Losers about DIY punks - great name for a film , Celia Maysles' Wild Blue Yonder (which is interesting because her Uncle and god of documentaries, Albert, fell out with her over it) and Julian Schnabel's doc about Lou Reed performing his classic album Berlin. I like Schnabel a lot, and I love the Velvet Underground, but having seen some reports about Reed doing Berlin last year and found him utterly self-indulgent, I hope the doc manages to penetrate his bubble of complacency (moan moan moan). Plus this being SXSW, which gave birth to my beloved Mumblecore films, there's a sprinkling of great fiction features like Baghead and Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig's Nights and Weekends

Plus (phew!) the doc that got Berlin excited last night, Martin Scorsese's Shine-A-Light tracing the career of the Rolling Stones. Now that sounds like an epic doc if ever I heard of one.

So, OK, really amazing set of films, and especially amazing because a lot of them reflect their locality of the US and in particular, Texan ways and means (the festival takes place in Austin), and that's really cool. But for those of us sitting in the UK in admiration, I do wonder where our equivalent is - when do we get our own fest of new indie British films? In fact, add to that, when do we get to see most of the films that are on at SXSW? When do we get our public-facing conferences about ace new fimmaking? I'm not saying there's nothing here - far from it - but a big shindig where industry, public and mavericks get to sit down and talk and watch....I don't think we have it, do we?