AUSTIN, TEXAS –
As indie as it wants to be, South by Southwest festival, hits its 15th year as a thriving seedbed of grassroots American cinema – much of it shot on high-definition video – that isn’t always as predictable as a catalog synopsis makes it seem. Though its day and night-long screenings of more than 250 features, docs, short films, music videos, and hybrids indulges a taste of celebrity glam, it’s usually of the “Harold and Kumar” variety. The event’s low-key populism favors the left field and the under-the-radar.

Even something as facetious as “Super High Me,” in which laconic comedian Doug Benson documents a 30-day pot-smoking binge in the manner of Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 SXSW favorite “Super Size Me,” isn’t all spoofery. Marijuana is legal for sale in California through licensed dispensaries to individuals whose doctors have prescribed it. The booming industry in medical weed makes Mr. Benson’s huffing and puffing of esoteric pot strains with names like “White Widow” and “OG,” anything but criminal (he has a sympathetic physician), though the laughs briefly subside when agents from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration launch a series of raids on the dispensaries — prompting an unlikely civics lesson over state’s rights.

“Crawford,” David Modigliani’s documentary about life in the small town President Bush adopted as the site of his “Western White House,” had enormous potential for cheap laughs at the expense of Red State Americana. Instead, it’s revelatory: a deeply committed piece of high-def storytelling that anatomizes this community of 800, showing how the arrival of their new neighbor shook the townspeople to their roots, polarizing and politicizing lives that never asked to be in the glare of the world media. The filmmaker’s sympathetic ear for a diverse and highly eccentric array of voices makes the narrative’s surprising twists more effectively moving, as Crawford’s role as a focal point for peace activists, such as Cindy Sheehan, sparks conflicts that reflect the national division over Mr. Bush and the “war on terror.” Greeting the audience after the world premiere of “Crawford,” Mr. Modigliani welcomed several of his film’s principals to the stage front, many of whose lives changed profoundly during the seven-year shoot. “My feeling is that things have returned to normal,” he said. “But normal doesn’t feel the same anymore.”

Normal, of course, can be a highly subjective term in a city whose tourist shops stock T-shirts that insist: “Keep Austin Weird.” Never mind the irony, just go with the flow. Moviegoers have lots of chances to wander up and down East 6th Street, the local answer to Bourbon Street, where undergraduate dive bars became festival party hubs. Here, plucky indie filmmakers plugged their sagas of renegade ostrich farmers (“The Ostrich Testimonies”) and impossibly noble plastic surgeons (“Flying on One Engine”), widescreen video panels flashed preview loops of IFC premieres (“American Teen”), and nicotine-starved cineastes collected their free packs of American Spirit cigarettes. Though the vintage Paramount Theatre, a 90-year-old movie palace on Congress Street, was the most elegant spot for screenings (grey-haired women ushers in matching red outfits), 6th Street’s Alamo was the most accommodating. Plush seats, neverending leg room and servers who bring pint drafts of Shiner Bock — Austin’s signature beer — to your seat.

The drinks helped a lot during Harmony Korine’s “Mister Lonely,” the first film in eight years from the director of “Gummo” and “Julien Donkey Boy.” Diego Luna is a Michael Jackson impersonator whose solitary sojourn in Paris is interrupted when he meets Marilyn Monroe, or a close facsimile played by Samantha Morton. They meet during a gig at an old folk’s home, and he is whisked away to a Scottish commune of fellow impersonators. It is, surprisingly, an ambitious and refined effort, even with a subplot about flying nuns in the Panamanian jungle and a crazed cameo by Mr. Korine’s superfan, German director Werner Herzog. Even so, many of its narrative choices seem as deliberately baffling as Mr. Korine’s colorful post-screening comments, which included an aside about his first visit to Austin as a hitchhiking teen. One guy he got a ride from turned to offer him a whole stick of butter. When Mr. Korine politely declined, the driver smiled, unwrapped the package, and popped it into his mouth, munching happily away.

Stranger things happen in Emily Hubley’s bittersweet “The Toe Tactic.” Easily the most original debut at SXSW, this mix of Ms. Hubley’s playful, hand-drawn animation and live action is a kind of Brooklyn magic realist fable about a young woman (Lily Rabe) slowly coming to terms with her father’s death years earlier. While the theme may be Oprah-esque, the treatment is anything but; the film unfolds as a cosmic game played by a quintet of cartoon dogs (voiced by Eli Wallach, David Cross and jazz musician Don Byron, among others) who dabble in mortal affairs. Hoboken indie-rock legends Yo La Tengo, which features Ms. Hubley’s sister Georgia, provides the moody soundtrack. It’s an ideal analog for the eccentric swerves of the plot, which spins on outsized gestures of character, the random poetry of small objects, and the mystery that lurks behind the veneer of everyday life. All in all, not unlike Austin itself.