Before we go any further, I have to confess something: Burma wasn’t on my original SXSW to-do list. It wasn’t even on the second revision of the list. Nothing about it jumped out at me. In fact, the only reason I went to see Burma at all was because I badly needed dinner and it was being shown at the Alamo, which just happens to offer full, in-your-seat food service. Seeing Burma was really just an accident.

And what a happy accident it was. Carlos Puga’s film is an emotionally heady family drama that takes on how we related to each other, and how sometimes we are least able to see clearly those who are closest to us. The film starts with a fairly basic premise: Dr. Lynn (Christopher McCann) returns to tell his adult children something nine years after abandoning them along with his dying wife. The range of emotions felt by siblings Christian (Christopher Abbott), Susan (Gaby Hoffman) and Win (Dan Bittner) seems a bit stereotypical at first. Okay, it’s a family drama with all the attendant sibling issues. However, as Burma progresses, so much more comes to the surface.

Short films and documentaries are often treated like the wicked stepchildren of their full-length counterparts by cinema buffs. Animated shorts perhaps get a little more leeway because they are more familiar to most viewers—but they are still regarded as just a way to entertain the audience before a movie, not as a legitimate, central event in and of themselves. Maybe it’s because bad shorts can be really bad; there aren’t brilliant moments to excuse the lackluster ones. Or maybe people believe that they can’t get lost in a short in the same way that they can get lost in a feature film.

Whatever the problem is, I’m hell-bent on telling the world that shorts are worthwhile. It’s something that the folks behind your favorite films know. A great deal of them started out in short films. If you’re still skeptical about the medium or have had disappointing experiences with shorts, try my top picks from this year’s SXSW shorts program.

One thing about Interactive and I guess, SXSW in general, is that it’s difficult to take reality completely tiled in brand. It’s so omnipresent that companies strap fur to cars to try and catch your numbed out attention. It was a hairy van, so I’m guessing it’s a company that makes an Instagram filter which turns everything into a ‘70s porn. It’s an extra layer of creepy at Interactive because people use branding language about their lives and then try to sell that back to you. It’s also fucking ugly. There’s the incessant crunch of plastic as you’re handed things to throw away. It’s probably the Midwesterner in me that finds handing me garbage an impolite introduction. At some point during the day, I decided that the best use of my energy would be spent figuring out the lyrics to the R&B track I want to write called “Trapped in a Pitch”. I want Miguel to sing it and Pierre Hardy to sponsor it. Oh, and there is lots of Utopianism and free things that feel like they still owe you.

“Half of you will love this movie and half of you will hate it.” That was pretty much the extent of Rob Zombie’s introduction to the US premiere of The Lords of Salem and, honestly, he was right. Not being a big horror fan, I had serious trepidation about walking into the Topfer Theatre on Monday at midnight to see Zombie’s long-awaited fifth feature film. Waiting in line to enter the show, I found myself surrounded by serious horror aficionados and diehard Rob Zombie fans. They told me that I was likely to both scream and laugh during the show and that, yes, I might just have nightmares.

Unfortunately, it seems Rob Zombie was right. I didn’t hate the movie, but it seemed that many in the Topfer were less-than-enthused about The Lords of Salem. It took a long time for the story to take off and even after it did, it didn’t seem to go as far as it could to meet its potential. Still, the film had a more arthouse air about it than fan favorite House of 1000 Corpses and offered some pretty stunning visuals. Instead of relying on the constant gore that many fans seemed to be expecting, Zombie used subtle effects that made the film play more like the am I going crazy? narrative it’s supposed to be than a hardcore gore film.

When the garden gnome took the stage, people gasped. And applauded. The possibilities that the garden gnome evoked made the makers and the techies drool.

The garden gnome itself was ordinary. It was small, no more than eight inches. It sat patiently in the jaws of a machine while Bre Pettis, founder of Makerbot, explained. This machine was the big reveal at the opening remarks of SXSW – a digitizer that could scan the shape of any small object in 3-D and digitize it for easy printing. What made people gasp is that this digitizer will be available to buy for your own home.

3-D printing is the big draw at SXSW this year. With opening remarks by Pettis and a handful of other signature talks addressing the topic, the topic is getting a lot of love from South by. And no wonder – Obama highlighted it in his State of the Union.