Ah, Mumblecore. They never asked for the tag--it came about from a random search of a descriptive term in an IndieWire interview with practicioner Andrew Bujalski, who also called that particular, defining group of films from a set of directors who starred in their own talkative films, "a bunch of performance-based films by young quasi-idealists". Later proposals listed in a smart New York Times piece included 'bedhead cinema and Slackavettes, but the term, especially after a downtown New York ten-film festival staged by IFC last year ("The New Talkies: Generation D.I.Y.") , has persisted.

Austin's South by Southwest Film Festival and its chief programmer Matt Dentler are inextricably liked to the "movement", and this week both festival and genre got a little more grown up with first-ever distribution deal growing out of a world premiere at the festival. Leading you-know-what director-performers Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig's romantic drama Nights and Weekends was picked up by IFC, who last year had acquired another film in which they co-wrote (he had sole director credit), Hannah Takes the Stairs, some months following its 2007 SXSW premiere.

Swanberg's already been squirming a bit under the spotlight for a while; as he told Variety in an online interview, the early attention "created a backlash" that seemed unfair because "these movies really are modest...it was really hard to be thrust into the spotlight like that with such small films."

As Gerwig chimes in, complaining that the sheer improvisational naturalism of the [pictures leads people to think they're inhabited by real-life characters (she played a woman dating three guys in Hannah), "That's not me...I never dated those three guys...it's not a documentary...[yet] they feel they have every right to attack you as a person--why did you just reach across the country and punch me in the face?

The web and media churn around these humble films reminds me a bit of the ascension of a similarly modest and chatty road-picture from director David Burton Morris in 1988. It won the Critics Award at the Deauville Film Festival along with nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards for Best Cinematography, Feature Male Lead. Screenplay (shared by the director and the three improvising leads) and was nominated for Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in the Dramatic category. It got a respectable 80 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes (though the New York Times' Janet Maslin found it a throwback to something even predating the director's related 1976 feature, Loose Ends):

There's a late 1960's tone to both the attitudes espoused here and the awkward, even drab sincerity with which they are set forth. The film is interesting in its ambitions to the extent that it tries to contrast and exemplify so many sexual stereotypes and preconceptions. But its style is hopelessly ordinary without being particularly frank, and the level of insight displayed is hardly more engaging.

The film scratched out $345,000 in a brief run (around triple the box office of Hannah would make thre decades later. ) . Though director Morris is still working in TV (thanks in part to a string of biopic on folks like Sonny and Cher), and leading man Chris Mulkey is often seen as "detective" "agent" or even, in Cloverfield, "Lt. Col. Graff", none of the principals would go on to bulldoze their way to high mainstream or even indie visibility.

None of this is a rebuke to the system or to the excitement that may be running through Austin this weekend. As the thriving and striving number two to Sundance, it's doing a fine job and the studios and specialty house are happy to run their films through the festival for some indie cred. An example is The Visitor, which producer Michael London told me some months ago is one of the projects he's [proudest to have done. Courageously, director Tom McCarthy was determined to cast ace character actor Richard Jenkins as a leading man, and in an insightful interview with him from Austin, IFC.com's Stephen Saito gets witty and informative answers about Jenkins' history with the Coen brothers and this new, welcome career moment.

The festival, with its useful synergy of music and interactive modes with film, continues through this coming Sunday.