Woodstock Film Festival - Grit Not Glam

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 07 September 2010 17:04

Written by Laura Blum

Just as the fall foliage mounts its technocolor show in the Hudson Valley Catskills, the Woodstock Film Festival fires up a spectacle of its own in Woodstock, NY. Screenings, performances, panels and special events will unfold in the historic arts colony of flower power fame as well as in the neighboring towns of Rhinebeck, Rosendale, Mt. Tremper and Kingston. This year’s “fiercely independent” Festival will take place September 29 to October 3, 2010, marking its 11th season.

More than 150 films will be on offer, whittled down from 1,500 submissions. Each year the tally of premieres edges ever upward; the upcoming edition’s is 60, and 11 of these mark world debuts.

Some 15,000 participants are expected to join the revelries 100 miles up the Thruway from New York City. Since its launching in 2000, WFF has steadily risen in the pantheon of regional film festivals, boosted by the community of filmmakers and enthusiasts who nurture it.

Banner names to attend this year include Keanu Reeves, Edie Falco, Adrian Grenier, Danny Glover, Edward Burns, Vera Farmiga, Vincent D'Onofrio, Larry Fessenden, Tess Harper, Bruce Beresford, Bob Berney, Barbara Kopple, Bill Plympton, Ted Hope, Heidi Ewing and Joe Berlinger, among others.

While such luster helps draw audiences, Woodstock’s all-lights-on audiences in turn draw quality filmmakers, talent and industry types. “Filmmakers know that the Festival is a good place for them to showcase and premiere their films, said WFF co-founder and Executive Director Meira Blaustein. “Woodstock is filled with progressive thinkers and art lovers and artists, so audience responses are very engaged.”

For Lilly Rivlin, whose documentary Grace Paley: Collected Shorts will premiere at WFF 2010, the engaged local citizenry represents her featured author/activist's core audience. "Woodstock draws on the literary and political influences of New York, which was the center of Grace Paley's life," she noted."

By the same token, northerly winds from the City's film industry have aerated the fest in welcome gusts. Said Blaustein, “The industry has been very instrumental to the Festival’s growth,” not least for the networking it affords with “movers and shakers and with like-minded filmmakers.” In an un-vicious cycle, this has allowed the Festival to attract desirable films and celebrity power.

Just don’t call WFF glitzy. Blaustein certainly doesn’t. Rather, she describes it as a magnet for “very high-end attendees who mingle about with emerging filmmakers as their equals in an atmosphere that is very casual, friendly, intelligent and nurturing.”

Romancing filmmakers is an essential piece of the Festival strategy. Co-founded by the Hudson Valley Film Commission’s Laurent Rejto, WFF dangles its evocative setting as a hook for filmmakers to “fall in love with the area and come back and shoot their films here,” per Blaustein. Backs get properly scratched as the Festival helps the Film Commission and vice-versa -- with the win-win-win upshot that filmmakers show their locally-shot work on Festival screens.

The bulk of WFF’s entries, though, hail from elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world. This year's overarching themes range from the environment and technology to “human connectivity…and political decisions being made for us," noted Blaustein, adding, “A lot of the films are concerned with human beings responding to today’s changing reality. They show people longing to be together but having a harder time making it happen. Did technology make it easier or more difficult? Is globalization a good thing or a bad thing?  Some give answers and some don’t. This leaves you with something to think about."

Day one of the Festival features a special screening of Lennon NYC. Mining rarely seen footage, documentarian Michael Epstein charts John Lennon’s New York years, including his life with Yoko Ono, beginning with his arrival in 1971. Epstein will hold down a Q&A following the film.

The closing night film is Stone, a drama by John Curran (We Don’t Live Here Anymore, The Painted Veil), about a parole officer (Robert De Niro) whose last assignment before retiring draws him into the case and cunning of an inmate (Edward Norton). Curran will be on hand to discuss the film.

One of 2010’s Spotlight Films is the U.S. premiere of Henry’s Crime, starring Keanu Reeves, who also served as its co-producer and who is slated to receive an Honorary Excellence in Acting Award at the Maverick Awards Ceremony. Directed by Malcolm Venville, the film follows its titular Henry (Reeves) on a misadventure of non-crime and punishment. Co-star Vera Farmiga will join the Q&A.

For those who can only swing the weekend, Fright Night Friday! may guide their arrival time. This simultaneous double billing of horror flicks includes Vincent D'Onofrio's Don’t Go In the Woods, described as “Glee meets The Blair Witch Project.” A rocking riff on criminal intent, the actor's directorial debut tracks an indie band trying to jam in a forest as bodies go mysteriously missing. (The film doubles as an ad for local shoots; it was filmed on D'Onofrio's 100-acre property near Kingston, which he lovingly described as "a canopy of trees so thick you can barely see the sky," or otherwise put, "the  abyss.")   

Screening alongside the slasher musical is Joe Maggio’s Bitter Feast. James LeGros plays a celebrity chef who avenges an unkind critic using his cooking skills. Real life celebrity chef Mario Batali makes a cameo appearance in the scream-fest produced by and co-starring Larry Fessenden. To whet festival-goers’ appetites, there will be a pre-screening feast catered by Mary Giuliani Catering & Events, with menu inspired by Batali.

Other special events surrounding this program include Q&A with D’Onofrio, Don’t Go soundtrack creator Sam Bisbee, Maggio and Fessenden following their films; a concert by the Don’t Go In the Woods Band; and the WFF Filmmakers Party.

Bruce Beresford, whose Oscar-winning film Tender Mercies will be screened at the fest, has been tagged as a 2010 Maverick Award recipient. He will chat with US Weekly senior editor Bradley Jacobs prior to the Tender Mercies screening, and join female lead Tess Harpers afterwards for Q&A.

Jake Scott’s Welcome to the Rileys does honors as the 2010 Centerpiece Film. With a high-sheen cast spanning Melissa Leo, James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart, the film explores the toll that grief exacts of a married couple whose daughter died.

Given the Festival’s robust lineup and constellation of stars, you may never guess that its organizers’ biggest challenge is its funding. “We have to do things very creatively -- like indie filmmakers do, with low budgetary resources,” said Blaustein.

“Our tag line is “fiercely independent, more ways than one.”

For the full roster of screenings, discussions, parties and performances, head over to www.woodstockfilmfestival.com

Woodstock Film Festival
September 29 to October 3, 2010
Main Box Office:
11-13 Rock City Road
Woodstock, New York

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