Shooting The Sisterhood of Night in Kingston.
It’s never easy to discern how a film festival film’s going to play, especially from what one reads in a catalogue. Take a flick like the new WildLike, which we described as a love story only to hear from one who’s seen it already that its actually about a teenage girl meeting a 50+ man in Alaska. Then again, Lolita was a love story of sorts, too.
What we can be sure of is that apart from the big opening, highlighted, keynote and closing films at the 15th Annual Woodstock Film Festival — running from October 15 through 19 all around Woodstock, with added events in Rhinebeck, Rosendale, Saugerties and Kingston (and a full lineup of over 150 films and events taking place) — many in attendance from around here will be looking at films shot locally, or by people who live amongst us.
Take Lacey Schwartz’s documentary Little White Lie, shot in part locally but all about its maker’s story of growing up in a typical upper-middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock only to later find out about her real father…and race. Many will know the main characters, the milieu, and themselves in the unfoldings on screen.
Then there’s Caryn Waechter’s The Sisterhood of Night, a story “of friendship and loyalty set against the backdrop of a modern-day Salem witch trial” shot in Kingston. Many saw the film being shot; some worked as extras in it. How does its dark spiral play off local settings we’re all familiar with?
“Hudson Valley Films: passionately committed to supporting regional filmmakers and film production,” is how the WFF pushes the locally created or shot fare it highlights for us, as well as industry insiders come to the festival and thinking about shooting their next features here.
Leah Meyerhoff, an English teacher’s daughter, will be showing her inaugural outing as a director, I Believe in Unicorns, a wild imaginative ride into the ways we cope with life’s challenges via fantasy. Olive-based horror maestro Larry Fessenden presents his latest piece of producing work, the geriatric terror piece Late Phases, by writer/director Adrian Garcia Bogliano…with locally shot scenes, of course.
Jazz film legend Burrill Crohn comes back with his haunting new work, Playing with Parkinsons, which follows jazz guitarist Sangeeta Michael Berardi as he relearns his craft and re-meets and plays with past musical compatriots.
Even adventurer Jon Bowermaster, who followed a career writing adventure nonfiction works that took him around the world with a string of successful documentaries including the recent anti-fracking tome Dear Governor Cuomo has rounded up the Regal Cinemas in Kingston for a screening of his newest, Antarctica 3D, On the Edge.
Other locally produced short films include The Lipstick Stain, The Suffering Kind, One Armed Man and an entire Hudson Valley Docs program with works about ice yachts on the Hudson, the Catskill Park, the creative hotbed that is Red Hook’s Rokeby Farm, and dancer Susan Slotnick. Even indie veteran Nathan Silver’s latest involves a plot that brings its characters Upstate.
And yes, the panels reflect all this, from Rondout Valley producing magnate Claude dal Farra of BCDF Pictures moderating a panel on casting films, with local actress Melissa Leo, our very own Oscar gal, on board; Ron Nyswaner, Peabody award winner and writer of Philadelphia, speaking about his new work writing for Ray Donavan, as well as features; and various other writers coming in to town as much for Woodstock’s literary rep as its film life, including the great Tony Kushner and Hook author Malia Scotch–Marmo.
Jennifer Connelly and Natalie Portman will be giving an award to their director Darren Aronofsky, and the mysterious Terrence Malick might show up for the screening of his protégé A.J. Edwards’ debut feature, The Better Angels, whose tale of a young Abe Lincoln, in black and white, will serve as the festival’s closer. And it’s even grander that the man behind the opening night concert for the new Israeli music doc East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem will be local boy Steve Earle.
But getting to see ourselves on screen, even if only via our neighbors? That’s priceless.
But also very much in character for the Woodstock Film Festival.
The WFF box office on Rock City Road in Woodstock is currently open from 9 a.m.-7 p.m. through October 6, as well as online or via phone. Program brochures are available at a variety of local outlets. Call 679-4265 or visit www.woodstockfilmfestival.com for more information.