Now in its eighth year, the Woodstock Film Festival (October 10-14) comports itself less like an unruly preteen and more like an institution which has slid quietly into a dignified middle age. That is to say, lurching metamorphosis is not a hallmark of the event that turns Tinker Street into a crunchy version of the Rue de la Croisette once a year. The goals and values of WFF, established from the start, are merely reaffirmed year after year, to the delight of unreconstructed lefties, veteran counterculturists, and musicians who seek a liberal oasis from the surging conservative madness in our midst. If there is any whiff of chaos still clinging to the proceedings, it springs from misbehaving microphones at speaker panels or occurs among lines of ticket holders that snake out into the street for a buzzworthy screening.
Co-founders Meira Blaustein and Laurent Rejto continue their benevolent reign over this cineaste empire—she alternately genteel and anxious, he in an unruffled state of bliss. Their fellow programmers Ryan Werner, Tom Quinn, and Michael Lerman have helped concoct an overstuffed schedule of narratives, documentaries, shorts, and animated films to play in venues from Hunter to Rosendale. While WFF clearly has no Sundance envy—their sponsors remain modest, the opening night party at New World Cooking is no Cannes bacchanal—the festival continues to deliver films that have dazzled at other leading competitions. This year, Blaustein and company have hit a high point on that count.
The opening night coup is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by artist-director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls) which garnered him the Best Director prize at Cannes this year. Unavailable at press time for viewing, the film is based on the real-life memoir Le Scaphandre et le Papillon by Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor in chief of French Elle. A stroke at age 43 transforms the imperious man into a living corpse, the victim of locked-in syndrome. The haunting, hallucinatory aspect of this story is an ideal match for Schnabel’s collagelike approach to filming.
The closing night film, also not available in advance, already has critics honing their knives for the loopy premise alone. I’m Not There by Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven, Safe) offers a meditation on the many lives of Woodstock’s erstwhile resident Bob Dylan, played by several actors, including Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, and Heath Ledger.
While the naming of the winning films often seems beside the point, festivalgoers enjoy the Maverick Award, the annual selection of an individual whose personal activism complements a body of work featuring some sharp message films. Recipients have included Woody Harrelson, Barbara Kopple, Tim Robbins, Mira Nair, and Steve Buscemi. This year’s recipient is Christine Vachon of independent powerhouse Killer Films, who’s produced such gems as Infamous and Boys Don’t Cry. The Trailblazer Award, honoring indie film behind the scenes, will be given this year to Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix, for his work promoting niche and small production films via the DVD subscription service.
WFF 2007 will feature a line-up of 150 films (including eight world premiers), panels, concerts, and parties, as well as a technological innovation: a showcase of high-definition films at the Bearsville Theater. The Woodstock Film Festival remains a cultural highlight of this or any other Catskill season.
For a complete schedule of films and special musical events, and to order tickets for screenings and panels, visit www.woodstockfilmfestival.com.
Selected Film Reviews from WFF 2007
(* indicates critic’s choice)
NARRATIVE
*American Fork
Chris Bowman, Director
The flat, even tone of this tale of a good-natured, obese loser named Tracy Orbison should seem familiar; the film was produced by Jeremy Coon, who produced 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite. But while Dynamite grated with its one-note lead character—sorry, Jon—American Fork benefits from the big-hearted lead, depicted by Hubbel Palmer, (who also wrote the wincingly funny screenplay), and William Baldwin as a narcissistic acting coach.
*August Evening
Chris Eska, Director/Writer
A tale from Mexico that, gratefully, does not include the narrative pyrotechnics of Babel, Amores Perros, or 21 Grams. Jaime (Pedro Castaneda) is a Mexican campesino, a field worker now in late middle age and unemployable. When his wife dies, Jaime is left alone with his widowed daughter-in-law, Lupe (Veronica Loren). Together, they travel over the border for shelter with Jaime’s married children, striving for middle-class assimilation and embarrassed by their father who hews to old Mexican tradition. The fitful progress of Jaime and Lupe unfurls with a lyrical ease, and issues of aging, familial responsibility, and racism are touched on with grace, rather than with a dull thud. Castaneda and Loren radiate enormous, understated dignity.
The Cake Eaters
Mary Stuart Masterson, Director
A tale of broken lives and redemption in a Hudson Valley town (in this case, Catskill). Co-producer Jayce Bartok wrote the script and plays the prodigal son, a failed rock star whose return unsettles this sleepy world. At the center of this gallery of eccentrics, Kristen Stewart plays a high school girl suffering from a terminal nerve disease, intent on cramming life’s peak moments in her remaining years. Aaron Stamford is her hangdog suitor, and veteran scene-stealers Elizabeth Ashley and Bruce Dern make this film a sentimental favorite.
Choose Connor
Luke Eberl, Director/Writer
If this tale of corrupt politicians and one boy’s shattered trust were on cable TV, I might give a pass to the wooden acting and improbable situations. But as a feature film, it withers under scrutiny. Dreamy Escher Holloway maintains a measure of self-respect as the S&M stooge nephew of a congressional candidate gone wrong—but what in hell is Steve Weber doing in the title role of this utterly overcooked turkey?
Dark Matter
Chen Shi-Zheng, Director
The Virginia Tech massacre of last April will spring fresh in viewer’s minds after seeing this film about an Asian transfer student fighting an unjust system. Eager to share his iconoclastic theories of cosmology (the “dark matter” of the title), Liu Xing from Beijing is nurtured and encouraged by his patron (Meryl Streep) yet thwarted by his headstrong professor (Aidan Quinn). Ambitious in its scope, the film suffers from a stunning lack of direction; it is unsettling to see actors of this caliber stumble as they try to breathe life into a script riddled with holes.
The House Is Burning
Holger Ernst, Director/Writer
We’re in Larry Clark territory here: frantic, sex-starved, drug-taking American suburban teens breaking rules, talking trash, and bleeding confused anger from every sweaty, acne-clogged pore. German filmmaker Ernst sets up the overlapping tales with a mathematical precision but undercuts any pretense of naturalism with overwritten dialogue and an incessant soundtrack. Still, the camerawork and lighting are exquisite (Stefan Grandinetti) and the performances of Robin Taylor as the feral Phil, Nicole Vicius as Valerie, Harley Adams as Steve, and Melissa Leo as Mrs. Miller rise above the relentless histrionics. Executive producer Wim Wenders must teach Ernst to strip away his excesses, guaranteeing a revelatory next film.
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Alex Holdridge, Director/Writer
New Year’s Eve, Los Angeles. Wilson, another failed screenwriter, faces the prospect of this forced celebration alone. Cajoled into placing a personal ad, Wilson meets bipolar Vivian in a cafe. Holdridge has shrewdly set this in the LA we never see: the decaying downtown areas, far from the sunny valleys. Robert Murphy’s moody cinematography perfectly complements this touching anti-romance, starring Scoot McNairy and Sara Simmonds.
*Liberty Kid
Ilya Chaiken, Director/Writer
A group of Dominican teens try to find their way in a post-9/11 world in this quietly lacerating film. Tico is a hustler selling drugs; Derek wants to do well by his twin children by starting another household. Chaiken’s narrative is blessed with an ensemble cast that, to a person, retains purpose and poise even when the characters lose their way. Al Thompson as Derek and Kareem Savinon as Tico (making his screen debut) fill the screen with a formidable life-force.
Super Heroes
Alan Brown, Director/Writer
An Iraqi War veteran named Ben, shattered by trauma and riddled with shrapnel, is befriended by Nick, a Brooklyn videographer. The pair drive to the soldier’s Catskill Mountains cabin where the layers of his psyche slowly peel back. What plays out too often like an acting class exercise still manages to offer occasional jolts: several consultants made sure Ben’s psychological and physical ailments are medically accurate. While tethered to some ham-fisted monologues, Dash Mihok as Ben nonetheless creates a disturbing portrait of another casualty of this ongoing war.
DOCUMENTARY
*Billy the Kid
Jennifer Venditti, Director
Life and love happen no less profoundly for kids than adults, but most teens simply lack the emotional intelligence to voice it. But meet Brunswick, Maine’s 15-year-old Billy Baker. Abandoned by his alcoholic father, he shares a trailer home with his mom, likes heavy metal guitar, has an allergy to pineapple and, he tells the camera, “I’m always at war with myself.” Perhaps autistic—it’s never explained—Baker delivers guileless and penetrating observations about himself and his first romance with a local girl named Heather. A heartbreakingly funny documentary.
*Black White & Gray
James Crump, Director
Behind the protean, manic genius of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was a more grounded influence: curator Sam Wagstaff. Ridiculously graced with privilege and patrician beauty, Wagstaff was a visionary collecting rare art photography in the ’70s when he and Mapplethorpe collided. It was a perfect symbiosis: Mapplethorpe was a shameless social climber; Wagstaff wanted to shepherd a budding artist yet also gain access to the S&M world that his lover/client inhabited. Insightful interviews with Patti Smith and Dominick Dunne, offset by grating blather from leading art critics.
Chasin’ Gus’s Ghost
Todd Kwait, Director/Writer
Like a jug band jam, this intriguing chase takes its sweet time, ambling around the country in search of the progenitors of this American musical genre. Kwait exhumes forgotten pioneers like the titular Gus Cannon—and sets the record straight. He also interviews modern practitioners John Sebastian and Bob Weir, the latter exulting, “Jug band music is the mud my toes are planted in.”
*Chicago 10
Brett Morgen, Director
The director of the winningly weird The Kid Stays in the Picture now assuredly dissects the elements that led to the youthquake and police brutality of the 1968 Democratic Convention. The hours and days are pieced together through vintage footage, interviews with the survivors, and extended animation that re-creates the trial of Yippie organizers Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, et al. (Supplying the voices are powerhouse actors Mark Ruffalo, Dylan Baker, Nick Nolte, Hank Azaria, Jeffrey Wright, Roy Scheider, and Liev Schreiber.) Morgen steers clear of partisan politics in explaining why a dream died in Chicago that week.
Constantine’s Sword
Owen Jacoby, Director
Your host for this exploration of Church dogma is James Carroll, a former Roman Catholic priest who authored the book of the same name. Carroll’s spiritual peregrinations are thoughtful, but he remains enslaved by the basic tenets of his faith, which really preclude any deep examination of the centuries of injustice fomented by power-hungry popes and priests. Narrated by Liev Schreiber, Philip Bosco, Eli Wallach, and Natasha Richardson.
The Cool School
Morgan Neville, Director
The Los Angeles art movement receives its due in this exhaustive, fraternal dissection of the men who became its ambassadors to a skeptical world: among them, Ed Ruscha, Craig Kauffman, Ed Moses, and Larry Bell. Their clubhouse was called Ferus Gallery on La Cienega and their aim was to upend the New York art standards that oppressed them. A surfeit of footage from the era suggests that they sensed immortality in the air and documented it accordingly.
*The Future is Unwritten
Julien Temple, Director
The audacious, kinetic director of two Sex Pistols docs turns his talents on the canonization of the leader of the only rock group that ever mattered: Joe Strummer of The Clash. Through brazen, hyperanimated graphics, vintage photos, and home movies, we watch young, mouthy Woody (his childhood name) morph into Art School Joe, a budding pop artist and rockabilly devotee. Temple has assembled numerous witnesses to Strummer’s genius and his later megalomania. Some are indispensable—bandmates Topper Headon and Mick Jones—while some prompt head-scratching. Do we really need the gushings of Matt Dillon, John Cusack, and Johnny Depp? Still, a worthy record of a wild ride that ended too soon.
Making Trouble
Rachel Talbot, Director
Jewish comediennes of the last century provided more than rueful yuks; they challenged the sexist shortcomings of the goyishe new world. Making Trouble rescues from obscurity Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, and Sophie Tucker, while citing their latterday successors Gilda Radner, Joan Rivers, and Wendy Wasserstein. (Sarah Silverman deserves inclusion but gets short shrift here.) Like the legendary Pu-Pu Platter, Making Trouble piques our appetite but leaves us hungry for more.
*Operation Filmmaker
Nina Davenport, Director
Backstory: Liev Schreiber sees a Shiite film student, his Baghdad school in ruins after the US bombing, on MTV. He decides to offer 25-year-old Mathuna Mohmed an internship on his film Everything Is Illuminated, shooting in Prague. This documentary chronicles that internship. What threatens to be a self-congratulatory spasm of liberalism evolves into something more morally gray. Mohmed proves himself a slacker prone to conflicting tales and Schreiber eventually gives up on him. But Nina Davenport follows Mohmed through numerous scrapes, forming a codependent relationship that calls into question the responsibility of a filmmaker for its subject. Disturbing and fascinating.
*Oswald’s Ghost
Robert Stone, Director/Writer
A sobering yet bracing meditation on the legacy of the Kennedy assassination by the director of 2004’s Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst. Thoughtfully, expansively, Stone quizzes the cream of the assassination theorists and Kennedy biographers to learn why conspiracy tales persist years after the Warren Commission released its report and why a marked distrust of the government has colored American politics ever since.
Steal Me a Pencil
Michele Ohayon, Director
This sentimental doc produced by Red Envelope Entertainment (Netflix) signals an offbeat addition to the voluminous canon of Holocaust films. Jaap Polak and Ina Soep were in the early stages of a romantic affair in 1940s Holland—she single, he bleakly married—when the Germans descended. The Polak couple and Ina were remanded to Bergen-Belsen. There, Jaap defied his wife Manja’s edict and corresponded steadily with Ina, her sister Josette secretly playing messenger between the barracks. Many fevered passages are recited in voiceover by leading Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbe. An affirmation of love and life.
*Surfwise
Doug Pray, Director
Meet the Paskowitzes, the first family of California surfing. Father Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz chucked a medical career, leading his wife and nine children across the world in the ’60s and ’70s in search of the perfect wave and eventually opened a surfing school. Extensive footage and exhilarating graphics capture the era, buttressed by plainspoken interviews with disgruntled family members. Ultimately, Doc’s dream could be achieved only through extreme discipline, which explains why the family eventually imploded.
This article appears in October 2007.
