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Berkshire Theatre Festival

Spencertown Academy Book Fair

Johnnycake Books

Movie Theaters

Bantam Cinema
Bantam, CT

Canaan Colonial Theatre
Canaan CT

The Chatham Film Club
Chatham, NY

Cinerom
Torrington and Winsted, CT

Crandell Theatre
Chatham, NY

Fairview 3
Hudson, NY

Gilson Cafe and Cinema
Winsted, CT

Hudson Movieplex
Hudson, NY

Images Cinema
Williamstown, MA

Little Cinema at the Berkshire Museum
Pittsfield, MA

Lyceum Cinemas
Red Hook, NY

The Mahaiwe
Great Barrington, MA

The Moviehouse
Millerton, NY

Regal Berkshire Mall 10
Lanesborough, MA

Spectrum 8 Theatres
Albany, NY

Time & Space Limited
Hudson, NY

The Triplex
Great Barrington, MA

Upstate Films
Rhinebeck, NY

Movie Intelligence

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Following are the films currently showing in our region, listed in order of their Metacritic score.*  For a synopsis of the film and excerpts from the reviews that led to the score, click on the Metascore next to the film title. For show times, click on the theater name in the Movie Theaters directory at right.
 
 
 
 
Metascore/film title/(theaters)

84 Happy-Go-Lucky (Bantam, Spectrum)
83 Trouble the Water (Spectrum)
82 Rachel Getting Married (Spectrum, Triplex, Upstate)
72 Transsiberian (Spectrum)
68 Synecdoche, New York (Upstate) trailer below

65 Flow: For the Love of Water (TSL)
63 Appaloosa (Gilson, Hudson Movieplex, Lyceum, Regal Berkshire)Rural Intelligence Arts 
63 Burn After Reading (Gilson, Spectrum)
62 The Changeling (Cinerom, Lyceum, Moviehouse, Regal Berkshire, Spectrum, Triplex)
62 The Duchess (Fairview, Spectrum)
61 Madagascar Escape 2 Africa (Cinerom, Crandell, Hudson Movieplex, Lyceum, Regal Berkshire, Triplex)
59 Role Models (Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex, Regal Berkshire)
59 Quantum of Solace (Cinerom, Lyceum, Moviehouse, Regal Berkshire, Triplex)
57 The Secret Life of Bees (Canaan Colonial, Fairview, Spectrum) trailer below

57 High School Musical 3 (Canaan Colonial, Cinerom. Hudson Movieplex, Lyceum, Regal Berkshire)
56 W. (Bantam, Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex, Moviehouse, Spectrum)
56 Religulous (Spectrum, Upstate)
55 What Just Happened? (Spectrum)
55 Zack and Miri Make a Porno (Cinerom, Fairview, Regal Berkshire, Spectrum)
53 Rocknrolla (Regal Berkshire)
45 Pride and Glory (Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex)
 
28 The Haunting of Molly Hartley (Cinerom, Fairview, Regal Berkshire)
19 Saw V (Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex)

*Metacritic is a site that weighs film reviews from dozens of sources, averaging the results to achieve a score—the closer to 100, the more positive the reviews.

Unscored:

Metropolitan Opera Live Broadcast of Adam’s Doctor Atomic (TSL)
Dust (TSL)
Breathless (Upstate)
Intimidad (TSL)
Key Largo (Mahaiwe)
So You Want to Live in the Country (Upstate)

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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/13/08 at 09:23 PM • Permalink

World Class Film in Small Town U.S.A.

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Synecdoche, NY, a film directed by Charlie Kaufman starring Philip Seymour Hoffman has already sold out.

For four days, starting this Thursday, October 16, FilmColumbia, a.k.a. the Chatham Film Festival, will screen more than 24 new independent films from around the globe, plus three sneak previews.  The Chatham Film Club, the event’s sponsor, will host meet-the-filmmaker events, a film trivia competition, panel discussions, and film art displays.  A highlight: a screenwriter’s contest, and a staged reading of last year’s winning script.

Rural Intelligence ArtsAmong the independent features that will be screened at the festival is Breakfast With Scot, a beguiling comedy that delivers a family values message with a gender twist; I’ve Loved You So Long, starring Kristin Scott Thomas as an emotionally traumatized woman, released from prison after serving a 15-year sentence for an unspeakable crime, who tries to reestablish her relationship with her estranged sister and her bourgeois family.  This film was nominated for a Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Sunshine Cleaning has been described as a cross between Little Miss Sunshine and Pulp Fiction.  In it the dazzling young actresses Amy Adams and Emily Blunt play down-and-out sisters in Albuquerque who make ends meet by tidying up crime scenes.  The film was a Grand Jury Prize nominee at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. A documentary that will have particular resonance for many in our region is Under Our Skin, which exposes the failure of the American healthcare system to correctly diagnose, manage, and treat Lyme disease. trailer below

There is even a free Saturday morning Children’s Program, a kaleidoscope of the best short films for kids from around the world, curated by award-winning producer Patti Greaney of Giraldi Media for children.
The staged reading from last year’s first-ever FilmColumbia Screenwriters’ Contest will be Dawn Renee Jones’ first-prize winning, Man of the Word.  Sarah Horne, who placed second with Women Marry Down, and Kirk McGee, who placed third with Activity Place Mats, will be honored as well.

For tickets and a complete schedule of films, events, and venues, please visit the FilmColumbia website.

FilmColumbia Festival, Chatham; 518.392.3445
Thursday-Sunday, October 16-19
Tickets $7 - $10

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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 10/08/08 at 01:22 PM • Permalink

‘The Duchess’ Producer Carolyn Marks Blackwood Talks About Her Film

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In 1998, Dutchess County resident Carolyn Marks Blackwood and her partner in Magnolia May Films, Gabrielle Tana, optioned the film rights to a soon-to-be-published biography, Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire.  The book went on to become a bestseller here and in the United Kingdom, and it’s author Amanda Foreman won that year’s prestigious Whitbread Prize for biography.  Four directors, two stars, three screenwriters, and ten years later, the film will premiere this Friday, September 19. 

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The Duchess is the story of Georgiana, “G”, Spencer, who at 17 marries the Duke of Devonshire, a powerful public figure, due, for all appearances, entirely to the law of primogeniture. From the first, he is an emotional cypher, in and out of bed.  Then Georgiana disappoints him by producing daughters instead of the requisite male heir, a situation he views as a willful dereliction of duty. He takes a lover, Georgiana’s live-in companion, Lady Elizabeth, “Bess,“ Foster.  But even as G’s private life disintegrates, her public life grows ever more compelling: She is the reigning celebrity of her day, the best dressed, most adored, most politically influential and disarmingly unaffected aristocratic woman that world had, to that date, ever known. 

Blackwood kindly agreed to talk to Rural Intelligence about the picture that has been her passion for the last ten years. 

Rural IntelligenceAmanda Foreman’s book, on which your film is based, was published in 1998.  Start at the beginning, with acquiring rights.

Carolyn Marks Blackwood: Gaby, my partner, was a childhood friend of Amanda’s.  We read the book in galleys and optioned the rights just as it was coming out in the UK and before it came out in the United States.  Then, after a few years, we bought the film rights outright.

RI: What exactly does an Executive Producer do?  You and Amanda Foreman share the title, while your partner, Gaby, is listed as Producer.  Your neighbors are curious: what is the difference in these job descriptions?

CMB:  Gaby and I functioned equally on this film for many years—we found a screenwriter to write the original script (Jeffery Hatcher) and paid for it, then oversaw the development of the script and the project in general.  We went through four directors (among them Paul Greengrass, who left the project to do the second in the “Bourne” series, and Susanne Bier, who left to do Things We Left in the Fire), additional writers, and one other lead actress, who wanted us to wait for six months, which we did not want to do.  Which goes to show what Gaby and I have come to understand about the film business, and life—something that feels like a huge loss at the moment may actually turn into an opportunity.

Gaby essentially moved to England to make the movie.  She sacrificed much to be on the set.  She and her husband have an apartment in Paris.  Since I had worked on this project for 10 years preceding the filming—helping to develop it, both monetarily and artistically, underwriting part of the pre-production, writing notes on the script, and seeing dailies from home, I was given an Executive Producer credit.  As for Amanda Foreman, she was given an Executive Producer’s credit as part of the deal we made to obtain the rights, but she also was on the set for 10 days as a very valuable consultant to the director and the actors.

RI: You are a screenwriter; weren’t you tempted to take a crack at the script?

CMB: No, I was never tempted; it is not my area of expertise.  I felt intimidated by the English dialect of the 18th-century.  It would have bogged me down. Gaby and I read a wonderful script that Jeffery Hatcher had written that took place during that period.  His ability to capture the time and the language—it was quite natural for him. I did, however, feel equipped to give notes as the script was being written.

RI: The parallels between the Diana and Charles’ story and that of Georgiana, Diana’s direct forebear, and the Duke are striking.  How much did that influence the choices made with the screenplay?

CMB: Actually, the screenplay was not influenced at all by the Diana and Charles story.  The story we tell is the story of Georgiana and the Duke.  Any resemblance to the Charles and Diana story is purely coincidental.  We did want the story to resonate with modern audiences, so they could relate to her plight, but the use of Diana in the English publicity was the choice of the PR departments, not the filmmakers.  However, the two stories do happen to have an amazing amount in common—Georgiana was Diana’s great, great, great, great aunt and was raised at Althorp, as was Diana.  The other parallels are pretty obvious, but that was not on our minds in either the development of the script or the filming. 
RI: Keira Knightly had to bring together so many threads—fashion plate/party girl, political activist, loving mother, wounded/defiant wife, and betrayed-yet-loyal friend. 

CMB: I think that Keira did a fantastic job bringing all the threads together.  She was 22 when she filmed last year. The scene where G spies on Bess and her boys, while her husband lavishes them with attention, hits me particularly hard.  You feel how trapped she is.  She had to find solace in the very small world that was open to her—spirit encased.

RIAnd it fell to Ralph Fiennes’ to make sense of the Duke, who could have come off as one-dimensional monster.

CMB:  His performance simply blows me away in it’s complexity—watching the different takes in the rushes was an amazing experience.  He gave the Duke a humanity that could easily not have been there.  From his performance, we come to understand that the Duke was also a victim of his station and time. There was little in the script that showed the Duke in a sympathetic light.  It was the wonderful direction of Saul Dibb and the incredibly nuanced performance by Ralph that broke the back of this character in the film.  It would have been so easy to have just made him a villain; I think that Saul and Ralph did a remarkable job.

RI: For Americans it’s difficult to fathom the British aristocracy then OR now: how such barely housebroken people can wield so much power and influence.  According to the book, the Cavendish clan of the day had its own patois.  Georgi-ah-na became Georgi- ay-na, and they generally spoke in baby talk—evidence of laughable self-indulgance and insularity.  One would think the Duke would have been a Tory to the bone, yet he was the chief supporter among the aristocrats of the Whigs, correct?  This craven nincompoop was a political progressive?

CMB: It is surprising that the Duke was a liberal thinker, but he was, as was George III’s son, the prince. The Whigs were pro-independence [for the American colonies], against slavery, etc.  It is sort of the equivalent of someone like George Soros, or the rich and powerful in Hollywood supporting the Democratic party and Obama in this day and age.  Even so, the servants in the film stand about like furniture, overhearing the most personal conversations—as if they are not people, do not exist.

RI: You are also a photographer.  It must be gratifying that the cinematography is so exceptional—all those canddlelit palaces, and the outdoor shots that look like Turners and Constables.

CMB: Our Hungarian cinematographer, Gyula Pados, did an amazing job.  It was the intention of all involved to make the interiors look candlelit, and I think they succeeded.  One really feels as if you are in those times.  And when the Duke first undresses G in the film, when her corset is taken off, we see the deep grooves in her back from the corset strings.  I found that one picture so emblematic of her life: The film is like an emotional Das Boot—it feels suffocating. The double standard was complete.  Even an upper class woman like G could be ruined or banished. 

RI: What’s in the pipeline for Magnolia Mae Films?

CMB:  We are working on a number of projects, including a film that I wrote called Barbette, and a number of other things that we cannot discuss because we are in the middle of negotiations.  Now Gaby and I are being asked what we would like to do.  We hope it will be a little easier next time. 


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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/11/08 at 03:34 PM • Permalink

In Hudson: The Envelope, Please?

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One film festival, 7 days long, showing 12 short films at 115 venues around the world, and you get to be the judge.  Literally. Such is the oddly conceived and named Manhattan Short Film Festival, now in its 11th season.  Why odd?  To begin, unlike every other film festival, this one is not named for its locale.  For another, it only shows shorts, an otherwise difficult category of film to see. And finally, what do a bunch of random ticket buyers know? 

Apparently, enough.  Among the 2007 finalists, two went on to screen at the Sundance Film.Festival, and one of them, I Met the Walrus, won and was later nominated for an Oscar. The other, Soft was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award, as well. 

This year’s films, which were culled from 429 entries from 42 counties, will be screened next week in venues from St. Petersburg to Buenos Aires, including locally at Space 360 in Hudson.  At the end of each screening, audience members will be presented with voting cards and asked to select their favorite.  On September 28, the night following the final screening, the winner will be announced in (ah, so that’s the connection) Manhattan.

Manhattan Short Film Festival
Space 360, 360 Warren, Hudson; 518.697.3360
Admission: $8 Reservations recommended.
The same 12 shorts are shown at each screening.
Sunday, September 21 at 2 & 5
Wednesday, September 24 at 7
Thursday, September 25 at 7
Friday, September 26 at 2, 5 & 8
Saturday, September 27 at 2, 5 & 8


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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/10/08 at 01:25 PM • Permalink

Two Documentaries for Grown-ups

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At Chesterwood (above), documentaries under the stars.

Is it our imagination or do the programs at our cultural institutions get more sophisticated come September, once the vacationing families have cleared out, and the kids can have gone back to school.  This Saturday night, for example, two markedly grown-up documentaries, A Visit with Colette and Always Yes, Caresse will be screened at Chesterwood, the Stockbridge property, now an historic site, that was the 1920s summer home, studio, and garden of Daniel Chester French, the sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial. 

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The Colette documentary, (in French with English subtitles) was made in 1951 by Yannick Bellon.  In it Colette, by then widely heralded as the greatest woman writer in France, reminisces rhapsodically about her rural childhood.  At one point, her neighbor in Paris’ Palais Royale, Jean Cocteau, drops by and assumes the role of interviewer.  One critic called the film, “a sheer delight.“

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On the same bill is another documentary, Always Yes, Caresse, about the scandalous, opium-smoking American avant garde publisher Caresse Crosby (nee Mary Phelps Jacob), who with her then husband Harry Crosby founded the legendary Black Sun Press, a Paris-based publisher of English-language books by James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and other U.S.-banned writers of the between-the-wars period.  In the 1950s Caresse rented then later bought a dilapidated seventy-two room, fifteenth-century castle, Roccasinibalda, north of Rome.  Though the purchase entitled its owner henceforth to be called Principessa, Henry Miller described the property, where the film was shot, as the “Center for Creative Arts and Humanist Living in the Abruzzi Hills.“  Best moment: the surrealist dinner with Bob Hope that involves a plateful of live frogs.

Chesterwood
4 Williamsville Road (off Route 183); Stockbridge, 413.298.3579
Grounds open at 7; film starts at 8
Admission: $15; $10/members
Dress warmly and bring a blanket or folding chairs; water and popcorn provided.  If you wish to picnic before the film, there are tables on the grounds.
 

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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/20/08 at 08:08 AM • Permalink

“Frozen River” Screens in Chatham

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Courtney Hunt directing Frozen River

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
As usual on the last Sunday of the month, the Chatham Film Club will screen a movie at the Crandell Theater this week. But there’s nothing “as usual” about this particular screening.  In fact, it’s safe to assume, there has never been a screening closer to the Film Club members’ hearts.  Frozen River, written and directed by Courtney Hunt, a Chatham resident and member of the Film Club board, will be released on August 1, by Sony Pictures Classics.

Hunt, who holds an MFA in film from Columbia University (her award-winning thesis film was later aired on PBS), wrote the script for Frozen River in 2003.  That spring, at the FilmColumbia Festival in Chatham, she met guest speaker, Melissa Leo, star of that year’s sneak preview film, 21 Grams.  Courtney pitched Frozen River to Melissa, who asked to see the script and subsequently agreed to do the film.
 
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The next winter, Courtney shot a 15-minute segment of the script, which was presented as a “short” at that year’s New York and Los Angeles Film Festivals, among others, including, naturally, FilmColumbia.  Finally, by 2007, funding in place, she was able to complete shooting the entire feature-length script.  Frozen River was accepted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for drama. Sony Pictures Classics purchased distribution rights to the film, about a desperate trailer mom and a Mohawk Indian girl who team up to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States from Canada, for $1 million.  It will open in Los Angeles and New York on August 1st and nationwide soon thereafter.

Courtney Hunt will be at Sunday’s screening of Frozen River. She will also be on hand afterwards for an informal question-and-answer session at the theater and at the Club’s quarterly “Salon in a Saloon,“ held upstairs at the Peint O’Gwrw, a nearby pub.
Chatham Film Club at the Crandell Theater
Main Street (Route 66), Chatham
Sunday, July 27, at 2:30 (tickets go on sale at 1 pm)
Admission: $6; $5/members
Salon at the Saloon: cash bar

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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/17/08 at 03:36 PM • Permalink

Cinemas Paradiso

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Sissy Spacek with a pre-Presidential Martin Sheen in Badlands.

We watch movies all the time, and the blackened sky is ours for the asking every single night.  So why is the combination so special?  Can’t really say, except that, like an outdoor shower, a movie viewed out-of-doors, under a nighttime sky, tastes ever-so-slightly of forbidden fruit. Another great aspect of this summer’s outdoor film series in our region is the programming: there’s not a stinker in the bunch.   
 

The Images Cinema in Williamstown dubs its outdoor movie series Family Flicks Under the Stars, and screens them on Sundays, with Mondays as a back-up in case of rain.  The series begins this week, July 20, with the incomparable Ghostbusters, followed on subsequent weeks by Rear Window (though utterly chaste, thus squeaking under the wire as Family Fare, it is perhaps the sexiest sex-scene-free film ever made), Singin’ in the Rain, and The Great Muppet Caper.  Prior to each film, there’s half-hour of live music.  In addition, at 7:30 on the night they screen Singin’ in the Rain, there will be a (be still, my heart) tap-dance workshop.

50 Spring Street, Williamstown; 413.458.5612
Time: dusk/8:30ish
Admission: Free
 

The selection at this year’s Moonlit Movies at MASS MoCA was influenced by Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape, the show currently on view in the galleries.  All are characterized by dramatic landscapes or a specific sense of place. The series begins on Thursday, July 31, appropriately enough, with Terrence Malick’s Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, followed on August 7 by Sidney Pollack’s Out of Africa, and on the following Thursday, August 14, by Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.  The final film in the series, on Thursday, August 28, is Bagdad Cafe, a West German film set in the California Desert, about Bavarian tourists, a husband and wife, who become stranded when their car breaks down. 

1040 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams; 413.662.2111
Time: 9
Admission: $7.   
 

PS 21 in Chatham screens its films in an airy tent—perhaps not quite as glamorous as en plein aire, but certainly more waterproof. Another selling point: admission is free. Those who, last Tuesday, missed the rare opportunity to see Margaret Dumas shot from a cannon on the big screen in the Marx Brothers At the Circus, will want to be sure to mark their calendars for Tuesday, July 22 at 8:30, when Adjunct Professor of Communications at FIT Frank Farnham introduces the film The Red Balloon.  Old Chatham resident Farnham will also be on hand with helpful commentary for subsequent screenings of such films as Shall We Dance, On the Riviera, Footloose, High Society, Billy Elliot, and Carlos Saura’s Tango.

2980 Route 66 (north of the village); Chatham; 518.392.6121
Time: 8:30
Admission: Free
 

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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/17/08 at 12:49 AM • Permalink

Preview: The 3rd Annual Berkshire International Film Festival

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BIFF founder Kelley Vickery at The Triplex

If you play “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” with Kelley Vickery, it’s pretty certain she will win. As the founder and director of the 3rd annual Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF), she’s watched almost every one of the actor’s 60 films to prepare the tribute to him that will take place at the Mahaiwe Theater  in Great Barrington on Friday May 16. “He’s had such an amazing career when you think about it—beginning with Animal House and Diner through Apollo 13 and The Woodsman,“ she says. “I really like the idea of honoring someone with a connection to our region.“ (Bacon and his wife, actress Krya Sedgwicl [above] have long had a house in Sharon, CT, and his band, the Bacon Brothers, often gives benefit concerts in the region.)
Vickery has managed to organize a world-class festival with a hometown sensibility. For instance, she’s arranged for Douglas Trumbull of Southfield, MA, who created the special effects for the groundbreaking Blade Runner  in 1982, to speak before a screening of the new digital edition (trailer below) of director Ridley Scott’s cult classic on Sunday May 18.

“He’s one of the legends in his field,“ says Vickery. “He has a wonderful presentation that he’ll do.“  She’s excited that BIFF’s finale will be Frozen River—the story of an upstate New York woman who smuggles illegal immigrants from Canada into the United States through a Mohawk Indian Reservation—which was written and directed by Courtney Hunt of Chatham, NY.
A film festival, she explains, is about celebrating films you might not normally get to see as well as schmoozing and networking. She has worked hard to make BIFF serious and fun, glamorous and accessible. “I just got permission to close down Railroad Street on opening night,“ she says. “We’re going to have a free dance party on the street from 9 P.M. to midnight with a local Brazilian band, Berkshire Bateria. And if it rains, we’ll have it in Pearl’s.“  Other parties and dinners are only open to ticket-holders who’ve purchased the $250 or $500 passes, which are still available. BIFF has already sold out all of its $100 movies-only passes, which is why now is the time to buy tickets for individual films before they sell out, too. “We’re developing a reputation,“ she says. “Seventy percent of our sales are to people from outside the Berkshires.“
A mother of three—Kaitlin, 14, Andrew, 12, and Jack, 10—Vickery enjoys taking her children to to Tanglewood and Jacob’s Pillow, but felt that there was a gap in their cultural education, which was one of the inspirations for the festival.  “We have so much dance, theater and music in the Berkshires and I thought that movies deserved to be celebrated too,“ she says, adding that the affordability of tickets ($10) makes BIFF family friendly.  Indeed, BIFF reaches out to the community all year long and hosts a free 11 AM screening at The Triplex on the first Sunday of every month. (This Sunday’s film is the documentary Single about the 100 million unmarried adults in the U.S., and the filmmakers will host a Q&A after the screening.)
The weekend before Memorial Day has turned out to be ideal time for the event. “The summer crowds have not yet shown up so the restaurants and shops are happy for the extra business,“ she says. “It’s really become the kick-off for the cultural season.“

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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/01/08 at 04:46 PM • Permalink

Behind the Scenes

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A scene from “The Royal Tenenbaums”

Anyone who’s curious about the tricks of the set designer’s trade—how he uses color, light and illusion to help film and stage directors tell a story—will want to attend Carl Sprague‘s free illustrated lecture at the Berkshire Museum on Thursday, April 3, at 7 PM. The Stockbridge resident has impressive credits: He’s been the art director for films such as Wes Anderson’s State and Main; he’s designed sets locally for the Albany Berkshire Ballet and the Berkshire Theater Festival, and he’s worked with fine-art-star photographer Gregory Crewdson, who frequently shoots in and around Pittsfield.

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Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/03/08 at 09:24 PM • Permalink

40 Films in Four Days in Kent

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You’d think that a town without a proper movie theater would have a tough time pulling off a serious film festival, but the arts community of Kent, CT, does not let that inconvenient detail get in its way. “It requires a lot of imagination,“ says Frank Galterio, who founded the festival three years ago. “We’re still wondering how we’ve we done it. The first year we had two six-by-eight screens. Now, we have one that is nine-by-twelve and one that is ten-by-sixteen, plus three other screening rooms.“

Beginning on Thursday, March 27, Kent will show 40 films in four-days, and host panels and workshops for anyone who loves movies. The festival kicks off with a screening of Doughboy [trailer below], the story of two brothers and their family’s bakery in the Bronx, which was directed by Louis Lombardi, who played federal agent Skip Lipari on The Sopranos.

One of the festival’s highlights is a master class on Saturday afternoon with Albert Maysles,  the dean of American documentarians, whose films include Grey Gardens and Gimme Shelter.“There are only a few tickets left for that,“ says Galterio. Rural Intelligence ArtsAnd on Friday night, the premier of A.D. Calvo’s The Other Side of the Tracks will be followed by a Q&A with Tony- and Emmy-award winning actress Shirley Knight, who is in the film. Saturday night’s big film is Josseph Merhi’s Oranges, a drama about five families who each have a ten-year-old son on the same soccer team; the cast of Oranges includes Heather Locklear, Jill Hennessy, Orson Bean and Tom Arnold.

Galterio, who had a film in the first festival, no longer has time to make movies himself. “This has become a full-time job for me,“ he says. “As soon as this one is over, I have to start organizing next year’s.“

Tickets are $8 for individual films; a full-day pass for Saturday or Sunday is $35; for $195, you can purchase a pass that gets you into all screenings, workshops, panels, and parties. Click here for the complete lineup.

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Posted by Dan Shaw on 03/24/08 at 10:58 AM • Permalink