On August 14 at 8 p.m., the Kingston Film Festival will screen Cold in July, starring Michael C. Hall, Sam Sheperd and Don Johnson. This thriller was filmed in and around Kingston.
Trevor Dunworth, co-director and co-founder of the Kingston Film Festival that unspools for its third outing in the Uptown section of the county seat this Thursday through Sunday, August 14 to 17, says that he’s looking forward to one event in particular this time around. “Much of the movie Cold in July, which we’ll be playing at BSP Thursday night, was shot in Kingston,” he said of the Michael C. Hall/Sam Shepard/Don Johnson thriller directed by Jim Mickle. “And a majority of that local shoot and work was done right in BSP, where we’ll be screening the work. I saw much of it coming together then, and look forward to seeing it on the big screen in that same location.”
Dunworth, the manager at Backstage Studio Productions on Main Street, noted how he and Astrid Cybele, a Kingston native who works with the San Diego Film Festival, “thought it would be great to bring something like this to Kingston.” They’re both thrilled that the festival keeps growing – “stubbornly independent,” as their logo runs – alongside the increasing élan of the city that it was designed to serve.
“We celebrate the art and entertainment of film in all its forms,” reads the festival’s mission statement. “Through screenings and associated events, the festival aims to present a wide spectrum of filmmaking: feature films, documentaries, animation, short films, experimental, big-budget, micro-budget, trailers and so on.”
The offering this year includes a number of documentaries, including the in-progress Gone Postal, a paean to a Kingston post office worker by his son; Tobe Carey’s Rails to the Catskills; the Vermont-based Cow Power; and a variety of shorts. There are some cool narrative works, including the offbeat and dark Go down Death, Eddie Mullins’ Catskills-shot Doomsdays and loads of animation – plus some music documentaries, including that new underground hit about a legendary rock concert that probably never occurred, Led Zeppelin Played Here.
As with all good festivals, and most things happening in and around Uptown Kingston and BSP in recent times, there’ll also be concerts and some mega-parties, including a big tie-in to the Chronogram Block Party taking place on Saturday night, August 16.
Kingston Film Festival, Thursday-Sunday, August 14-17, Uptown Gallery & BSP, 323 Wall Street, Kingston; (914) 417-9114, www.kingstonfilmfestival.org.