Woodstock Film Festival makes Summer Youth Film Lab year-round, renews Filmmakers’ Residency
The Woodstock Film Festival (WFF) has announced the expansion of its annual Summer Youth Film Lab into a year-round program and the renewal of its month-long Filmmakers’ Residency/Incubator with White Feather Farm for 2022. These two initiatives will continue to build on WFF’s mission to provide free educational opportunities for emerging filmmakers and the local community.
The Woodstock Film Festival’s Youth Film Lab began as a free three-week filmmaking program for teens living in the mid-Hudson Valley region and interested in pursuing careers in film and media. For the past four years, students and instructors have met during the summer to conceptualize, shoot and edit their own original film projects while receiving creative guidance from a roster of accomplished guest mentors.
Starting in January of 2022, the Youth Film Lab will meet twice a month after school in Kingston, where the students will learn about the art of filmmaking and develop their projects before transitioning in July to a three-week intensive course, where they will produce and shoot their films. Confirmed mentors for the 2022 academic year include Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry and editor Sabine Hoffman, as well as animators Joy Buran and Noelle Melody, with more to be confirmed in the near future. Applications for the 2022 Youth Film Lab are currently open and will close on December 22.
“We’re very excited and grateful for the opportunity to expand the Woodstock Film Festival Youth Film Lab into the school year,” said the Lab’s program director, Megan Sperry. “We’re looking forward to working with 12 students on their original stories, which will be produced during our three-week summer intensive. This is a really great opportunity for local teens to learn about filmmaking from concept through distribution from industry professionals, while being mentored by instructors throughout the entire process.”
Launched in the spring of 2021 in collaboration with White Feather Farm, WFF’s Filmmakers’ Residency/Incubator is a month-long program that serves visual storytellers from underrepresented communities who are in the middle of developing film projects with social justice themes. Attending filmmakers stay at a residential property in Woodstock, where they spend the month of May participating in group workshops and one-on-one sessions with mentors from all over the entertainment industry. Mentors for the 2021 Residency included Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair, writer/director Matty Rich and Academy Award-nominated producer Julie Anderson, along with award-winning documentary filmmaking duo Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís. Filmmaker and professor Alex Smith will return as the Residency’s artistic director for 2022.
For more information, visit woodstockfilmfestival.org.
Laying It Bare in Bearsville
Mikhail Horowitz will read from and sign copies of his new book, Slapstick Gravitas, on Saturday, December 18 at Nancy’s Artisanal (formerly known as Peterson House) in the Bearsville complex from 2 to 4 p.m. Published by Station Hill Press in Barrytown, the book is a selection of the author’s various perpetrations in poetry and prose over the past 35 years. The free event will take place under the auspices of The Golden Notebook.
Join the family! 
