The 24th annual Woodstock Film Festival happens this weekend, September 27 to October 1, and as always, it’s tough to choose what to see amongst a wealth of enticing screen offerings. At various venues in Woodstock, Rosendale and Saugerties, WFF is presenting 28 feature narrative films and 26 feature documentaries, plus 14 programs of a total of 107 short films in various genres. This year’s lineup includes nine world premieres, seven US premieres, nine East Coast premieres and 16 New York premieres.
A big part of the fun is that screenings are typically followed by question-and-answer sessions with directors, producers and actors. As always, there will also be a series of live talks and panel discussions featuring some heavyweights of moviedom, plus musical performances following screenings of the music films that are a specialty of this music-town festival.
Live performances
The pairings of film screenings and live music are among the most popular offerings at WFF, so some of them are already sold out; check the website for ticket availability at https://woodstockfilmfestival.org/tickets. Here’s the full lineup:
Tuesday, September 26, 7 p.m., Levon Helm Studio, Woodstock: Kiefer Sutherland live performance following the screening of Texas Music Revolution.
Friday, September 29, 6:30 p.m., Orpheum Theatre, Saugerties: Javon Jackson live jazz performance following the screening of With Peter Bradley.
Friday, September 29, 8 p.m., Bearsville Theater, Woodstock: Live acoustic performance from Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone of the Zombies following the screening of Hung up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary.
Saturday, September 30, 2:15 p.m., Bearsville Theater, Woodstock: Maverick Sextet live classical performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4, following the screening of Fioretta.
Saturday, September 30, 6:15 p.m., Bearsville Theater, Woodstock: Kishi Bashi live acoustic performance following the screening of A Song Film by Kishi Bashi: Omoiyari.
Live musical performances will also follow both short blocks of music videos.
Maverick Awards
A highlight of each year’s WFF is the presentation of the Maverick Awards, in a ceremony that this year will take place at the Saugerties Performing Arts Factory at 9 p.m. this Saturday, September 30. This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award goes to legendary director James Ivory, known for an impressive body of work in partnership with the late producer Ismail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, including A Room with a View, Maurice, Howards End and The Remains of the Day. Ivory will be on hand for a tribute screening of his film The City of Your Final Destination at 2 p.m. on Saturday at the Woodstock Playhouse.
Other awards categories at WFF (2023 recipients not yet announced at presstime) include the Gigantic Pictures Award for Best Feature Narrative, the Leon Gast Award for Best Feature Documentary, the NYWIFT Award for Excellence in Directing a Documentary Film + Narrative Film, the Gray Schwartz Ultra Indie Award, Best Editing (Narrative + Documentary), the Haskell Wexler Award for Best Cinematography, Best Short Animation, the Mark Braunstein Award for Best Short Narrative, Best Short Documentary, Best Student Short and the World of Ha Change Maker Award. Also, short films screened at WFF become eligible to compete in the year’s round of Academy Awards.
Big stars, big debuts
While “fiercely independent” WFF is among the best places to discover emerging talents in the world of independent and low-budget cinema, it also regularly spotlights works by top-shelf filmmakers with famous casts – and sometimes even gets to debut them. Arguably its biggest coup for 2023 is the world premiere of Nicol Paone’s crime comedy The Kill Room, which stars Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Manganiello and Maya Hawke. It screens at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 27 at the Woodstock Playhouse and repeats at 7:15 p.m. on Thursday, September 28 at the Orpheum Theatre in Saugerties.
Another world premiere worth noting, though its cast members aren’t household names, is Eric McGinty’s Stockade. This thriller about underground trafficking of ancient artifacts was made right here in the Hudson Valley and can be seen at 12:45 p.m. on Friday, September 29 at the Tinker Street Cinema and at 4 p.m. on Sunday, October 1 at the Rosendale Theatre.
This year’s Opening Night feature is Fair Play, directed by Chloe Dumont and starring Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich and Eddie Marsan (Wednesday at 5:15 p.m. at the Woodstock Playhouse, repeating at 4 p.m. on Thursday at the Orpheum). The Closing Night film (Sunday, 7:30 p.m., Woodstock Playhouse) is Finestkind by Brian Helgeland, set aboard a New England fishing vessel and starring Ben Foster, Toby Wallace and Tommy Lee Jones.
Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne and Robert De Niro star in Tony Goldwyn’s Ezra, screening at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday at the Woodstock Playhouse. Cate Blanchett portrays a nun in Australia in the 1940s in Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy, showing twice at the Orpheum: 9 p.m. on Thursday and 2:45 p.m. on Sunday. Miranda Otto plays a woman in LA offering shelter to an undocumented Salvadoran immigrant family in Augustus Meleo Bernstein’s At the Gates, screening at 6 p.m. on Thursday at the Tinker Street Cinema and at 8:15 p.m. on Friday at the Rosendale Theatre. Anne Hathaway and Thomasin Mackenzie butt heads in William Oldroyd’s Eileen, at 2 p.m. on Friday at the Woodstock Playhouse and 4:45 p.m. on Saturday at the Rosendale Theatre.
Past Maverick Award-winner Tim Blake Nelson produced and stars in Asleep in My Palm, a dark drama written and directed by his son Henry, with shows at 4:15 on Thursday at the Woodstock Playhouse and 2:30 p.m. on Friday at the Orpheum. Another Maverick veteran, Steve Buscemi, directed The Listener, starring Tessa Thompson as a telephone crisis counselor. The entirety of the film is set in the small space of her home and only one actor occupies it. It screens at 5:30 p.m. on Friday at the Rosendale Theatre and at 1 p.m. on Sunday at the Woodstock Playhouse.
An unidentified “Surprise Screening” has been announced for 10:15 a.m. on Sunday at the Woodstock Playhouse. The star who’ll be taking questions afterwards is Griffin Dunne, so it’s reasonable to deduce that the film may very well be his newest vehicle, Ex-Husbands, which premiered this past Sunday at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
Distinguished documentaries
Aside from all these fiction features, WFF is also a fabulous place to see outstanding documentaries, including the ones about musicians noted above. Perhaps the most exciting offering on the doc roster this year, though, is Anselm, a portrait of the great German painter/sculptor Anselm Kiefer, directed by the legendary Wim Wenders. It screens at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday at the Orpheum Theatre. The two-time Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple’s newest work, Gumbo Coalition, follows two visionary Civil Rights leaders, Marc Morial and Janet Murguía, as they work to empower African American and Latino American communities through three turbulent years in America (4 p.m. Sunday, Bearsville Theater).
Having its world premiere at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the Bearsville Theater is doc of strong local interest: Jodie Childers and Dan Messina’s portrait of Pete and Toshi Seeger and the creation of the sloop Clearwater, Down by the Riverside. (It will be available to stream online as well.) Another folkie folk hero is profiled in Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky and Maeve O’Boyle’s Joan Baez: I Am a Noise (7 p.m., Thursday, Bearsville Theater and 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Rosendale Theatre).
We’re also intrigued that Unseen, a multimedia documentary about a blind undocumented immigrant by Set Hernandez – one of the residents in WFF’s incubator for emerging filmmakers at White Feather Farm in 2021 – will be on view (Friday, 2:45 p.m. Orpheum Theatre and Sunday, 10 a.m., Tinker Street Cinema).
As usual, Almanac only has room to scratch the surface of what’s going down this week at the Woodstock Film Festival. There’s much more information available at woodstockfilmfestival.org. The Festival box office is located at 13 Rock City Road in Woodstock, open September 27 to 30 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and October 1 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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