The region celebrates its 20th Woodstock Film Festival
As another major hallmark arrives here in town, what are the Woodstock Film Festival’s highlights over the years, both maverick and community-minded?
Stage & Screen
Coming to a big screen near you: Tix on sale now for Woodstock Film Festival
Wednesday-Sunday, Oct. 2-6: Of the more than 100 “Fiercely Independent” films being screened, 13 are having their world, North American or US premiere at Woodstock.
Tan Dun conducts his scores for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero & The Banquet at Bard’s Fisher Center
Saturday, Sept. 28: To put it mildly, Bard has found itself a new faculty superstar. Local audiences will get their first real chance to hear Tan Dun in action on Saturday, September 28 at 8 p.m., when he conducts the Conservatory Orchestra in a multimedia concert featuring excerpts from three classic martial arts movies that he scored.
SUNY’s Studley Theatre hosts New Paltz Film Festival
Saturday, Sept. 28: After a successful freshman campaign in the summer of 2018, with more than 15 short films screened to an audience of over 300 at the Water Street Market, the organizers have moved the event to the larger venue on the SUNY campus. Predictably, submissions have greatly increased as well, topping 100 this year, coming from a wider range of independent filmmakers across the Hudson Valley.
In the Time of the Butterflies to be staged at SUNY-New Paltz
Thursday-Sunday, Oct. 3-6: Of all the horrific dictators ever to plague Latin America, Rafael Trujillo was arguably one of the worst. Whether as president or behind-the-scenes military strongman, he ruled the Dominican Republic for 31 years with an iron hand. His personal hit squad roamed the capital, Santo Domingo – renamed Ciudád Trujillo during his reign – in a red Packard nicknamed the “car of death,” carro de la muerte. A national network of procurers rounded up preteen girls for him to rape. Within one week in 1937, he had his army butcher between 20,000 and 30,000 Haitians in a border incursion known as the Parsley Massacre.
TMI Project’s Voices in Action storytelling benefit to be held at BSP
Saturday, Sept. 21: Chris Wells, founding artistic director of the Obie Award-winning organization The Secret City, will be honored with the 2019 Voices in Action Award for his groundbreaking work in connecting community through the arts.
Colony presents two nights with Chris Gethard
Friday/Saturday, Sept. 27/28: On Friday night, the zeitgeist comedian, writer, actor and podcaster for the memoir and confessional generation will deliver a traditional standup set, or as close to it as he is likely to get. On Saturday night, he presents a live onstage episode of his popular caller-based Beautiful/Anonymous podcast.
Woodstock Film Fest’s 20th brims with promise
We’ll start our preview of this year’s 20th Anniversary Woodstock Film Festival, running October 2-5, with the special guests, including Matt Dillon, Rosie Perez, Parker Posey, Julie Taymor, folk music icon Janis Ian, and many others. Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Walt, will receive the Trailblazer Award for her documentaries and community activism. March for Our Lives co-founder Cameron Kasky will be on hand for the screening of Parkland Rising, about the teen-led anti-gun-violence movement generated by the high school shooting in Florida.
New Paltz Film Festival moves to larger venue this year, still free to attend
The New Paltz Film Festival that debuted last year as “New Paltz Shorts” during the outdoor summer movie series at Water Street Market, will present a one-night, two-hour screening event on Saturday, September 28 at 7:30 p.m., featuring short films created by Hudson Valley-based filmmakers. But don’t go to the marketplace expecting to find the action this time around: the festival is moving to the 620-seat Studley Theatre on the SUNY New Paltz campus.
Dzieci Theater Co. to perform site-specific Makbet at Widow Jane Mine
Saturday, September 14: Based in Brooklyn, the Dzieci Theater Company characterizes itself as “an international experimental theater ensemble…dedicated to a search for the ‘sacred’ through the medium of theater.” Part of the troupe’s approach to theater-as-ritual is a fondness for developing site-specific staging for the plays in its repertoire. Well, how about a cave with such wonderfully eerie acoustics that Pauline Oliveros herself couldn’t resist recording there?