Upstate Films screens festival favorite

"War/Dance," the Audience Award winner for documentary feature at the Woodstock Film Festival, will be presented tonight and Thursday at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck.

The documentary, which also won the festival's Haskell Wexler Award for Best Cinematography, tells the story of brutality in northern Uganda through the eyes of three children.

Screenings take place tonight and Thursday at 6 and 8:15 p.m. at Upstate Films on Montgomery Street in Rhinebeck.

Admission is $7.50; $6 for seniors 62 and over; and $4.50 members & children under 16.

Audiences loved 'The Living Wake'

Audiences chose "The Living Wake" as their favorite narrative feature of the eighth annual Woodstock Film Festival.

Directed by Sol Tryon, the movie was described in the film festival catalogue as "a dark comedy set in a timeless storybook universe."

The Audience Award winner for documentary feature went to "War/Dance," directed by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine.

"Run Granny Run," directed by Marlo Poras, came in a very close second, festival organizers said.

'Chicago 10' makes poignant connections

Mia Mask, a film professor at Vassar College, attended a screening of "Chicago 10" Saturday evening at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck. Here is her review:

Brett Morgen’s “Chicago 10” was an enjoyable find at the Woodstock Film Festival. Having made the rounds at Austin, Sundance, and Silverdocs, it’s only fitting this depiction of ‘60s counterculture mavericks be screened at the hippy-est of film festivals — the one most closely associated with anti-war, peace-loving bohemia.

A 95-minute feature, “Chicago 10” tells the tale of the Chicago protest during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the trial of seven activist-icons.

The original eight defendants, indicted by the grand jury on March 20, 1969, were Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Black Panther Bobby Seale.

The defense attorneys were William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The judge was Julius Hoffman. The prosecutors were Richard Schultz and Tom Foran.

The (in)famous defendants — who were catapulted to celebrity as a result — were charged with conspiracy, inciting to riot and other misdemeanors related to violence that ensued during convention week.

It’s clear the charges only heightened their popularity with the non-conformist, anti-authoritarian followers, making them more symbolic than they would have been without police brutality and National Guard deployment.

After all, Yippies (the Youth International Party) were a theatrical party with a penchant for carnivalesque political performance.

They aligned with groups like the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (a.k.a. MOBE), which also appears in “Chicago 10.”

Local Chicago government and state resistance only made charismatic leaders of playful resistors like Abbie Hoffman and his crew.

What makes Morgen’s treatment unique is that it combines rotoscopic animation techniques — made famous by films like “Waking Life” and "A Scanner Darkly” — with archival riot footage, and existing feature film clips (excerpts from Haskell Wexler’s “Medium Cool “).

Morgen reconstructs the animated courtroom proceedings with the help of professional voice talents Nick Nolte, Roy Scheider, Hank Azaria, Mark Ruffalo and Liev Schreiber.

These scenes are intercut with the archival footage.

Morgen parallels the action by using a split screen, dividing it horizontally and vertically.

Aesthetically, “Chicago 10” is reminiscent of other films that have blended live-action and animation like Ralph Bakshi’s work in the ‘70s or Robert Zemeckis’ cartoon-noir, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”

Here rotoscope is put to more political and progressive use: educating a younger generation about the events of the 60s.

In his introduction to the film at Upstate, director Morgen told the Woodstock festival audience he wanted to “make the history accessible and recreate the experience of being in Chicago rather than an academic account of Chicago at the time.”

Morgen may have also succeeded in advancing the amalgamation of documentary and animation as docu-mation.

“Chicago 10” makes it clear (for younger audiences who didn’t live through the ‘60s) that the baton-wielding, tear-gas throwing police initiated much of the violence.

While some might have been looking for trouble, the majority of hippies, Yippies and protesters could barely find their way out of Lincoln Park.

Made by the same production company that produced “An Inconvenient Truth,” it’s no wonder this feature has been well received at festivals.

It makes the poignant connections other films strive for but miss.

And, its pastiche of images is set to an equally rebellious score.

The connection between Johnson’s Vietnam and Bush’s Iraq is provided — ironically enough — by Eminem’s anti-war anthem, “Mosh,” and Beastie Boys rhymes.

“Chicago 10” is certainly the best documation treatment of the confrontation between police state authoritarianism and youth-driven protest.

It captures the political tumult, spirit of rebellion and momentary feeling of euphoria experienced by the charismatic cadre that helped define the ethos of The Sixties.

Vassar professor reviews 'Oswald's Ghost'

Mia Mask, a film professor at Vassar College, attended a sold-out screening of Rhinecliff-based documentary director Robert Stone’s “Oswald’s Ghost” Friday evening at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck. Here is her review:

Among the documentaries premiering at the 8th annual Woodstock Film Festival was Robert Stone’s “Oswald’s Ghost,” a clear-cut approach to the otherwise dizzying morass of conspiracy theories and forensic contradictions circulating around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963.

To evoke the zeitgeist of the sixties and recreate the feeling of loss, chaos and disbelief that followed the assassination, the director utilized a familiar catalogue of images, evidence and filmed material.

With editor Don Kleszy, Stone assembled well-preserved archival footage, excerpts of Abraham Zapruder’s film — played in super slow motion — and still photographs of haunting figures Jack Ruby and the eponymous gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald.

The images are sutured together by interviews with historians and assassination chroniclers Edward Jay Epstein, Mark Lane, Norman Mailer, former Sen. Gary Hart and anchorman Dan Rather — among others — who carefully recount the narrative of that fateful day in Dallas.

The resulting film is a professionally rendered, carefully paced documentary that’s slick enough for theatrical release but provides little new information or inspiration, which might lead moviegoers to ask: Why this film now?

In his introduction to the festival screening, Stone said he wanted to make “Oswald’s Ghost” for more than a decade, ever since he saw Oliver Stone’s “JFK.”

“I was interested in the debates and discussions it inspired,” Robert Stone said.

If he has any agenda, it’s to debunk conspiracy theories in general, something he clearly considers debilitating to progressive, leftist politics.

In the post-screening Q & A he compared the proliferation of theories around JFK’s assassination to the new crop of plots and schemes concocted to explain Sept. 11, 2001.

“The problem is: There’s no basic set of facts,” Stone said. “There’s no basic set of facts you can have a discussion about. There’s a whole cottage industry that says the Zapruder film is a fake. I didn’t want to fall into the rabbit hole of these debates. It’s been a rabbit hole for the left to pursue conspiracy theories that make people feel powerless. It only enables the powerful. The assassination of JFK was the 9/11 of our generation.”

If that’s true, then one wants “Oswald’s Ghost” to make that point.

The film’s public television, documentary-by-numbers formula works. But in trying to moderate two sides of the assassination debate, it fails to provide anything other than the sensible conclusions already surmised.

To Stone’s credit, there are archival and authorial flourishes viewers won’t find elsewhere. Chief among them are the police radio tapes and CBS’ 16mm coverage, neither of which had ever been used in any accounts of the tragedy.

There’s also a humorous moment of cinematic reflexivity when Robert Stone’s “Oswald’s Ghost” pokes fun at Oliver Stone’s “JFK.”

Just when the myriad of competing explanations starts to overwhelm, the documentary cuts to a 1991 interview with Oliver Stone on the set.

"Oswald's Ghost" mocks its predecessor as the mainstream film that managed to “…make use of all the theories.” The message seems clear: Hokey Hollywood films manufacture order out of complexity and chaos.

If the two films have anything in common, it’s that they both raise epistemological questions about cinema’s relationship to historical memory and the persistence of that memory.

Indeed, the killings of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X were stumbling blocks to the rise of a progressive majority — as one Woodstock audience member noted.

The orbit of unknowns has proved an epistemological quagmire.

He's right here

I hope that anyone who was as utterly disappointed in the the Neal Cassady movie finds something worth reading in the story that I wrote for the Poughkeepsie Journal, about Cassady and Bob Dylan, that appears in today's paper.

My story is pegged to the showing at the film fest of "Neal Cassady" and "I'm Not There," which is about the different personas of Dylan and closes the fest tonight at the Tinker Street Cinema.

But my story isn't about these films. It's about these two larger-than-life personalities that inspired these films. Cassady was a friend of Jack Kerouac's and the inspiration for Kerouac's Dean Moriarity character in "On the Road." Quite frankly, I think you will learn more about Cassady in my story than you will in the movie.

There are also a few nuggets about Bob.

From Bowie to Bearsville, the old roadies

Inspired by a photo that Journal photographer Kathy McClaughlin took of the projectionist at Woodstock Town Hall, I sought out one of the minds behind the moving images, to learn more about what makes these folks tick, or rather, turn.

I headed over to the Bearsville Theater, where I met Jim Dodge. Jim has done projection work for some major live performances by some major folks – McCartney, Bowie, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson and R.E.M. among them.

He is from Shohola, Penn., and described himself as WFF tech guru Jeff Kantor’s “sidekick.”

Jim said at the first film fest, in 2000, he and Kantor ran the projection show, “running from venue to venue,” dropping off films.

His work at the WFF, he said, “started off as a real affection for Meira and Laurent,” he said, referring to the festival’s co-founders. “Just because of the love of what she does.”

He first met Meira at a New York film festival years ago.

He added, “I look forward to next year’s festival even before this one is over.”

He mentioned that several projectionists at the WFF come from the concert industry and the film fest serves as a reunion of sorts for these “old roadies.”

Patricia Clarkson has quote of the festival

Actress Patricia Clarkson, who said she was celebrating her 47th birthday today (someone needs to edit her IMDB profile), was asked how she felt about Hollywood's preoccupation with staying young, particularly the use of Botox.

Clarkson said she believes one of the reasons she has been acting so much lately is because she does not go the Botox route.

"I honestly think it's because my face moves," she said. "And it will always move."

Love it.

(Photo by Poughkeepsie Journal photographer Karl Rabe)

That slice lived on

Remember Gill Holland, the producer I bumped into at Catskill Mountain Pizza? Well I saw him again at the Skytop Restaurant, where I popped in briefly after the Felice Brothers concert Saturday night. Gill introduced me to Alexie Gilmore, a New York City resident whose parents just moved to Woodstock.

Alexie was a film fest juror but also has some pretty big stuff happening. She will star next year opposite Matthew McConaughey in "Pro Surfer," a comedy about a surfer and a reality show. Gilmore will also be seen in "New Amsterdam" on Fox, about a New York City Police Detective who is immortal, but who is trying to become mortal, with the help of Gilmore, who plays his love interest.

Nice to meet you Alexie.

Here is a picture of Holland and Gilmore at the Skytop.

Felice fanatics

There was a line stretching outside the door of the Colony Cafe Saturday night, for the second straight evening of live music at the Woodstock Film Festival. Both concerts were staged by Wacbiz.

I've been to a fair share of shows at the Colony,but never have I seen such a waiting list and then people without tickets standing out front of the sold-out show, perhaps just listening?

Here are some photos of the gig:

A Lovin' Spoonful love-in

A panel discussion on Music in Film at Utopia Studios Saturday turned into a mini John Sebastian love-fest, with the panel's moderator and a composer whose work includes one of the Harry Potter films gushing over the Woodstock veteran and long-time Woodstock resident, who participated in the discussion.

'John Sebastian is just an iconic soul in my book," said William Rossis, who composed music for "Matrix Reloaded," "Forrest Gump" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

On the topic of "Film and Television as the New Radio," lobbed up for debate by moderator Doreen Ringer-Ross, vice President of Film/TV Relations at BMI, Sebastian said "It moves around." "I've said no to alcohol, but yes to beer; no to big oil and yes to an electric power company that gives money to schools."

Here is a picture of Ringer-Ross and Sebastian.

Peanuts group therapy session

A documentary about Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, "Good 'Ol Charles Schulz," shown Saturday night, was a multi-dimensional, psychological anlaysis of the loved illustrator that dissected the many angles of his personality through the characters he created.

Interviews with Schulz's children, widow and colleagues revealed a man who WAS Charlie Brown.

I found myself feeling guilty for looking at Charlie Brown all those years as that sorry loser, the kid who can't kick the football, the kid who can't control the actors in the Christmas play and the kid who buys the pathetic Christmas tree. I learned during the film that Schulz looked at himself as that sorry, pathetic kid.

Some revealing moments in the came during interviews with the woman who was "the little red-haired girl," in the comic strip, who Charlie Brown has a crush on but can't work up the nerve to talk to. It turns out she had dumped Shultz. A funny moment came during an interview with Linus Maurer - a former colleage of Schulz's from the art institute where they both taught. An even funnier moment came when the film showed a picture of THE Charlie Brown - Schulz's colleague from the art institute who inspired him to draw you know who. I can't remember who said it, Schulz or someone else, but the line of the movie was about the real Charlie Brown - "The real Charlie Brown had a round head. He did."

Of course, I felt a little bit like Charlie Brown myself as I thought this movie was being shown at the Woodstock Community Center when in fact, it was at Town Hall. I only realized my mistake after watching several minutes of "Caroline By Committee." The 10 minutes I watched were hilarious.

Steve Guttenberg appears at festival

Steve Guttenberg, the star of big franchise hits like "Police Academy," "Three Men and a Baby," "Short Circuit" and "Cocoon," was the surprise guest at an actors' panel this morning that featured indie queen Patricia Clarkson.

He might not be the first person you think of when you hear the film festival catch phrase, "fiercely independent," but Guttenberg was self-effacing, warm and very funny. He talked about his desire to do more dramatic work, reminding the audience that he began his career in the theater.

Guttenberg recently completed "Major Movie Star," a studio film with Jessica Simpson (what I'm assuming is a "pay the mortgage" movie -- a phrase I'm borrowing from Mary Stuart Masterson) and will be heading to Berlin to finish shooting the independent drama, "The Well" (what I'm assuming is a "pay the soul" movie). Film productions are apparently lured overseas because of the tax breaks, he said.

(Photo by Poughkeepsie Journal photographer Karl Rabe)