The Revolutionary Optimists coming to Upstate Films
“It’s the things I do, not luck, that determine my fate.” So says a plucky young girl from the slums of Kolkata who is taking the initiative to recruit her neighbors to vaccinate…
Joey Eppard launches new DVD at Bearsville
The first time I saw Joey Eppard play, he was a kid packing the local music clubs with an early incarnation of his band 3 and playing what struck me then as a…
Marta Waterman and the sound of silents
When Marta Waterman was a toddler, she didn’t bang on the piano like other children, but, according to her mother, “listened and tried to make it sound pretty.” When she later learned to…
Catskill Film & Video Festival & Glow Show
What defines one film festival from the next? Often it’s focus, or connections. The biggies, like Cannes and Venice and Toronto and Sundance, pull top directors or studios interested in gaining buzz for…
Taking Stock: documentary of Magnum co-founder this Sunday
When dealing with the “iconic” photographs of Magnum’s Dennis Stock, it is best to remember – quoting Stock from Hanna Sawka’s no-nonsense, straight-ahead film portrait of the artist – that “Every picture should…
Some cinematic remedies for cabin fever
Hollywood’s annual feeding frenzy peaks with the Academy Awards broadcast this Sunday night, but the cinema season has already entered its post-Oscar doldrums, with not many appealing choices out there once you’ve seen…
Tap roots: Documentary on Peg Leg Bates this Sunday
Don’t look at me in sympathy, I’m glad that I’m this way; For I feel good and I’m knockin’ on wood… I mix life’s fantastics up with hot gymnastics, I’m Peg Leg Bates,…
Rosendale to screen 2013 Best Short Film Oscar nominees
Isn’t it frustrating to look at the list of Academy Award nominees for Best Short Film and have no idea which to root for, because you’ve never seen any of them? Voting members…
Rosendale screens The Magistrate with John Lithgow from London’s National Theatre
Back in 1979, I happened to catch a charming, thought-provoking little play performed proscenium-style at Circle in the Square in New York City. Titled Spokesong, or: The Common Wheel and authored by a…
Rosendale to screen uncut version of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai
Everybody knows that Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 masterpiece Seven Samurai is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, right? But how many of us have actually seen it? Probably a lot…
