The Woodstock Film Festival pulled off their 21st annual festival event in classic style — showcasing really good independent movies.
It’s been a weird year and, like many other art events, film festivals are suffering. They depend on ticket sales to bring in revenue as well as income from festival souvenirs. The cities and towns that they are located in also depend on tourism dollars from hotel stays and restaurant visits. They need support.
Now, if you’ve never gone to a film festival, you’re missing out. It’s a great way to see some really great movies that might not make it to the theaters or a streaming device. Some do, but not all do. And there are some really talented filmmakers out there and I’ve seen some really great movies and documentaries, as well as shorts.
This year’s Woodstock Film Festival was a hybrid of watching movies online from the comfort of your own home and watching some screenings at the local drive-ins in or near Woodstock. I was able to get screeners so I did watch the festival this year from my living room even though I usually go to this awesome town.
The number one movie that I wanted to see was Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand, but unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to because they were only doing it at the drive-in. It’s directed by Chloé Zhao, who also wrote, edited, and co-produced and it’s based on the 2017 non-fiction book. McDormand leaves her small hometown to travel around the American Midwest, and it shows a world of nomads who work while traveling around America. It was named Best Narrative Feature as part of the annual Maverick Awards during the 21st Woodstock Film Festival.
What did I see?
The Sit-in: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show
Directed by Yoruba Richen. In 1968, Johnny Carson, the host of The Tonight Show, took a one-week vacation and asked Harry Belafonte to come in and host for the week. The Sit-in: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show shows you that in 1968, when there was a lot of racial tension, Belafonte used his platform to bring on some really important guests including Martin Luther King Jr., Aretha Franklin and Robert Kennedy to show diversity, and to talk about the culture of black Americans and what was going on in the world.
It’s a very well-done documentary that also shows the historical impact of television too. It really was interesting to see that so much of what was happening back then is almost reflective of what’s happening today. 8 / 10.
Fully Realized Humans
Directed and written by Joshua Leonard. A couple has less than a month to go until their first child is born. They go to their baby shower and their so-called friends scare the living hell out of them, telling them that their life is never going to be the same and that they are not going to be the same people that they were before the baby came along. Jackie goes into a panic and when they leave, they decide that they need to do something to break the cycle of dysfunction that they had in their lives.
It had to be and bold, but since Jackie is pregnant they decide to start becoming a little more experimental in the bedroom. Then they also realize that they have very dysfunctional parents and in order to be better parents to their daughter, they need to now confront their own parents about their upbringings and the mistakes that their parents made.
It’s a good movie about self-discovery. and how parents-to-be start to get a little deeper in thought when they know they’re bringing a child into the world. I went through it. I know, a lot of my friends went through it, and the movie takes that idea and runs with it. 7.5 / 10.
Horse Latitudes
Directed by Noah Gilbert; written by Seth Gilbert. One of my absolute favorite movies is Under the Tuscan Sun and there are two reasons why I fell in love with that movie. First was the cinematography, because I remember watching the movie — I had never been to Italy or really looked at pictures of Italy or Tuscany — and in this movie, the views were just so breathtaking to me that I started to cry. I had this overwhelming desire to just cry at the beauty of what Tuscany is. And it’s still number one on my bucket list. I was going to go soon, but thanks COVID. The second reason I loved it was the storyline and Horse Latitudes hit both of those marks too. Now I want to go to France.
The concept of the movie is that there’s a young girl, Tom, who is very much a nomad. She decides to go back to an old flame on a vineyard in France, to give their relationship one more shot and be committed and stay put somewhere. I enjoyed watching their relationship develop and then wonder and if they’re going to stay together. How is this going to work? She’s so different than he is. He’s starting to change too so is that going to affect them? The writing was really well done. I’m not going to give away the ending, that’s up to you to go watch. I had a chance to interview Noah and here is what he says about the movie:
“My brother and I have lived in a strange and interesting community in Los Angeles with a group of other artists and our closest friends for some time. We all live in the same old hotel from the 1920s in Hollywood. And our style of storytelling, creating and collaborating, has really just been about being in the same space and living together and eating together and drinking together and breathing together. It just yields such a wonderful collaboration. So we sought to recreate that, wherever it was that we were going to make this film and it happened to be in this tiny, beautiful place in the south of France.“
Where did the concept of the film come from?
“My brother writes everything that I direct, and we do all these things together. The foundation of this particular story is very personal to him and was based on something he was actually in the process of going through himself. We were interested in all these different themes of a later life coming of age, turning 30 and asking yourself the age-old question of what do I want from life? It’s something that I definitely grapple with in a major way. The idea of the balance between being settled and being free. Then my brother took it away. And he’s such a beautiful writer and made it what it is.“
9 / 10
Milkwater
Directed and written by Morgan Ingari. Meet Milo, who going through a change in her life where she’s starting to feel a little abandoned by her friends who are doing more with their lives. She meets an older gay man at a bar and he says that he’s always wanted to be a father, but the adoption fell through. Milo decides to become his surrogate. Milo develops an attachment to him because, I think, he’s showing her the attention that she so desperately needs. She’s holding on to that in a way that’s really dysfunctional. Because he’s gay, they’re not going to fall in love. He wants to raise this baby on his own, so they’re not going to be partners. And it really becomes a complication for Milo. 7 / 10
The Outside Story
Written and directed by Casimir Nozkowski and it stars Brian Tyree Henry. What I loved about this movie is the fact that you take the simple concept of locking your keys in the house and make it an entire movie that’s well done, both funny and eye opening. I can’t get in. I’m stuck outside. What happens now? I’m a black man stuck outside of my own apartment. What happens now? I really, really liked this movie. The movie puts Charles in scenarios that really made him evaluate his life and really showed us his life as a black man climbing down a fire escape on the outside of the house to just trying to get into his own apartment
He went outside without shoes. How is he perceived? He didn’t have any money, so how does he get food? His cell phone dies. How does he charge it? A small concept developed into a bigger picture. Well done. And there are some funny scenes in there. I think that Brian Tyree Henry did a great job carrying this movie. A simple story, a well-written script, a character arc, and a great ending. I think that that’s really what It’s all about and that’s why I love film festivals because I find movies like this. 8.5 / 10
For more information on the Woodstock Film Festival, visit https://woodstockfilmfestival.org/.
