![FilmColumbia Brings Indie Cinema Upstate](https://lakevillejournal.com/media-library/hayao-miyazaki-s-first-feature-film-in-10-years-is-a-hand-drawn-tale-by-the-academy-award-winning-director-photo-courtesy-gkids.jpg?id=50681242&width=980&quality=90)
Hayao Miyazaki's first feature film in 10 years is a hand-drawn tale by the Academy Award-winning director. Photo Courtesy GKids
‘I love the lineup that we have,” said FilmColumbia Festival Director Calliope Nicholas of the festival’s 2023 offerings. “I love that we have so many films this year as far as award winners, Oscar nominations for a particular country… and we’ve got a great number of filmmakers that are coming in and doing Q&As.”
Friday, Oct. 20, will be the first of FilmColumbia’s 10 days of discussions, events and, of course, film screenings, most of which will take place at the Crandell Theatre, the home base of the festival since its beginning in 1999.
FilmColumbia is celebrating its 23rd year of curation by Co-Executive and Co-Artistic Directors Peter Biskind and Laurence Kardish, the former a film historian, critic and best-selling author, and the latter the senior curator emeritus for film and media at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
“It was interesting with ‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘Barbie,’ just having the audiences come back into the theater and kind of enjoy being in the theater again,” Nicholas said. “It really does create a different type of mood as compared to watching television or streaming.”
The festival’s highly anticipated screening of “May December,” the latest from director Todd Haynes, came about “because we are honoring the producers,” said Nicholas. “‘May December’ has got some good buzz and we were really lucky to be able to bring that in on the first weekend.”
Producers Christine Vachon and Pam Koffler, who are also the founders of Killer Films, will be feted at FilmColumbia’s annual kick-off party on Saturday, Oct. 21. In addition to “May December,” which will culminate in a Q&A with Vachon, Koffler and award-winning producer, director and screenwriter James Schamus, who is also a Crandell Theatre board member, two other Killer Films productions—“Camp” (2003) and “I Shot Andy Warhol” (1996)—will be screened at this year’s festival.
“’The Boy and the Heron’ is actually kind of a funny story,” said Nicholas of the festival’s Sunday, Oct. 22, screening of the latest from Academy Award-winner Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. “One of our assistant managers, our tech guy at the Crandell Theatre, loves anime films and he’d been pushing for this film. He kept contacting them and they finally came back to us and agreed to have us screen it.”
Tuesday, Oct. 24, will feature “All of Us Strangers,” a love-story-turned-ghost-story in which the main character is visited by his parents, who were killed in a car crash when he was 12 years old. “That was one that we got in through the distributors,” Nicholas said. “A lot of this is just connections through our programmers [Kardish and Biskind] that talk and communicate with the different distributors.”
Most of FilmColumbia’s films have already debuted at other festivals. “[Kardish] ends up seeing some of the film festivals—he was up in Toronto earlier in September—and it’s through [Toronto International Film Festival' that he ends up making some recommendations, and then, of course, Peter, through his connections, as well,” said Nicholas.
A favorite feature of the festival for many is the annual sneak preview, a film that almost always ends up being an Oscar nominee, and the title of which is never revealed before showtime.
FilmColumbia’s annual screenwriting panel with actor Scott Cohen and screenwriter Anastasia Traina, both Catham residents, is also “a really popular event,” according to Nicholas. “[Participants] bring in a few pages of a screenplay, a scene, and actors will read through it and there will be a discussion afterwards.” The event has proven to be so popular that, this year, Cohen and Traina have added a second session the following day.
Commenting on the influence of COVID-19 on the festival’s recent years, Nicholas said: “I think the silver lining is that COVID has kind of shown that having that collective experience is kind of an amazing thing.”
“The community coming together for a single moment,” she continued. “I think that’s unique.”
FilmColumbia will run Friday, Oct. 20, through Sunday, Oct. 29, at the Crandell Theatre and Tracy Memorial Hall in Chatham, New York. For tickets, information and a full schedule of films, go to www.filmcolumbia.org
Abstract art display in Wassaic for Upstate Art Weekend, July 18-21.
WASSAIC — Art enthusiasts from all over the country flocked to the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley to participate in Upstate Art Weekend, which ran from July 18 to July 21.
The event, which “celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York”, included 145 different locations where visitors could enjoy and interact with art.
On Saturday, July 20, The Wassaic Project hosted numerous community events. Will Hutnick, the director of artistic programming, said “We’ve been a part of it since the beginning, this is the fifth year of UPAW.”
Most of the action was based at Maxon Mills, the seven-floor grain mill located in the heart of Wassaic. On exhibit was work from 30 artists, 18 of whom were past residents of The Wassaic Project. “Artists can come and do a residency here, meaning they live and work with one another for a couple months at a time,” Hutnick stated.
The first floor held work by Petra Szilagyi, who uses dirt and linseed oil to construct images of paranormal concepts, most of which include bats. They reflected that a recent trip to a fifth sense competition in Vietnam was the influence behind the exhibit.
Across the floor was Tiffany Smith’s interactive installation which incorporated plants and wicker chairs, all of which were objects associated with her Carribean upbringing. “The room being filled with plants is symbolic of hurricane prep which often included bringing the plants from outside into the house,” Smith said.
As visitors made their way up the narrow wooden stairs, music could be heard from behind the walls. The echoing music was Daniel Shieh’s installation, entitled Mother’s Anthem, which played a recording of the American Anthem in 30 languages. The languages ranged from Spanish and Italian to Navajo and Bengali.
Each floor was filled with artwork of all mediums, including painting, fibers, collage and photography. Rachel Bussières, who switched her concentration after watching the 2017 solar eclipse, uses varying light sources to produce lumen prints. During the wildfires, she recounted that she “made a new exposure each day to capture the changing air quality”.
Luciana Abait also incorporates the natural world into her pieces, instead using maps. An environmental activist originally from Argentina, Abait’s work highlights “environmental fragility, specifically the impacts it has on immigrants.” Her installation that is currently on display at Maxon Mills, takes the form of a mountain range built solely from maps of the US and Argentina.
Throughout the day, visitors could “Arm Wrestle 4 A Popsicle”. Winners had the choice of 3 playfully flavored trout-inspired popsicles - Nightcrawler, Power Bait, and Salmon Roe. Artist Katie Peck, who spent the day in costume as a rainbow trout, encouraged guests to step up and try their hand at an arm wrestle.
Shibori Indigo dyeing, group meditation, and dance workshops were open for community members of all ages as well.
While the daytime activities fostered appreciation of fixed art, a dance party until midnight at The Lantern Inn offered guests a space for performative art.
When describing the environment of The Wassaic Project, Smith emphasized, “It’s all community, it’s all love.”
A serene scene from the Amenia garden tour.
AMENIA — The much-anticipated annual Amenia Garden Tour drew a steady stream of visitors to admire five local gardens on Saturday, July 13, each one demonstrative of what a green thumb can do. An added advantage was the sense of community as neighbors and friends met along the way.
Each garden selected for the tour presented a different garden vibe. Phantom’s Rock, the garden of Wendy Goidel, offered a rocky terrain and a deep rock pool offering peaceful seclusion and anytime swims. Goidel graciously welcomed visitors and answered questions about the breathtaking setting.
Amenia Finance Director Charlie Miller welcomed visitors to his Bog Hollow Road garden in Wassaic, a manicured expansive yard with well-placed garden beds framing a far-reaching view. He said he plans carefully each winter for the next spring’s improvement.
The organic, environmentally responsible Maitri Farm was next, a lesson in coordinating agriculture with natural balance. The farm stand and a walk among the greenhouses brought visitors together.
Near the center of Amenia was the garden of Polly Pitts-Garvin, offering a chance to visit a robust vegetable garden with raised beds to be envious of and a remarkable absence of any insects or usual vegetable garden problems.
At Chez Cheese, the vast garden acreage surrounding the 1850s historic home of Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips in Millerton, visitors could begin at refreshment stations where walking tour maps of the 15-acre property were available. There were streams and ponds with docks, and a dozen bridges arranged around the landscape. In the 19th-century, the property had been the home of the Wilson Cheese Factory, inspiring the name of the estate.
The Amenia Garden Tour was supported this year by Paley’s Garden Center in Sharon.
Gary Dodson working a tricky pool on the Schoharie Creek, hoping to lure something other than a rock bass from the depths.
PRATTSVILLE, N.Y. — The Schoharie Creek, a fabled Catskill trout stream, has suffered mightily in recent decades.
Between pressure from human development around the busy and popular Hunter Mountain ski area, serious flooding, and the fact that the stream’s east-west configuration means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight, the cool water required for trout habitat is simply not as available as in the old days.
This is not a new phenomenon. It does seem to be getting worse, though.
Gary Dodson and I convened where the creek makes its final run into the Schoharie reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system, on a semi-broiling Thursday afternoon, July 11.
The goal was simple. Catch smallmouth bass, which abound in the lower section of the river.
This was hot stuff — as in an 80-degree water temperature.
The air temperature was actually slightly less at 77.
After negotiating the intensely slippery rocks, festooned with treacherous algae, the first major pool presented several difficulties, with a back eddy competing with a main flow and several large trees draped about the whole thing.
I hit on the simplest strategy, which was to flip a weighted attractor fly called a Tequilley into the start of the eddy so it would proceed slowly but steadily into the maelstrom, sinking all the while.
This worked. A proper adult smallmouth, with bronze coloring and vertical stripes, took the thing.
The point-and-shoot camera finally died, however, and I was not going to try to fumble my phone out for a nice but routine fish photo.
Why not?
Because I guarantee the fish would have made a sudden, last-moment bolt for freedom, causing me to drop the device into the drink.
Gary moved downstream while I continued trying to annoy the residents of the pool, succeeding a couple of times with different colored Wooly Buggers.
Then we all got bored and I moved off, where Gary was catching rock bass and cussing them out for not being something else.
I have to admit, they are not the most compelling critters. Something about the red eyes.
This latest trip was dominated by extremely tedious and distasteful Harry Homeowner activities, but on both Wednesday and Thursday mornings I prowled Woodland Valley Creek. By “morning” I mean “dawn,” because that was when the water temps were down to a barely acceptable 64.
I made the acquaintance of several stocked browns and of a handful of their wild cousins. The wild fish are smaller and nimbler.
The successful ploy was an Adams wet fly, size 16, drifted behind something big, like a Parachute Adams or Stimulator.