Sarah_Coleman's blog
Blogging Woodstock: Round-Up
A round-up of the stand-out films at the Woodstock Film Festival.
October 9th, 2008 | Sarah Coleman
Sarah Coleman sums up the highlights of the Woodstock Film Festival closing ceremonies with crude quips from this year's Maverick filmmaker, Kevin Smith (see the trailer for his latest film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which closed the festival), and wide-eyed acceptances from upcoming filmmakers such as Jeremiah Zagar (see the trailer for In a Dream), Sean Baker (see the trailer for Prince of Broadway), and Tom Quinn, among others.
Want to inject a bit of spark and a lot of profanity into your film festival award ceremony?
Blogging Woodstock: Talk, Talk, Talk
Blogger Sarah Coleman boils down the panel discussions at the Woodstock Film Festival.
October 7th, 2008 | Sarah Coleman
Sure, panel discussions are useful, but the information-gleaned-to-time-spent ratio doesn't always work out in your favor so we had blogger Sarah Coleman get the inside scoop from critics, actors, producers and filmmakers, like Jay Duplass (see the trailer for Baghead here), who were willing to share their filmmaking experiences, from post-production to distribution.
Saturday at the Woodstock Film Festival is a day filled with panel discussions. At best, panels can wonderfully stimulating, filled with useful information delivered by vibrant, inspiring people. At worst, they can be mind-numbingly dull.
Blogging Woodstock: Ready, Set, Activism!
Blogger Sarah Coleman takes a look at the themes of activism and genre bending at the Woodstock Film Festival.
October 6th, 2008 | Sarah Coleman
Not-your-everyday animation finds a home with the audience at Woodstock with Bill Plympton's Idiots and Angels (view trailer here) along with a passionate forum for environmental concerns following a screening of Dan Stone's documentary At the Edge of the World.
Nikki Goldbeck, the deputy director of the Woodstock Film Festival, is the point person for organizing filmmakers’ visits to the festival. This year, some 80 filmmakers are coming to discuss their movies, the highest number ever, which Goldbeck sees as a testament to the festival’s growing success. “It really makes a difference,” she says.
Blogging Woodstock: Politically Independent
With the 2008 presidential election quickly approaching, the 9th Annual Woodstock Film Festival brings political and social issues to the forefront.
October 4th, 2008 | Sarah Coleman
Independent blogger Sarah Coleman gives readers a peek into the politically-charged first day at the Woodstock Film Festival where films addressed issues such as the environment, broken families (see the trailer for "The New Year Parade"), world culture (see the trailer for "Throw Down Your Heart"), and religion (see "Religulous" trailer).
On the day before this year’s Woodstock Film Festival screenings are due to begin, festival director Meira Blaustein sits in her office, enjoying a moment of calm before the storm. As it’s grown in stature and reputation, this “fiercely independent” festival in the well-known Catskills town has been finding itself increasingly spoiled for choice.
Wrapping up the Woodstock Film Festival
What sticks? A film that could be called "the feelbad movie of the year"
October 19th, 2007
Back home from the festival, Sarah Coleman finds that the film that has stuck with her the most is Operation Filmmaker, about a young Iraqi student given the chance to work on a film production. (The story doesn't deliver the happy outcome you might expect.) To read Sarah's breakdown of Days One, Two, Three, and Four of the festival, visit our blogs page.
My sojourn at the Woodstock Film Festival is over, and it's time to reflect a little on the gazillions of frames that have passed in front of my eyeballs in the last four days. As with any other works of art, films often demand some settling-in time.
What's in a Name?
Day Four at the Woodstock Film Festival
October 16th, 2007
Today is Bob Dylan day at the Woodstock Film Festival. The four-day fest is closing tonight with a screening of the Todd Haynes biopic I’m Not There, in which six different actors, including Christian Bale, Richard Gere, and Cate Blanchett, portray various incarnations of His Bobness over the years.
Testing the Moral Code of Documentary Film
Day Three at the Woodstock Film Festival
October 15th, 2007Meira Blaustein is the director of the Woodstock Film Festival, but this year she's also a contributing filmmaker. She's screening her heartrending documentary about her disabled son, For the Love of Julian, and it begins my day of documentary viewing. "I made the film out of necessity," Blaustein told me when I bumped into her at the opening night party.
The Discomfitting "Dark Matter"
Day Two at the Woodstock Film Festival
October 14th, 2007I'm facing a difficult choice this morning: whether to go to the screening of Black White & Gray, James' Crump's documentary about the relationship between Robert Mapplethorpe and his curator/lover Sam Wagstaff, or Julian Schnabel's feature The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which sounds even prettier in its French title, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon.) In the end, for logistic
An Upstate State of Mind
Day One at the Woodstock Film Festival
October 12th, 2007
Everyone loves the Woodstock Film Festival. That's the sense you get, anyway, when arriving at this picturesque little Catskills town that proudly bills itself as a "colony of the arts." Here, there are no red carpets, no velvet ropes. The town's only permanent big screen venue, the Tinker Street Cinema, is a modest white clapboard building that used to be a church.
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