CHICAGO 10
U.S.A. / color & b/w / 103 minutes
Director: Brett Morgen*
Screenwriter: Brett Morgen

'Chicago 10' explores the build-up and aftermath of the week-long anti-war demonstrations staged during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, during which protesters clashed with the Chicago Police Department and the National Guard. Following the protest, eight of the most vocal activists were held accountable for the violence and brought to trial in 1969. The defendants represented a broad cross-section of the anti-war movement, from counter-culture icons Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin to renowned pacifist David Dellinger. Seven of the defendants were represented by Leonard Weinglass and famed liberal attorney, William Kunstler, with the eighth defendant, Bobby Seale, co-chair of the Black Panther Party, who attempted to defend himself. The trial was presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman. The film presents contemporary history through a mix of bold and original animation with extraordinary archival footage that allows the film to move back and forth between the protests on the streets of Chicago and the resulting courtroom chaos. Set to the music of revolution, then and now, CHICAGO 10 is a story of young Americans speaking out and taking a stand in the face of an oppressive and armed government.— Sundance Film Festival

*Part time Hudson Valley resident and past jury member, Woodstock Film Festival

THE SAVAGES
U.S.A. / color / 113 minutes
Director: Tamara Jenkins*
Screenwriter: Tamara Jenkins
Featuring Philip S. Hoffman, Laura Linney, Peter Friedman, Cara Seymour, Debra Monk

In her consummately executed, irreverent drama The Savages, Tamara Jenkins achieves a rare storytelling feat: making us simultaneously laugh and cry. In what may evolve into a new genre, the coming-of-middle-age story, she has captured all the pain and misgivings that befall a pair of adult siblings, suddenly plucked from their very absorbed lives and forced to care for a parent who never much bothered to care for them, and transformed what could make viewers uncomfortable into a brilliantly humane examination of family dynamics.

That she has at her disposal two of the finest actors working today in Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, an outstanding creative team behind the camera, and sage, capable producers contributes to the excellence of this production. But this is a film that underscores how much can be established in a single scene and how profound and intelligent a work that takes risks to succeed on multiple levels can be.

That The Savages is detailed and nuanced goes without saying. That it makes us see ourselves at every turn and never exploits or cheapens any of its scenarios is a notable accomplishment. Young lives have often been chronicled. The Savages is the portrait of a family at a point films usually ignore, from a director/writer whose talent will certainly not be.— Sundance Film Festival

*Part time Hudson Valley resident and past panelist

CRAZY LOVE
Documentary Competition
U.S.A. / color & b/w / 91 minutes
Director: Dan Klores*, Fisher Stevens**

This head-scratching yet unforgettable portrait is a true story of two inimitable New Yorkers--Burt Pugach and Linda Riss--that was played out in the headlines of the tabloids but resonates with lessons about love and relationships. At once romantic but very disturbing, Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens's Crazy Love is a multifaceted exploration of the pathology of our emotional lives.

The beautiful Liz Taylor-like Linda first met the successful older attorney Burt in the late 1950s when she was 21, and he seemed to be the fulfillment of all her romantic dreams. But, when it became clear that he was not quite what he purported himself to be, the life they might have shared changed forever. The nature of obsession, forgiveness, contrition, and cruelty are all the subject of Klores and Stevens's exquisitely rich and reflective examination. Nothing could and did keep Burt away from Linda…friends, family, prisons, or publicity.

Crazy Love is a film at once frozen in time and eternally relevant, generational and perhaps intergenerational. It is a story about uncomfortable questions, about what we do not to be alone, and about hurting the one we love. Incorporating rare 16mm footage, a great soundtrack, and the commentary of soothsayers from New York cops to Jimmy Breslin, Crazy Love is about all of us.

*2005 Alumni with THE BOYS OF 2ND STREET PARK
** Advisory Board member

EVERYTHING IS COOL
U.S.A. / color / 100 minutes
Director: Daniel B. Gold*, Judith Helfand

In their signature upbeat comedic style, Daniel Gold and Judith Helfand weave an entertaining, character-driven, behind-the-scenes tale about the mother of all problems: global warming.

Against a distinctly American backdrop of denial, deception, and delay, a group of global-warming messengers/prophets fervently search for the right language and strategy to propel a reluctant, disaster-fatigued citizenry and its elected officials into action. Among this cast of characters are a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who repeatedly tries to retire but can't, the Weather Channel's first climatologist with a "global-warming beat" who must pack her Ph.D. into 30-second sound bites, two "bad boys" who aim a radical critique at the environmental movement, and a public servant who blows the lid off the White House's manipulation of key climate-change research.

Intercut throughout this strikingly shot journey are the trials and tribulations of a snow groomer turned biodiesel entrepreneur working on a solution, and the story of an Inuit Alaskan community that must decide whether to stay and risk getting washed into the sea or move their entire village. Hurricane Katrina blitzes the Gulf, U.S. consciousness on climate makes a seismic shift, and America finally "gets" global warming. Or do we? The way we're acting, one would think everything's cool.

*Hudson Valley resident

FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO
Documentary Competition
U.S.A. / color / 95 minutes
Director: Daniel Karslake
Screenwriter: Daniel Karslake, Nancy Kennedy*

Are homosexuals welcome in the kingdom of God? For centuries, the Bible has been used to sanction discrimination, repression, and injustice. It has justified slavery, empowered segregation, and excused the subjugation of women--and the tradition continues. Same tactics, new target. Today a handful of religious passages are constantly exploited to validate hatred and violence against homosexuals.

GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB
Documentary Competition
U.S.A. / color / 82 minutes
Director: Rory Kennedy*

Wielding startlingly candid interviews with perpetrators, witnesses, and victims, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib provides an inside look at the abuses that occurred at the Iraqi prison in the fall of 2003. Award-winning filmmaker Rory Kennedy explores how, given the right circumstances, typical boys and girls next door can commit atrocious acts of violence.

Kennedy begins tracing the path to Abu Ghraib with 9/11. Facing a whole new war on terror, the Bush administration justified intelligence gathering at any cost. The administration's decision to ignore the rules of the Geneva Conventions laid the groundwork for the abuse. The result? Heinous acts of torture heretofore associated only with the world's most repressive dictatorships.

The now-infamous photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib represent only the tip of the iceberg, pointing to systemic abuse from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan and beyond. These photos have come to redefine the United States--once considered a bastion of human rights--as a principal proponent of torture. Have we blurred the distinction between ourselves and terrorists in ways that will haunt our country throughout history? Powerful, restrained, and fiercely compelling, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib demands that we examine our conscience as a nation.

*Winner for 2003 Best Documentary for A BOY'S LIFE

BROKEN ENGLISH
Dramatic Competition
U.S.A. / color / 96 minutes
Director: Zoe Cassavetes
Screenwriter: Zoe Cassavetes
Producers: Jason Kliot and Joana Vincente*

Nora isn't broken; she just acts that way. She is actually sexy, funny, and creative, and her only fault is being cursed with that modern affliction of wanting more out of life than what others want for her. She must suffer quietly her best friend's "perfect marriage," a job she has outgrown, and a mother who constantly reminds her of it all. After yet another disastrous date, Nora meets Julian, a quirky Frenchman who won't take no for an answer, and they embark on a romance that could either be exactly what she needs…or send her over the edge for good. For Nora, the edge is not far away.

The perfect recipe for a romantic comedy includes two actors with charisma and chemistry, and writer/director Zoe Cassavetes has found them in Parker Posey and Melvil Poupaud. Posey's near-slapstick antics are well timed and cut with the right amount of sexy neuroticism to play perfect counterpoint to Poupaud's breezy, European confidence. Like The Philadelphia Story in its day, Broken English isn't afraid to show Nora and Julian's flaws in a big way, ensuring they always remain human and vulnerable. With Broken English, Cassavetes has reinvented an old genre and given it a decidedly new millennial spin, concocting a totally enjoyable and fresh approach to the well-explored "love story."

*Alumni panelists, filmmakers, participants.

THE GOOD LIFE
Dramatic Competition
U.S.A. / color / 106 minutes
Director: Steve Berra
Screenwriter: Steve Berra
Featuring: Donal Logue*

In the cold, small-town heartland that has always been the defining state of mind for America, there are two worlds. There is a community whose focal point is the football team, and there is the alienated existence of the kid who doesn't fit in. In The Good Life, a debut feature that is remarkable for its maturity and sophistication, filmmaker Steve Berra unerringly sketches a portrait of life in these environs that is at once full of torment and hope.

Jason Prayer (Mark Webber) works two jobs, struggles with his uncaring family, is tortured by a bully, and in general is quietly suffocating in the provincial insularity of his town. Other than that, the local cinema, which is literally on its last legs--as is its aging operator, Gus (Harry Dean Stanton)--is Jason's one escape and window to the outside world. But when he is courted by a mysterious stranger (Zooey Deschanel), his desperate life takes a turn. As a response to the lessons of Capra-corn in It's a Wonderful Life, and with a nod to The Last Picture Show, Berra offers a ray of light in these dark times--a modern vision about the contradictions of small-town life.

*Alumni participant (TENNIS ANYONE), panelist and art collector (Adam's melted plastic creations). Also check out Donal in the new ABC sitcomTHE KNIGHTS OF PROPERITY, wednesday nights at 8:30 beginning January 17.

HOUNDDOG
Dramatic Competition
U.S.A. / color / 98 minutes
Director: Deborah Kempmeier
Screenwriter: Deborah Kempmeier
Editor: Sabine Hoffman*

Like a lily growing in the swamp, Lewellen, a precocious southern girl, radiates splendor amidst the murk that surrounds her. She is being raised by her abusive father and disciplinarian grandmother, and finds comfort, joy, and strength in music--she is obsessed with Elvis Presley and breaks into his songs whenever the mood strikes. In addition to music, playing in the woods with her friend, Buddy, brings a few other moments of childhood happiness. Their playing drifts toward innocent sexual games, however, and it becomes evident that Lewellen has a painful history that she keeps buried inside. When another tragedy strikes, will her spirit finally break, or will her inspiring resiliency carry her on?

A southern Gothic tale about a girl finding strength to overcome debilitating obstacles, Hounddog is endowed with a phenomenal performance by Dakota Fanning. She tackles an immensely challenging role--a role that would have scared off even the most seasoned of actors--with an awareness and ferocity that will leave audiences shaken to their core. Writer/director Deborah Kempmeier displays a delicate touch in handling the horrific events, which makes their impact even greater. Lacing the film with compelling imagery, she crafts a powerful story about an indomitable spirit and the power of the blues.

*Advisory board member and founder of WFF Editing Award

JOSHUA
Dramatic Competition
U.S.A. / color / 105 minutes
Director: George Ratliff
Screenwriter: David Gilbert, George Ratliff
Featuring: Vera Farmiga*

One of the most difficult choices anyone has to make is whether or not to have a child. It is a life-altering decision that carries profound consequences even if everything goes right. But what if it goes horribly wrong?

Joshua tells the story of the quintessential well-to-do New York City family: a successful father who works on Wall Street; a mother who chooses to stay at home to care for their newborn daughter; and Joshua, a precocious young piano prodigy. With the newborn's addition, the family's dynamic shifts, and their seemingly idyllic world begins falling apart. But is it just the rigors of caring for a newborn and a little sibling rivalry…or is it something much more sinister?

George Ratliff, who directed the documentary Hell House, successfully transitions to the narrative world with a horror story disguised as a sophisticated family drama. Eschewing dark shadows and recherché camera angles, he compensates for the sinister content by favoring daylight over nighttime and preserving a straightforward, natural approach that defies expectations. Thanks to complex performances from a top-notch cast, Joshua transcends the genre to create a modern horror story that demonstrates how the potential for evil exists in the everyday.

*Hudson Valley resident and star of locally produced DOWN TO THE BONE.

PADRE NUESTRO
Dramatic Competition
U.S.A. / color / 105 minutes
Director: Christopher Zalla
Screenwriter: Christopher Zalla
Featuring: Paola Mendoza*

Fleeing a pack of henchman on the Mexican side of the border, Juan hops a truck transporting illegals from Mexico to New York City. En route he befriends Pedro, an innocent from central Mexico who is headed to New York to seek his rich restaurateur father, Diego. Pedro shows Juan a sealed letter that his mother, now dead, has given him--an introduction to the father he never knew. When the truck pulls into New York City, Pedro wakes to find both his belongings and his new friend gone without a trace. He is cast onto the street and stumbles around lost in an unknown city. Juan, meanwhile, shows up at Diego's door with the letter, claiming to be his long-lost son, Pedro.

Padre Nuestro, Christopher Zalla's smartly scripted first feature, is an exhilarating dog-eat-dog thriller brimming with style and exceptional performances. A provocative tale of stolen identity and fate, Padre Nuestro is also an insightful examination of the human longing to be loved.

*Winner of 2006 WFF Documentary Editing Award for AUTUMN'S EYES

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ROCKET SCIENCE
Dramatic Competition
U.S.A. / color / 98 minutes
Director: Jeffrey Blitz*
Producer: Sean Welsh*
Screenwriter: Jeffrey Blitz

Hal Hefner is a young man of few words. A high school student in Plainsboro, New Jersey, he has a persistent stutter for which he endures countless indignities at the hands of his classmates. His older brother, Earl, a directionless kleptomaniac, tells him he needs an agenda, but with none apparent, Hal takes to hiding in the school's custodial closet.

Enter Virginia Reyerson, star of the debate team. Dismissing the obvious issue of Hal's public speaking as something pent-up anger will resolve, she recruits him for the team. For Virginia, debate is life; for Hal, life is Virginia. So it seems a good match. Until it isn't.

Jeffrey Blitz's ingenious story of adolescent love and finding one's voice seems constantly to reinvent itself. Strewn with sardonic images, hilarious dialogue, wonderfully idiosyncratic expressions of character, and a narrator at pains to convey the mysterious connections of life, it evokes teenage confusion with humor and honesty. That Hal can't tell if he's motivated by love or revenge is just one amusing irony (kids making out during a debate on abstinence is another).

Blitz, whose eye for behavior was a pillar of Spellbound, shows real facility with actors, eliciting great performances from his cast, particularly Reece Daniel Thompson as Hal, who just wonders, "When does it all start to make sense?"

*Winner, 2002 Maverick Award for Best Documentary - SPELLBOUND

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SNOW ANGELS
Dramatic Competition
U.S.A. / color / 106 minutes
Director: David Gordon Green*
Screenwriter: David Gordon Green
Producer: Lisa Muskat**
Featuring: Griffin Dunne,*** Sam Rockwell**

David Gordon Green is not a filmmaker one immediately seeks out for upbeat sentiments about life. Indeed, his understanding of the realities of the human condition doesn't usually offer an in-depth explanation about the behavior or state of mind of his characters. But he is a master of tone and feeling. And in Snow Angels, the subtly superb achievement that is his latest work, he reaches a pinnacle of atmospheric expression that stays with you long after the narrative details fade.

The story of Snow Angels is fairly simply, and perhaps even familiar in the independent arena. A couple that has separated (Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale) are each attempting to pick up the threads of a future when they are dealt a further blow that leads to a dark conclusion. And a somewhat-nerdy young man in the throes of discovering a first romance must also deal with the separation and consequent strife of his parents' failed relationship.

Green's accomplishments are not just in the realm of character study but in the intensity of the emotions he provokes. The lyricism of his storytelling belies his use of naturalism and invokes a beautifully constructed faux reality from which emotional truth flows. He is without question a filmmaker with a special gift.

*Alumni participant (UNDERTOW)
**Alumni panelist
***Advisory Board Member, alumni filmmaker and panelist

DARK MATTER
Spectrum
U.S.A. / color / 90 minutes
Director: Chen Shi-Zheng
Screenwriter: Billy Shebar
Featuring: Liu Ye, Meryl Streep, Aidan Quinn*

Liu Xing (Liu Ye), a humble, but brilliant, Chinese student, arrives at Hubble University and makes a bumpy transition into American life with the help of Joanna Silver (Meryl Streep), a wealthy university patron who takes a liking to the young student. Xing joins a select cosmology group under the direction of his hero, the famous cosmologist Jacob Reiser (Aidan Quinn). The group is working to create a model of the origins of the universe, based on Reiser's theory. Xing's enormous talent leads him quickly to become Reiser's protégé, and it seems that only hard work stands between him and a bright future in American science. But Xing is obsessed with the study of dark matter, an unseen substance that he believes shapes the universe, and a theory that conflicts with the Reiser model. When Xing begins to make scientific breakthroughs of his own, he begins to encounter unexpected obstacles.

Liu Ye turns in a powerful performance as a passionate young scientist whose rising star must confront the dark forces of politics, ego, and cultural insensitivity. Based on true events, Dark Matter, Chen Shi-Zheng's impressive first feature, is a rare and fascinating window into the story of science as it often plays out in real life.

*Advisory board member, part time Hudson Valley resident, alumni WFF filmmaker and panelist

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DELIRIOUS
Spectrum
U.S.A. / color / 100 minutes
Director: Tom DiCillo
Screenwriter: Tom DiCillo
Featuring: Steve Buscemi*

Toby, a desperate, but affable, homeless kid insinuates himself into the life of Les, a hapless paparazzo, and offers to serve as his unpaid assistant. Always game for a deal, Les adopts Toby and shows him the sleazy ropes of party crashing, scoring goody bags, and chasing hot tips. As Les and his cameraman cronies clamor for photo opps, handsome Toby locks eyes with K'harma, the sexy reigning pop princess, and is suddenly swept into a glittery fairy tale like a boy-toy Cinderella. Of course Les views Toby's entrée into K'harma's heretofore-untouchable realm as a chance to snap a shot and make a buck. But Toby is genuinely smitten, and when Les is unable to control his impulses, both men must grapple with the meaning of friendship and the price of betrayal.

It's hard not to see our own voyeuristic anxieties play out in Steve Buscemi's brilliantly conceived Les, a loveable buffoon and tragic figure, while Michael Pitt's well-adjusted Toby reflects our best aspirations for authenticity and truth telling in a world obsessed with packaging the image. At a time when celebrity mania is at its zenith, Tom DiCillo delivers a high-energy, sharp-witted satire that pokes ironic fun at the absurd machine--paparazzi, publicists, and stars--that manufactures fame, while also addressing the toll it takes on those caught in its cogs.

*2005 WFF Maverick Award Honoree

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INTERVIEW
Spectrum
U.S.A. / color / 86 minutes
Director: Steve Buscemi*
Screenwriter: David Schechter, Steve Buscemi

Based on the late Dutch director Theo Van Gogh's film of the same name, Interview is a passionate verbal duel between two fundamentally opposed characters, portrayed by two immensely gifted actors.

Respected political journalist Pierre Peters has made a name for himself in war correspondence. But to his utter dismay, he has been sidetracked by his editor and assigned to interview the country's hottest young actress, Katja, a star of television and bad--but extremely successful--movies. Every day, fans and tabloids chase her, and there isn't a man who wouldn't love to spend an evening with her…except for Pierre. As the night progresses, they get more than they bargained for, and the interview derails into a battle of wits, desires, and deep, dark secrets.

Steve Buscemi, who stars and directs, expertly uses the rhythm of language to give life to what could have been a static film. He and Sienna Miller demonstrate formidable talent as their characters engage, with apprehension and tension, in a choreographed intimacy that becomes increasingly combustible. A moral chess match where anything goes, Interview successfully and intelligently dissects ego, journalistic ethics, and the idea of celebrity in our culture today.

*2005 WFF Maverick Award Honoree

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FAY GRIM
Spectrum
U.S.A. / color / 118 minutes
Director: Hal Hartley
Screenwriter: Hal Hartley
Producers: Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente*
Featuring: Parker Posey**

Eight years have passed since the infamous Henry Fool fled the country, abandoning his wife, Fay Grim, and their son, Ned. Played to Hartley-esque perfection by Parker Posey, Fay is falling to pieces. Ned is being expelled from school, and Fay's brother, Simon (James Urbaniak), the reviled garbageman/poet, is serving a 10-year sentence for aiding Henry's escape. Simon now believes that Henry's eight-volume opus, Confession, is not the self-indulgent, literary drivel he supposed but a coded report on the clandestine activities of several spy organizations. Enter CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum), who strikes a bargain with Fay that springs Simon from jail and sends her to Paris to retrieve two volumes of Henry's Confession. But what do spies and terrorists want with it anyway?

Hal Hartley's smartest, funniest film in many years, Fay Grim, one is tempted to say, picks up where Henry Fool leaves off. But in one of its many creative flourishes, Grim totally upends the Fool story and returns to the kind of playful intrigues reminiscent of Simple Men. Littered with Hartley's characteristic cadences and signature tone, Fay Grim simply asks, can a neurotic mom from Queens (with help from a friendly stewardess/part-time topless dancer) elude spy agencies and Afghan terrorists before her ex-husband, who isn't dead, is killed over eight volumes of illogical, pedantic gibberish?

*Alumni panelists, filmmakers, participants.
**Alumni participant, panelist and co-star of local producer PERSONAL VELOCITY

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THE TEN
Midnight
U.S.A. / color / 93 minutes
Director: David Wain
Screenwriter: Ken Marino, David Wain
Featuring: Liev Schreiber*

The Ten is comprised of 10 blasphemous and hysterical stories that put the insanity back in Christianity. Inspired by each of the Ten Commandments, every story is told in a different style, but the characters and themes overlap. It's all held together by a narrator who has his own moral problems. Finally, everyone is united to the end for a rousing finale that answers the question, "What's it all about?"

These hilarious stories feature a careless skydiver who becomes an accidental superstar, a doctor who kills patients as a "goof," two neighbors who compete over who can amass the most CAT-scan machines, and a woman who falls for all the wrong men, including a ventriloquist dummy.

David Wain returns to Sundance with a subversive, multilayered ensemble comedy from the creators and cast of Wet Hot American Summer, The State, and Stella. Jam packed with huge stars who aren't afraid to let it all hang out, The Ten is a comedy of biblical proportions that pulls no punches in skewering the most sacred topics. God damn, this movie is funny.

*Advidory Board member and part time Hudson Valley resident and alumni participant, panelist

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SHORTS

BOMB
We're excited to report that the short film BOMB, which premiered at the 2006 Woodstock Film festival, has been invited to screen at both Sundance and Rotterdam
in January. The film stars Melissa Leo and was shot on location in Stone Ridge and Saugerties, with help from the Hudson Valley Film Commission.

POP FOUL
Also screening is Moon Molson's moving POP FOUL, which won the 2006 WFF Diane Seligman Award for Best Student Short.

WINDOWBREAKERS
Since screening at Woodstock's 2006 festival, WINDOWBREAKER has been accepted to the 2007 Sundance Film Festival as well as the 2007 San Francisco Asian-American Film Festival, the largest Asian-American film festival in the United States. It also won an Audience Choice Award at the New York City Short Film Festival in November. Director Tze Chun is currently travelling in Singapore and Hong Kong researching a screenplay and book about his mother's childhood. Producer Bryan Wilson is shooting a new short in January.

The 2007 Sundance Film Festival for download via iTunes (http://www.itunes.com)

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MARC BLACK IN SUNDANCE
Longtime Woodstock mainstay Marc Black has been invited to perform at the ASCAP Music Cafe at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival at The Star Bar on Tuesday, January 23rd at 3:50.  The Star Bar is located at 268 Main St. Park City, Utah. 
Ron Sexsmith and Donovan are among the other invited performers.

Marc is a "wildly original" singer/songwriter from Woodstock, New York. His trancing, groove oriented, story telling is accompanied by music that ranges from industrial influenced ambient to traditional blue and heartfelt acoustic guitar.

Pulse writes about his latest project, Stroke of Genius, "Black carves something beautiful and human out of life's rawest emotions." Hear him, and you'll understand why Art Garfunkel, John Sebastian and the Dixie Hummingbirds were more than eager to add their talents to his recording.

Marc's also won the Mobius (Best Original Music in Advertising) and composed music for the Mets!