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Independent's Day: The Woodstock Film Festival Keeps the Faith



Will the fledgling Woodstock Film Festival escape the fate of other leading festivals?

Will it bend, like so many others, to the twin forces of commercialism and fabulosity?

Not if Meira Blaustein has her way. Even if attendees show up wearing more Christian Dior than tie-dye this year, Blaustein and co-founder Laurent Rejto vow to keep the proceedings in line with the festival’s motto: Fiercely Independent.

“I want it to be very high in quality,” Blaustein said. “I want it to become desired, meaningful, and possibly even prestigious for the filmmakers and distributors.”

Clinging to its counterculture roots while making a bid for financial success will be the prime balancing act for the festival, now in its third year. This year’s roster of more than 100 films will focus on political expression, music, and local filmmaking. These three themes, bulwarks of Woodstock life, were what first inspired Blaustein and Rejto to create the festival, she said.

The increasing migration of actors and artists to the Hudson Valley has been a boon to WFF; each year, more Hollywood players use the festival as a launching pad for their latest efforts. Among the prominent names in attendance this year will be locals Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi, and Tim Blake Nelson. Joining them will be Jonathan Demme, Ira Deutchman, John Sloss, Gary Winick, Mary Harron, Brad Anderson, Bill Plympton, Haskell Wexler, and Harold Leventhal.

Standouts of the four-day event (September 19-22) will be films about musicians and their craft. Some screenings will be complemented by live performances. Arlo Guthrie will headline a concert at Ulster Performing Arts Center to honor WFF’s screening of Bound for Glory, the 1977 film chronicling the life of Guthrie’s father Woody, Dust Bowl troubadour and old-time leftie. Rising Low, a chronicle of the jam band Gov’t Mule, will be followed by a live concert at the Bearsville Theatre, starring Mike Gordon, bassist of the band Phish and Warren Haynes of Gov’t Mule. An unlikely cult rocker is canonized in Into the Night: the Benny Mardones Story. Mardones, an ‘80s casualty who found a career rebirth in Syracuse, will perform. Actor, director, musician, and latter-day leftie Tim Robbins (Dead Man Walking, Bob Roberts, and Cradle Will Rock) will appear for the screening of Cradle Will Rock and to accept a lifetime achievement award.

The upsurge in programs this year, Blaustein said, reflects a transfusion of new blood; the advisory board recently welcomed several well-connected distributors and producers. In addition, WFF now has an official programming consultant, Ryan Werner of Magnolia Pictures. “He brought with him more visible films,” Blaustein said.

Upstarts in the mainstream are represented again this year. The Grey Zone, a tale of the Holocaust, comes from actor/director Tim Blake. After taking a detour with the superfluous Psycho and the mawkish, gun-for-hire project Finding Forrester, Gus Van Sant returns to his tangled creative roots with Gerry. Sounding like a variation on Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, it follows two friends as they wander through the desert. Gerry divided audiences at Sundance this year, which is always a good sign.

Blaustein has been crisscrossing the country since early this year, poaching the best entries from the film festival circuit, notably Sundance, as well as the fast-growing South by Southwest in Austin. But good business is as important as good film, said Blaustein, who has made her own movies. Short of making gilt-edged promises to all entrants, Blaustein wants them to know that her priority is playing matchmaker to auteurs and distributors. “Finding a distributor is always a mission of the festival,” she said.

These days, that likelihood is more plausible, she said; the growth of cable and the home video industry have created multiple markets. All releases have better chances for exposure in some venue. In fact, The Sundance Channel just launched a sister channel dedicated to airing documentaries.

Blaustein and Rejto, both filmmakers and Hudson Valley residents, had envisioned a festival that draws on the cultural heritage of this area. Woodstock has been an artist colony since the early 20th century, when the expression “bohemian” still had artistic and political significance. While working on other film events, including the prestigious New York Film Festival, Blaustein began making mental notes. She saw firsthand what worked, and what did not. Soon, she and Rejto were planning a festival that Woodstock could call its own. “It was just a natural progression in personal and professional growth,” she said.

Blaustein, a former Israeli soldier who can be alternately brusque and warm, ran with her vision. Within a year of execution, the first annual Woodstock Film Festival was ready. It bowed in the fall of 2000. An estimated 3,000 people attended, ranging from diehard cineastes to ‘60s refugees, from the merely curious to fanatics who wanted to latch on to what seemed like the last unsullied film festival on an increasingly crowded international circuit.

“When we brought the idea to Woodstock, people embraced it in such warmth,” Blaustein said. “They were more than receptive; they were thrilled to have it here in their backyard—or in their front yard. They have come on board and did way more than expected to help.”

Of the 80 films screened that year, standouts included the American premiere of My Generation by pioneering documentarian Barbara Kopple, and The Voice from Heaven, about the late master of Sufi Qawwali music, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. From the start, there was a serious air to the proceedings; WWF did not attract the gawkers who annually crowd Cannes’ Rue de la Croisette. Woodstock’s Tinker Street was filled with the fans of film, indie directors, and a few legends.
The energy generated from cocktail receptions and club events kept the town lit up all week. There was the chance to converse with the Old Lions, Academy Award-winning composer Elmer Bernstein and cinematographer Haskell Wexler. For those who needed a substantive celebrity fix, Aidan Quinn and David Straithairn participated in one of six panels. At the end of the four-day event, awards were handed out to outstanding films. Best Feature was The Dreamcatcher by Ed Radtke, a story about juvenile runaways. Freestyle by Kevin Fitzgerald, a meditation on African American hip-hop, won for Best Documentary. Awards were also handed out for outstanding short documentary, student film, cinematography, musical score, and animation. The awards were homely, abstract obelisks, whimsically crafted by a local sculptor.

To honor the avatars of alternative cinema, the Maverick Award was created, named after the original Woodstock arts colony of the last century. Les Blank, whose quirky, personal documentaries have celebrated gap-toothed women, the power of garlic, and the mad genius of Werner Herzog, was its first recipient. Last year, the award went to D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, whose cinema vérité documentaries have examined the roles of politics and music in forming our culture. Tim Robbins will be the recipient this year.

Although French-born Rejto’s zen-like placidity offsets Blaustein’s frenzy, the maiden voyage of the festival had its share of glitches. Volunteers were often more genial than effective in maintaining order and lines. Locals, known for their cool resilience, took problems in stride and packed the screening rooms.

After the promising but harrowing first year, Blaustein said there were lessons to be learned. “One lesson I keep trying to learn and apply is ‘more money’,” she elaborated. She was referring to a larger budget to merely meet festival operating costs. “I’m not talking about anyone making a profit or getting rich here.”

Blaustein and Rejto were able to build on buzz of the first year, bringing in more names and a wider variety of films in 2001. Overcrowding and over-scheduling, however, also returned. Patrons were not as forgiving this time, as they jockeyed into unmanageable lines. But there were more prestigious films and personalities to keep them happy, including the closing night offering, Pinero, a kinetic biopic of the playwright-poet Miguel Pinero. Benjamin Bratt, almost unrecognizable as he morphed into the self-destructive genius, attended the screening.

The sophomore year of WFF almost didn’t happen. The fest ival was scheduled to begin mere days after the horror of September 11. Since air travel was paralyzed, Blaustein faced cancellations from a number of directors, not to mention coping with the fear and mourning that blanketed the country. She and Rejto momentarily mulled over a cancellation. But they decided to proceed. “This was a blessing for everyone who came here, because it offered tremendous solace,” she said.

Again, WFF gave center stage to films about the Hudson Valley. Memorable offerings included Digging for Dutch, a documentary about the dreamers who traveled to Phoenicia in search of a fabled gangster treasure, and Wendigo, a tale of terror involving a Native American spirit stirred up by careless newcomers. Wendigo won Best Picture for local filmmaker Larry Fessenden.

WFF had it both ways last year: indie films and mainstream stars. Steve Martin headlined a black comedy called Novocaine, and actor-director (and local resident) Ethan Hawke helmed the American premiere of Chelsea Walls, an elegy to the Chelsea Hotel. The jazzy-druggy film starred wife Uma Thurman and Kris Kristofferson. The star wattage in attendance was upped last year—panelists included Parker Posey, Stanley Tucci, and Steve Buscemi.

Growing pains are inevitable, Blaustein admitted. But has she arrived at the point where films are chosen for political reasons (i.e. pleasing a distributor, sponsor, or an influential director)? Blaustein hesitated. “There are always a lot of issues: issues of community, issues of industry. We always try to cross that bridge one at a time.”
Some big-money outfits have been wooing the Woodstock Film Festival, she hinted, but refused to elaborate. “Temptations are always presenting themselves. Growth is expected in the life of every festival. If you don’t grow, you are stagnant. But we want to stay with growth in terms of quality, not quantity. We always want to maintain the quality of independence.”

—Jay Blotcher