Whether it be a modern-day western set in a Chilean desert, a documentary about two Chinese women thrust into the worldwide economic downturn, or a drama about a forced marriage in a Senegalese village, the Rural Route Film Festival screens work about people and cultures normally overlooked by the mainstream media.Museum of the Moving Image will continue its partnership with Rural Route Films, to present the ninth edition of their annual film festival, from today, August 2 through 4, with screenings of 28 films from 13 countries, including five feature films and a program devoted to the late American documentarian Les Blank. This year, the festival will also have an outdoor component at the Museum, with free live music and local food for purchase in the Museum's new George S. Kaufman Courtyard.
Opening night of the festival at the Museum tonight, August 2, will be a tribute to Les Blank, the award-winning American director, producer, and cinematographer who died in April of this year. The Museum will screen three of Blank's best-loved films-Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Dry Wood, and Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers-followed by a conversation with Mark Toscano, Academy Film Archive Preservationist, who oversaw the restoration of these and other films by Les Blank, and Blank's son Harrod Blank, who will share a preview of a work-in-progress biopic about his father, Les Blank: A Quiet Revelation. This program is part of a city-wide celebration of Blank's work; additional screenings will take place at the Academy Theater,
Brooklyn Academy Of Music's BAMcinématek, and Union Docs.
Other highlights of this year's festival include:
• the New York premiere of Baikonur (2011), German director Veit Helmer's offbeat science-fiction romance shot on theKazakh steppes and the Baikonur Cosmodrome, where Russia launches its rockets into space;
• Tall as the Baobab Tree (2012), a film by Jeremy Teicher (who will appear in person) set in Senegal, about a young woman who tries to save her eleven-year-old sister from an arranged marriage. The film was the much talked-about Closing Night film of the recent Human Rights Watch Film Festival;
• a new DCP restoration of Fitzcarraldo (1982), Werner Herzog's stunning epic starring Klaus Kinski as a deranged European businessman obsessed with building an opera house in remote Peru;
• winner of Best Film at the inaugural First Time Fest, Salt (2011), directed by Diego Rougier, a modern-day western set in Chile's Atacama Desert, following a Spanish director trying to develop his screenplay who is mistaken for a local gunslinging hero;
• Marlo Poras's documentary The Mosuo Sisters (2012), an intimate portrait of two spirited daughters from one of the world's last remaining matriarchal societies in the foothills of the Himalayas, with filmmaker in person, paired with Felt, Feeling, and Dreams, a short film about a community of Kyrgyz women who pull themselves from poverty by makingbeautiful felt rugs, with director Andrea Odezynska in person (who will bring some of the special rugs) ;
• and additional short films from Canada, Ireland, Finland, Germany, and the United States, paired with each of the feature presentations.
The Rural Route Film Festival is organized by
Alan Webber, an Astoria-based filmmaker who grew up in Elkader, Iowa.Through 2008-2009, he traveled to all seven continents presenting the Rural Route Film Festival. About this year's festival, Webber said, "Live music and great food will top off our best group of new features yet, a solid bunch all dealing with modernity vs. tradition in their own particular way. The whole event is laced with fun eccentricities like a director bringing special felt rugs from Kyrgyzstan, and a sibling theme runs through the festival with two great films about sisters and musical performances by a brother-sister alt. folk band and a Colombian twin brother guitar duo."
"The Rural Route Film Festival is a unique event with an admirable vision, bringing films about life outside the city to an urban audience," said the Museum's Chief Curator
David Schwartz. "This year, we are pleased to have an outdoor component, with live music and local food in our brand new courtyard space."
Full descriptions of films are included below. With the exception of Friday evening, tickets are included with regular Museum admission: $12 adults, $9 senior citizens and students, $6 children 3-12, and free for Museum members.
On Saturday, August 3, the festival features live music by Brooklyn's alt-folk brother-sister duo This Frontier Needs Heroes (playing from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. with intermission) and Gimagua, the twin Columbian brothers known by many subway riders for their subterranean rumba performances (5:30 to 7:30 p.m.). On Sunday, August 4, from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m.(with intermission), Vlada Tomova's Bulgarian Voices Trio, featuring three women from Bulgaria, Russia, and the United States, will perform ancient Bulgarian and Cossack folk songs. Food vendors will include Strand Smokehouse,
William Hallet, and Astor Bake Shop-all Astoria-based restaurants.
In addition to the events at the Museum, there will be a kick-off party on Thursday, August 1 at Strand Smokehouse in Astoria from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m., a closing night screening and party at Brooklyn Grange in Long Island City on Sunday, August 4, and a screening at the Broadway branch of the Queens Library on Saturday, July 27. For information about these and other Rural Route Film Festival events, visit
ruralroutefilms.com.
