Woodstock Film Festival Announces 2017 Audience Award Winners

The 18th Annual Fiercely Independent Woodstock Film Festival wrapped up on Sunday with the closing night film ARTHUR MILLER: WRITER which was followed by a Q&A with director Rebecca Miller. Tallies from more than 120 narrative, documentary, short and animated films were calculated at the film center late Sunday night to determine the AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS. Thousands of movie buffs, film industry members and filmmakers from around the world attended films, panels, and special events in Woodstock, Rhinebeck, Rosendale, Kingston and Saugerties over the last three days, traversing everything from road blocks to drum circles to get to their screenings and fill the ballot baskets!

Festival attendees this year included:

Bill Pullman, Shep Gordon, Giancarlo Esposito, Rory Culkin, Griffin Dunne, Summer Phoenix, Lori Singer, Catherine Curtin, Auden Thornton, Tim Guinee, Rebecca Miller, William Horberg, Peter Saraf, Lee Aronsohn, Anne Carey, Richard Rowley, Bob Herbert, Jamie Redford, Sam Pollard, Barbara Kopple, Philippe Petit, Tamlin Hall, Catherine Eaton, Michael Lang and many more.

Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature: STUCK
DIRECTED BY: Michael Berry
Trapped together on a stalled New York City subway car, six strangers confront their assumptions of one another under the scrutinizing eye of a mysterious homeless man, authentically played by Giancarlo Esposito. A musical for modern times, STUCK counterbalances its claustrophobic setting with impassioned songs and fully realized characters, each vocalizing their stories through memory and fantasy. The talented cast (which includes Ashanti, Amy Madigan, Tim Young, Aden Cho, Omar Chapparo, Gerard Canonico, and Reyna de Courcy) leaps through the screen and grips us with the realization that each of us carries some silent burden waiting to be proclaimed.

Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature: The Organizer
DIRECTED BY: Nick Taylor
Documenting the work of the brilliant community organizer Wade Rathke, THE ORGANIZER takes us through his process of founding ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the first of its kind community-based organization. Starting with a few driven welfare moms in Arkansas, ACORN quickly mushroomed into a highly energized and mobilized half-million strong constituency that influenced government and corporate policy on the local, state and federal levels.

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