Bryson Van Nostrand, the owner of WV’s most interesting movie theater, will be showing the 2007 Rural Route Film Festival during January 2008. The showings will take place only on Fridays at 7:30 PM. If you live around central West Virginia, you may want to check out the 40-seat micro cinema which has now been in operation for several years, showing great films from around the world and West Virginia. Call 473-1818.
Since 2003 they have been showing some of the best films made in the rural world including several award-winners made in West Virginia including “Dental Farmer” about a Wheeling-based retired dentist and Mimi Pickering’s film about Hazel Dickens, a native of Bluefield, “It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song.” I have encouraged WV many fine filmmakers to enter their films – but to no success unfortunately.
Some of the great films being shown in the 2007/08 tour include a 1989 film by Herb Smith of Appalshop called “Whoa Mule.” Here is the full list of films with descriptions.
Whoa Mule
Herb E. Smith, 1989, 3 min., doc
Blackey, KY
The title song of banjo master Lee Sexton’s solo album is featured in this music video–one of the first and only traditional/non-commercial music videos to play on the country music cable channels. The video features scenes of Sexton behind a mule-drawn plow, tending to his three-acre garden in rural Linefork, Kentucky, and a performance of the Lee Sexton Band (which includes the spectacular fiddling of the late Marion Sumner) at a square dance at the Blackey Senior Citizens Center. From the Appalshop Archives – www.appalshop.org.
Wanderlust 2: Thunder on the Track
Walter Forsberg, 2004, 5 min., doc
Creelman, Saskatchewan, Canada
Inspired by stock car crash videos, this micro-documentary gives a 1980s glance into the sensational Saskatchewan Lawnmower Racing Circuit. In the hallowed Winnipeg tradition of image degradation, this work demeans cinematic imagery into a bygone videoscopic era of the movies. www.winnipegfilmgroup.com
In The Glow (Pick #1 from Lights are On, but Nobody’s Home program)
Stewart Copeland, 2006, 8 min., exp
Interstates and highways between St. Louis, MO and Tullahoma, TN
Part personal film, part pseudo-scientific study and part observational essay, Copeland’s film explores the banal (yet strangely beautiful) world of blank billboards. While many creatures (including the filmmaker) have an attraction to this ‘advertisement free’ light, Webster University’s Head of Biological Sciences teaches us that the massive intrusion of mile-after-mile of unnatural billboard light disturbs insect life cycles, plants, and on up through the ecosystem. www.gohomefatboy.com
Alice Sees the Light (Pick #2 from Lights are On, but Nobody’s Home program)
Ariana Gerstein, 2006, 6 min., exp
Owego and Barton, NY
Alice laments the loss of her view of the universe, one of her initial reasons for living in the country. The change in her environment is the result of “security lighting” for a large corporate storage facility. Gerstein’s piece is a craftily put-together ode to the dark, full of a variety of visual tricks and film artistry. We are presented with a simple case of light pollution that points to a universal concern – many people now live under lights so bright their eyes can no longer adjust to natural total darkness.
Pictograph – WINNER OF ‘BEST EXPERIMENTAL’ RRFF’07!
Mišo and Lida Suchý, 2006, 21 min., exp
Kryvorivnya, Ukraine
Images by two artists – color folk drawings and b&w photography stills – are animated to create a tapestry weaving together vignettes of life in the village Kryvorivnya in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine. Pictograph creates an engrossing, poetic language all its own, full of visual treats and pure photographic beauty. We witness hard labour and old country joys, pigs mating, people dancing, babies laughing, the ornate traditions of country weddings and funerals. Nostalgia for the past is undercut by excruciating memories of Soviet occupation. Our senses are engrossed even further through a soundtrack of folk music (accordions and avant-noise) and the non-sync recordings of horses stomping, pipes being lit, and distant voices reading the Psalter.
Biegga Savkala Ahte Duoddariid Duohken Lea Soames
(The Wind Whispers There is Someone Behind the Tundra)
Ken Are Bongo & Elle Sofe Henriksen, 2006, 9 min., exp
Tromsø, Norway
Two dancers travel through time and space, on rough land enjoying the wonders of the sky. During their journey they come across objects related to the reindeer herding Sámi people, Europe’s largest indigenous group whose population is spread across the tops of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and into Russia. The dramatic, somewhat narrative choreography is an abstract description of evolution, inspired by Sámi poet Synnøve Persen’s writing.
Dear Deer
Alan Webber, 2007, 4.5 min., narrative/music video
New York, NY
It’s an alternate take on nature vs. urbanity when a plastic lawn doe finds herself lost on the gritty streets of Brooklyn, NY. Survival story, and a folktale of newfound love – the bewildered deer gets “caught in the headlights” and hit by an oncoming car while trying to scamper across the street, but is found by a magical street faerie who nurses it, making bandages, food and water appear with a magic wand. The doe regains her health, and wanders back onto sunnier streets. She can’t believe her eyes when she happens upon something truly special under the Queensborough Bridge. Features the music of Bright Eyes’ “Make a Plan to Love Me”. Snowies
Elliott Kennerson, 2006, 12 min., doc
Flathead Lake, MT
Elliott Kennerson, an MFA candidate in Montana State University’s Science and Natural History Filmmaking Program, and Jeremy Roberts, an avid birdwatcher, follow an unusually large group of stunning, all-white Arctic Snowy Owls. Intelligent and enlightening, the film is also honest and funny as we witness the filmmakers missing some of the best owl shots because they accidentally turn the camera off or compose their frame wrong. Our guides also become a bit sidetracked upon meeting a couple of lady birdwatchers, who they believe are “after them.” A brief and delightful alternative to the often-dry standard wildlife documentary. Cousin Kasyte
Stashu Kybartas, 2006, 28.5 min., doc
Ruškeliai, Lithuania
A captivating personal journey film in which Stashu Kybartas visits Lithuania in search of the village where his grandfather was born. Kybartas looks back on his childhood, growing up in a Pennsylvania orphanage, along with his current frustrations with family members that don’t seem to know anything about their genealogy. Although the fall of the Soviet Union allows the filmmaker to cross borders and search for origins, not having the usual guideposts of connections and remembered clues makes this a strange and alienating odyssey. After it takes him months to access Lithuanian government records, it is wildly surprising that Kybartas’s ‘word of mouth’ trek through remote villages leads him to his father’s cousin, Kasyte Pukevicine, someone who is not only related by blood, but someone whose temperament and view of life strike a chord within his own inner-self
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