Thanks to all who attended our 2008 festival and for making it a success! We would love to hear how you liked the festival, what recommendations you have, what programs you liked, what you would like to see more of next year. Click on the link below to leave us feedback. Thanks!
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Screenplay Contest 2008.
Deadline extended to September 1st!
More info here.
Downloadable 2008 Program Info
Download the 2008 Program Schedule (PDF 644k)
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2008 Program Guide
Online tickets may be purchased now by clicking on "Buy Ticket" buttons after film descriptions. (Apologies that the PayPal shopping cart may not return you to the place you were browsing in the program.
Politcal scientist Norman Miller, anthropologist David Edwards and others discuss anthropology and ethnographic cinema, its roots, legacy, methods and meaning in an open panel illustrated with film clips from Afghanistan, Bolivia and Kenya. From the silent film era of pioneers Martin and Osa Johnson and Robert Flaherty to the expansive and truly global reach of today's digital documentaries -- including films by tribal peoples -- ethnographic cinema has come to record, represent and misrepresent many cultures, peoples and now-lost traditions. The panel will delve into contemporary issues in Visual Anthropology and the use of documentary film in international research and reporting An open panel discussion illustrated with film clips.
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.
In the broken cityscape of Kabul, Afghanistan, amid the dust and rubble of war, Westerners and Afghans adjust to the uncertain possibilities of peace. Kabul Transit shuttles through the broken streets of the city, moving between public space and private enclaves in a shifting mosaic of encounters, captured glances and telling gestures. This film is beautifully shot and woven together with the music and the found sounds of a city sluggishly coming to life. Rejecting the usual device of narration and portraiture, the film asks the viewer to experience Kabul as a newly arrived visitor would.
Introduced by Norman Miller; Q&A with David Edwards.
Sponsored by Resource Systems Group & Building Bridges
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.SOLD OUT
A limited number of tickets for What Would Jesus Buy? at our second venue will be available at the door.
Join us for WRIF 08's official kick-off and five-year celebration! Featuring fine Tip Top victuals, cash bar, our live auction and the "Reverend Billy" film and Q&A performance. Mingle with filmmakers and fellow movie lovers. And make a bid on some of the amazing array of auction items: fine works by top Upper Valley artists and a wealth of rare and curious film memorabilia and artifacts. Make reservations early and help WRIF. This event sells out!
Silent auction opens Thursday, April 24, 3pm, at the Cooler Gallery, 2nd Floor, Tip Top Building.
Sponsored by Mascoma Bank
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.
Preceded by Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie
Because of demand, we will be screening this film in two locations simultaneously. The second screening will occur in the studios of CATV, in the Tip Top Building. Purchasers of Auction & Fundraising Party tickets (see above) will view the film in the Tip Top Cafe.
The film Santa doesn't want you to see, What Would Jesus Buy? is a raucous and controversial documentary starring the New York performance artist and anti-consumerism activist "Reverend Billy" (Billy Talen) as he sets out to save America from the "Shopocalypse." Simultaneously gleeful and dead earnest, the film builds in energy and tension as Billy and his crusaders, a 35-voice gospel choir, load up into buses and head cross-country toward Christmas and the epicenter of all consumerism: Disneyland.The film, produced by Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame, features wonderful, foot-stomping original gospel numbers and takes us behind the scenes as Billy realizes his mission: the creation of the Church of Stop Shopping. Is he crazy? Is it a put-on, or is it spot on? Watch as the troupe rehearses, finds its voice, and then sets out on its odyssey. There are brushes with death, enthusiastic crowds, arrests, cheers, befuddlement, threats, and plenty of looks into America's spending mania that will make you wince. But you'll laugh plenty too and be clapping your hands for the reverend, his music and his passion.
Followed by a Q&A with Rev. Billy and savitri, the troupe's director.
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.
Preceded by Afghan Women
Here's the truth, fictionalized in The Kite Runner, all the more harrowing as it's from the perspective of the women under the heel of relentless patriarchal rule. Via interview, verite, hidden camera and archival footage, three women—married teacher Shapiray, single doctor Roeena, rural widow and women's rights activist Wajia—tell of their lives as refugees in Pakistan after fleeing the Taliban's rule in their native country, Afghanistan. Three wars—the Soviet invasion, civil war, and the US war launched in 2001—demolished the progressive changes initiated by King Zahir Shah in the 1960s. Women were voting by 1964 in cities like Kabul, but now, under the rule of the US-backed Hamid Karzai government, tribal patriarchal customs of rural Afghanistan dominate new generations, crushing the freedoms Afghan women once enjoyed. Charting the Draconian life changes Afghan women suffer, writer/director/co-producer Meena Nanji traces how America nurtured, financed (with billions of taxpayer dollars) and mobilized once-marginalized Muslim fundamentalists, even as American leaders knew the most basic human rights of Afghan women were being ravaged in the crossfire.
Preceded by Afghan Women (1974 • 17 min) WRIF co-founder Norman Miller's pre-Soviet invasion documentary, set in the Balkh province, 320 miles northwest of Kabul. This is the first film known to depict life of women "behind the walls" in an Afghan village. Shot by Nancy Dupree and Josephine Powell in 1972, it chronicles the life of women in an extended family of traditional Afghan wheat farmers. It is part of the Faces of Change series produced by Miller. The film shows the rhythm of women's lives in the seclusion of family compounds and suggests both the satisfying and the limiting aspects of a woman's role in a rural Afghan community.
Sponsored by Upper Valley Peace and Justice
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Preceded by Shell
Colonialism, occupation, war, and what these forces do to a country and its people galvanizes director Ken Loach and his frequent collaborator-screenwriter Paul Laverty's vivid portrait of 1920s Ireland torn asunder by the anti-British rebellion and subsequent civil war. Loach and Laverty steep the viewer in the time, place, people of "the troubles," with unflinching empathy and fidelity, deftly capturing the dynamic of all such conflicts. Thus, without moralizing or emphasizing the obvious, Loach and Laverty draw potent parallels with the ongoing wars in the Middle East via the tale of two brothers—Damien (Cillian Murphy of 28 Days Later, Girl With A Pearl Earring, Batman Begins) and Teddy (Padraic Delaney)—united against the British, but whose bonds of blood and loyalty are shattered as the conflict progresses. This is among the most powerful of Loach's works, aided immeasurably by Barry Ackroyd's superb cinematography and a sterling ensemble cast. Loach remains one of Britain's most fiercely independent filmmakers, whose impressive works include Poor Cow (1967), Fatherland (1986), Bread and Roses (2000), Sweet Sixteen (2002), and the Loach/Laverty collaboration Land and Freedom (1995) set during the Spanish Civil War.
The Wind That Shakes The Barley was the winner of the 2006 Cannes Palme D'Or.
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.
Welsh director Marc Evans (Snow Cake, Trauma, Resurrection Man) and William Francome document the life—before, after, and during his decades behind bars—of political activist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose 1982 death sentence for killing a Philadelphia police officer was overturned in 2001. The date of that officer's death—December 9, 1981—is also the birth date of writer Francome, prompting him to take a personal interest in Abu-Jumal and to travel across the US seeking the truth about the case. This sojourn embraces interviews with Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Alice Walker, Mos Def and Snoop Dogg as well as attorneys, political activists and Abu-Jamal's friends and family. The film widens its perspective to consider the cultural contexts of racism, capital punishment, and police brutality in America today. Executive produced by Colin Firth with cinematography by Ari Issler, this British view of American justice is highly recommended.
Post-screening panel discussion will include Robert Meeropol, Executive Director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children and son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, executed by the U.S. Government in 1953.
Sponsored by Upper Valley Amnesty International
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A very special one-of-a-kind event with British Acadamy of Film and Television ArtsBFTA-Award-winning film editor Peter Honess, charting his career and creative path as a film editor from Hell Up in Harlem to Harry Potter. Bringing along film clips and outtakes, Honess will be at WRIF in person to reveal the secrets of film editing, its importance in cinema storytelling, and to discuss his years in Hollywood. Honess's career highlights include his work in the early 1970s on director Larry Cohen's rough-and-ready independents (Hell Up In Harlem, It's Alive) to cult favorites (Electric Dreams, Highlander) to his Oscar-nominated alchemy on L.A. Confidential, major studio features (Six Degrees of Separation, Rob Roy, The Fast & The Furious, Troy) and the new era of 21st century epic fantasies like The Golden Compass and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. This is an extraordinary opportunity for film lovers!
Sponsored by Chittenden Bank
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Preceded by Orgasm, Inc. & Vacationing to the Grand Canyon
The latest feature from independent writer/director/editor John Sayles (Return of the Secaucus Seven, Matewan, Eight Men Out, Lone Star) is a rockin' good time, and WRIF is pleased to give Honeydripper its area premiere. As he has done since Brother from Another Planet (1984), Sayles once again insinuates himself—and the audience—into a community's complex tapestry, in this case rural Alabama of 1950 and the about-to-go-broke Honeydripper Lounge. Taking one last stand to save his beloved juke joint, proprietor and piano player Tyrone "Pine Top" Purvis (Danny Glover) stakes his fate on the famed Guitar Sam for a one-night gig. But in last-stand movie tradition, plans go awry, and Glover must instead bet the farm on the musical chops of an unknown train-hopping kid named Sonny (Austin, TX guitar and blues musician Gary Clark Jr., making his film debut). Sayles once again assembles a stellar cast to tell his tale—Charles S. Dutton, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Stacy Keach, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Patrick Thomas, Yaya DaCosta and Sayles himself. The music is rousing, featuring the likes of Dr. Mable John, Keb Mo‚ and others. All in all, another rich Sayles story enlivened by engaging characters and a kicking backbeat. What more can you ask for on a Saturday night?
Sponsored by Loch Lyme Lodge
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Preceded by Is Trust Between Us Important?
WRIF's annual "late-nite special feature," the first "ashcan musical"! Produced by Joel and Ethan Coen, written and directed by John Turturro, Romance & Cigarettes has unfairly spent the last three years in distribution limbo, eventually being self-distributed by Turturro himself to precious few venues. WRIF is proud to present this unique musical funhouse meditation on life, infidelity, redemption, love and loss in Queens. Boasting an amazing all-star cast including Kate Winslet, Christopher Walken, Steve Buscemi, Eddie Izzard, Mandy Moore and others, the film offers a new, hip take on why characters sometimes just gotta break into song. Tension is high in the marriage of philandering ironworker James Gandolfini and his wife, played by Susan Sarandon, and their family gets dragged kicking and screaming—and singing—into the fracas. Punctuated by the occasional Charles Bukowski quote amid bursts of song and dance with classics by James Brown, Vikki Carr, Tom Jones, and others, suburban angst has never sounded like this. Opening with his stirring and hilarious early-morning rendition of Engelbert Humperdinck's "A Man Without Love," Gandolfini's Everyman has his Tony Soprano moments ("You just twisted the cap off the tube, buddy"), and fiery Sarandon's cover of Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart" is a show-stopper.
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.
Preceded by Digital Pamphleteer
"Stuff happens," former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said of the unraveling Iraq War in 2003; "Mission Accomplished," announced President Bush in May of that year. But first-time filmmaker Charles Ferguson begs to differ. No End In Sight offers a devastating, comprehensive post-mortem of the Bush Administration's "pre-emptive" Iraq War and occupation, Year One. Using interviews, archival footage and a rich wellspring of inside sources, Ferguson rigorously details what led up to the decisions made in the spring of 2003. The autopsy is chilling: there was no occupation plan and the team in charge was sorely inadequate to the task of running a country. War architects Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz insisted troop strength was sufficient and refused to adjust, although military leaders recommended two to three times more forces. The US administration was at war with itself. The edicts of L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, left no provisional Iraqi government, disbanded the Iraqi military, and enforced de-Ba'athification—all of which have proven disastrous. This is not a screed. With sanity and composure, remaining apolitical and utterly nonpartisan, Ferguson lays out the facts with relentless precision, making this essential viewing for every American citizen. The evidence speaks for itself. Narrated by Campbell Scott.
Adrienne Kinne of Iraq Vets Against the War will be among the post-film panelists.
Sponsored by Upper Valley Peace and Justice
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.
Preceded by Redbelly & Arrows
Director/co-writer Guy Moshe's moving drama chronicles the plight of 12-year-old Holly (Thuy Nguyen in her acting debut), sold by her Vietnamese family into the Cambodian sex trade. Holly crosses paths with an American black marketeer (Ron Livingston of Office Space, Sex and the City) who decides to risk everything to rescue her. Also starring Chris Penn, in his final role, Holly was produced by the K-11 Project, named for Phnom Phen's notorious red-light district. The film takes great care not to exploit its subject while simultaneously giving us a hard look at its grim reality. The facts are indeed horrific: there are reportedly more than 30,000 children in forced prostitution in Cambodia alone. Shedding light on this monstrous flesh trade without relying on shock tactics or flamboyant melodrama, Holly soberly focuses on just one of the children trafficked daily into such brothels, confronting these volatile issues with passion, wit, and humanity.
Panel discussion with Mark Zuckerman, Assistant US Attorney for the District of New Hampshire, and Abby Tassel of WISE in Lebanon.
Sponsored by WISE
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Preceded by Punk House & High Water Mark & Cartoon College
At last, a WRIF movie with a message: it's okay to sweat like a pig, scream like banshee, and thrash your guitar to smithereens. Oh. You knew that already? Well, a lot of girls don't, and this delightful doc takes us on a journey as a group of quirky young ladies learn these guiding principals of life as well as a few things about musical chops and kicking out the jams onstage. The kids, ages eight to 18, attend an Oregon rock'n'roll camp for girls. They have a week to form a band, pick up an instrument, and write a song. The goal: a graduation concert for more than 700 people. Along the way, pros like indie-rocker Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney teach the girls lessons of empowerment, self-defense, and anger management. The film follows several campers: Laura, a Korean adoptee obsessed by death metal; Misty, who is emerging from a life of meth addiction, homelessness, and gang activity; and Amelia, an eight-year-old who writes experimental rock songs about her dog Pipi. Girls Rock is a joyous tribute to the redemptive powers of art... and noise. Wanna move down front for a mosh pit? Feel free.
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.
Preceded by Circus Dreams & Summer of Walter Hacks
Meet Alexis, Ashtyn, Doug, Eric, Julio, Kate, Kennisha, Leroy, Lucy, Luis, Michael, Mike and Vicky—now age 21 and living in America in the 21st Century. From childhood to adulthood, the lives of these Atlanta, GA youths are traced by documentarian Christopher Dillon Quinn (God Grew Tired of Us: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan) for this stateside incarnation of Britsh filmmaker Michael Apted's innovative and justly famous 'Up' series (Seven Up [1964]; 7 Plus Seven [1970]; 21 [1977]). Apted executive produced this feature. Quinn is also building upon two PBS documentaries by director Phil Janou that features many of these children, Age 7 In America (1991) and 14 Up In America (1998). Incorporating footage from Janou's earlier works, 21 Up America allows us to see how the kids have grown, changed, and been shaped by the varying economic and cultural strata in a country that prides itself on supposedly being free of those divisions. The reality is quite different from the ideal, as Quinn and the young adults themselves demonstrate in this thoroughly engaging, illuminating feature. Cinematography by Paul Daley and Michael Simmonds, music by Michael Tremante.
Produced by Norwich Resident Vicky Bippart who will be on hand after the show with cast members for a Q&A.
Sponsored by Vicky Bippart & Youth In Action / Lebanon
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.Join us at the unique Main Street Museum to meet and greet Dan Butler and his partner Richard Waterhouse, both of Newbury and principals in WRIF 08's closer, Karl Rove, I Love You. Also: announcing the second WRIF screenplay contest, a huge WRIF hit last year.
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.
Preceded by Peekers
A "mockumentary" that begins so deftly, you'll wonder if it's really happening. Well, WRIF will have the film's star and co-director, Dan Butler of Newbury, on hand to explain it all for you. Karl Rove, I Love You is a delightful, energetic look into politics and performance. It's election year, 2004, and Dan Butler (Bulldog on TV's Frazier), fresh from a Broadway show where he worked with Alec Baldwin, is back in LA and out of work. What's a character actor to do without a character to play? Adrift in the unemployment doldrums, Butler lunges at the idea of creating a one-man show in which he'll star as Karl Rove, President Bush's senior advisor. Soon Butler is certain he must inform the world about this "evil genius" and ultimate second-banana, Karl Rove. The film is funny and brash as it keeps upping the ante, and it gives us a knowing backstage look at how actors work, how they can become obsessed, and how they can lose themselves in a role. Daniel Day-Lewis has got nothing on Dan Butler. Our hero becomes a dervish of energy and mood swings. Is he a monster or is the man he wants to play—"Bush's Brain"—the real monster taking over poor Dan Butler, character actor? And what's love got to do with it? It may come as no surprise that the road to opening night is strewn with setbacks, but not all actors have to deal with the Secret Service, clandestine meetings, and White House communiques. And then, there's the rabbit hole of art. When you throw yourself into it, what happens if you can't get back out? Maybe it's not all bad in there. Maybe it's love. Or death. Or a new life altogether.
Post-show Q&A with Dan Butler.
Sponsored by Main Street Museum
Online sales have ended for this program. Tickets may be purchased at the venue box office.