Discover treasure trove at Woods Hole Film Fest
Great news for film fans heading to the Cape — the Woods Hole Film Festival kicks off Saturday at five venues in Woods Hole and Falmouth.
More than 130 films — 52 narrative and documentary features and 81 narrative, documentary and animated shorts — hailing from Mashpee to Maine and from South Africa to Sri Lanka will screen during the event. Most films include Q&A’s with the more than 100 filmmakers and other special guests attending the festival. Also on tap: panel discussions, master classes and, of course, parties.
A peek at the lineup:
• “One October,” a documentary by Framingham raised filmmaker Rachel Shuman, which follows WFMU radio reporter Clay Pigeon as he took to the streets of New York City to talk to people about their lives during the last days of Barack Obama’s first bid for the presidency.
• NASA astronaut Sunita Williams of Needham, featured in “The Mars Generation” by New Hampshire native Michael Barnett, will speak after a screening of the film about a group of aspiring teenage astronauts contemplating travel to the red planet.
• “Angelo Unwritten,” a documentary by Bostonbased filmmaker Alice Stone, takes a look at a Massachusetts foster family.
• The world premiere of Robert Cole’s horror/ thriller “Off Season,” starring Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) and Chance Kelly (“American Sniper”), as well as many local Martha’s Vineyard actors, as it was filmed completely on the island.
• Actress and Berkshire resident Karen Allen (“Raiders of the Lost Ark”) will speak after a screening of “A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.,” a short film shot in the Berkshires and based on a Carson McCullers short story, as part of a panel discussion on survival strategies for women in the film industry.
• Martha’s Vineyard native Susanna Styron, daughter of William Styron, will screen her short narrative “House of Teeth,” about a woman in midlife recovering from a divorce.
• “The Sounding,” a mystery by Boston-born, Vermont-raised director Catherine Eaton and filmed on Monhegan Island in Maine, about a mute woman who is committed to a psychiatric hospital after she begins to speak again by creating her own language that uses the words of Shakespeare.
• “Mashpee Nine: The Beat Goes On,” a documentary by Mashpee Wampanoag tribal member Talia Landry and Mashpee-based Paula Peters, about a group of traditional Wampanoag drummers and singers from Cape Cod who were arrested in 1976, but who won their case in a rare court ruling against law enforcement.
• Boston filmmaker Elika Portnoy will screen her short narrative “The 6th Amendment,” written by local screenwriter Bob Tremblay and featuring many local actors including Tony V, imagines what the jury deliberations might have been like for the Boston Marathon bomber trial.