Film festival lineup expected next week
The Woodstock Film Festival next week will announce its 2020 lineup of screenings and events that will be held virtually and at area drive-ins, including a pop-up drivein at Andy Lee Field in Woodstock.
The 21st annual festival is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 30, through Sunday, Oct. 4. This year’s festival will be a “reformatted virtual edition,” due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with inperson screenings limited to drive-in venues in Woodstock, Greenville and Poughkeepsie.
In previous years, screenings have been held at theaters in Woodstock and several nearby communities, and other festival events have been held
in Woodstock and Kingston. But the COVID pandemic forced organizers to reimagine the 2020 festival, and they announced in August that in-person screenings would be limited to several movies at drive-in sites and that other movies, as well as special events, would be shown online.
Organizers will announce the full lineup of events and screenings on Wednesday, Sept. 9, and tickets will go on sale then. Complete information will be posted on the festival’s website, woodstockfilmfestival.org.
“Putting this year’s film festival together has been a Herculean effort by our staff and myself,” festival Executive Director and Cofounder Meira Blaustein said in an email Thursday. “I’m very proud of what we have been able to create, and am absolutely thrilled by the programming of this year’s film festival.
“We’ll present an outstanding lineup of films at three drive-in theaters in the Hudson Valley, as well as a fantastic program of films and panels online,” Blaustein said. “It’s a special film festival, and I hope that many will take advantage of it and enjoy it.”
By phone Thursday, Blaustein said the festival was building a “pop-up drive-in” at Andy Lee Field for the event. She said two different films would be shown there each evening of the festival and there would also be questionand-answer sessions with the filmmakers.
This year’s event will feature a presentation of director Francis Lee’s latest film, “Ammonite,” inspired by the life of paleontologist Mary Anning and starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, on Saturday, Oct. 3, at the Overlook Drive-In in Poughkeepsie, according to a festival press release. The release said the film enters on reclusive fossil hunter Anning as she falls in love with Charlotte, a married woman recovering from severe depression.
Kicking off the festival will be the world premiere of Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider’s “Los Hermanos.” In the documentary, violinist Ilmar and pianist Aldo López-Gavilán, two virtuoso Cuban brothers previously separated by Cold War geopolitics, are reunited in the United States to perform together for the first time, according to the festival. “Los Hermanos” will be shown Sept. 30 at the Greenville Drive-In Outdoor Cinema and will include a live performance by Ilmar López-Gavilán, the press release said.
The festival also will feature a variety of guests participating in in-depth virtual panels and question-and-answer sessions utilizing the Zoom platform and viewable from home. Included will be a conversation with “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino.
For the drive-in screenings, several safety guidelines will be in place. Among them: cars will have clearly marked spots 6 feet from one another, and patrons will be required to have masks on at all times when outside their vehicles. Bathroom use will be limited to one person or family unit at a time, and the facilities will be sanitized regularly.