Something for everyone
Adirondack Film Festival kicks off Thursday in Glens Falls
By Ken Tingley
There is something for everyone at this year’s Adirondack Film Festival.
Whether you are interested in music, dance, drama, comedy or theater, it’s all part of an eclectic presentation unfolding over the next three days right here in Glens Falls. If you don’t like something, wait 15 minutes, you will have another opportunity.
This year’s Adirondack Film Festival kicks off Thursday night at the Wood Theater with the regional premiere of “Blondie: Vivir en la Habana.” A short documentary by director Rob Roth that chronicles rock star Debbie Harry’s cultural exchange trip to Cuba.
Roth will be part of a panel discussion after the movie. There will also be a selection of music videos. And that is just the beginning.
Over the next three days, I will be your guide to the film festival. I was part of a committee that screened 115 films for this year’s festival and am looking forward to seeing many of them again.
The film festival is again providing flexibility in its ticketing. It offers an all-access pass, an in-person pass, a virtual pass and day passes. If you can’t make the showing in person, you can check them out online. Check out the ticket options online at adkfilmfestival.org
Over the course of the next three days - Thursday thru Saturday - viewers will have the opportunity to see new feature films, documentary features and shorts, comedy shorts, suspense shorts, Adirondack movies and stage-to-screen films, including one starring Academy Award nominee David Straithairn in “Remember This.” He is still performing the play in New York City. The play was originally developed by a group of actors that included Straithairn and Glens Falls resident Joe Isenberg.
What is especially interesting is the number of local connections to this year’s film festival.
Lindsay Keys and Winslow Crane-Murdoch spent seven years working on a Lyme Disease documentary called “The Quiet Epidemic.” Lindsay was the valedictorian at Salem Central School in 2011 and Winslow is a graduate of Tamarac High School outside Troy. They met at their doctor’s office in Delmar and began working on the film project right here in Queensbury.
Nick Baroudi, a Capital District native who has worked with the Adirondack Theater Festival in the past and is now a series regular on “Law & Order: Organized Crime” is staring in the feature film “Cryptid.”
Among the Adirondack shorts, “Internal Combat” was directed by Syracuse native Brett Puglisi; “A Lasting First Impression” was created by Glens Falls residents Christopher Gaunt and Kayla Romanowski; and “The Long Goodbye” was created by Vermont native Burnham Holmes and Ken Holmes.
Other connections in the bonus block of shorts that will only be shown online are: Albany native John Fitzpatrick in “Sonder;” Skidmore College student Kathryn Brodie’s documentary on Pitney Meadows Community Farm in Saratoga Springs; and Albany native Logan Rando’s film “If I Could Tell You.” The short “Camp Greenwood” was shot in the Adirondacks.
Other names you might recognize in this year’s film festival include: Jason Schwartzman and Lili Taylor in “There There” and Academy Award winner Wes Studi (The Last of the Mohicans) and Dale Dickey (Breaking Bad) in “A Love Song,” which was recently nominated for the NEXT Innovator Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
If you love movies, downtown Glens Falls is the place to be over the next three days.
Saratoga Book Festival
The Second Annual Saratoga Book Festival will be held next weekend in Saratoga Springs.
“The Last American Newspaper” will be featured in a panel discussion on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. as WAMC host Joe Donahue conducts a conversation with former Post-Star editors Will Doolittle, Mark Mahoney and myself.
Will and Mark are both prominently portrayed in the the new book. There is a chapter on Mark witnessing a murder in Glens Falls and the affect it had on his three children as well as another chapter on winning the Pulitzer Prize.
Will is portrayed throughout the book as well from his work on a heroin series to “The Alzheimer’s Chronicles” podcast that Will did with his wife Bella after she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s.
The four of us will talk about the work we did and what the future holds.
Watertown profile
I have met Watertown Daily Times Editor Alec Johnson a couple times over the years. Johnson’s newspaper was part of a sharing agreement with The Post-Star, Plattsburgh Press-Republican and Adirondack Daily Enterprise to better serve our communities. Former Watertown editor Perry White was instrumental in us coming together. When Perry left, Alec continued the collaboration going and it has benefitted all our readers.
This past week, The New York News Publishers Association shared a profile on Alec and his family’s long-time commitment to journalism in the North Country from the Oswego County Business Guide. It is a great read and another reason to be optimistic about the future of newspapers.
“Derry Girls”
If you are looking for a great comedy on Netflix, you have to check out “Derry Girls.” The show follows the misadventures of a group of Northern Ireland teens during “The Troubles” in the 1990s. You wouldn’t think this could be the setting for a comedy, but it is. Even more importantly, the teens stumble on and struggle with the truth about what the conflict in Northern Ireland is even about.
The fast-paced dialogue and Irish brogue an be a struggle at first, but easily solved by putting on the closed captioning. The third season just dropped, but sadly each season is far too short. We had been waiting for the third season for so long that we went back and watched the first two seasons again. I think it is funnier the second time around.
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