BRATTLEBORO — The eighth annual Brattleboro Film Festival opens Friday, Nov. 1 with a free public reception in the lobby of the Latchis Theatre, 50 Main St., where trailers for all 2019 films will be shown continuously.
At the reception, which starts at 5 p.m., guests can hobnob with festival organizers and their fellow cinephiles prior to the opening night films, Varda by Agnès and Give Me Liberty, which begin at 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., respectively.
Film previews will continue to be shown in the Latchis Hotel Lobby for the duration of the festival.
All films this year screen at the Latchis Theatre.
Films from devastating to hopeful
This year's festival will feature Environmental Film Day on Saturday, Nov. 2, with five feature documentary films - The Pollinators, The River and the Wall, The Human Element, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, and The Map to Paradise - and one short drama, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.
Organizers write that the environmental themes of the six films range “from devastatingly eyeopening to hopeful and transcendent.”
Two filmmakers will be present that day for audience conversations after their respective films.
Peter Nelson, director of The Pollinators, screening at 11 a.m., has photographed a wide variety of feature films, commercials and documentaries in a multitude of film and video formats. His signature naturalistic style has taken him around the world to capture life as it happens for fiction and non-fiction films alike.
His feature credits include Emmy-award-winning Art & Copy, Sicko, A Tale of Two Pizzas, Pipe Dream, Suits, and the cult New York romantic comedy Ed's Next Move, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
Maine filmmaker Elisabeth Tova Bailey will answer audience questions following screening of her short film, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, based on her natural history/memoir of the same title.
The true story of her interspecies relationship is reaching a general international audience of all genders and ages and is finding special homes in the fields of literature, natural history, medical humanities, and education.
The film “recreates my memoir's nonfiction story of how I observed a forest snail which lived at my bedside while I was ill,” Bailey wrote in an email to The Commons. “The live action film stars a real Neohelix albolabris snail (native to the New England forests), and the voice over for the woman actor who plays me is by actor Daryl Hannah.”
“It is an unusual film with stunning footage of a snail's life and unusual for an author to adapt and direct her own film,” Bailey added.
The short is screening after the documentary film The Human Element at 3 p.m.
Best in Fest on Sunday, Nov. 10
The festival will close Sunday, Nov. 10, with the audience-chosen “Countdown to Best in Fest” films. These films represent movies voted by festivalgoers as the best films overall, giving the public a second chance to see (and bring their friends to) favorites. The top three runners-up will screen at 1:00, 3:00, and 5:30.
The Best in Fest - the one film that filmgoers voted for above all others - screens at 7:30 p.m.
Votes will be tallied after the last show on Saturday evening and announced by midnight on the Brattleboro Film Festival website and Facebook page.