Arts

‘A catalyst for debate’

Brattleboro Film Festival kicks off in November, with a goal of engaging the community with ‘great films’

BRATTLEBORO — Come November, the screens of the Latchis Theatre will light up with films in a new festival that organizers want to reflect the uniqueness of Brattleboro and the social, economic, and political life of its community.

The Brattleboro Film Festival (BFF), which is in the process of organizing as a nonprofit charity, will show its first series of films from Friday, Nov. 2, through Sunday, Nov. 4. The films - from all genres, from all over the world - “inform, challenge, entertain, and inspire, emphasizing viewpoints and characters often unseen in mainstream media,” according to BFF's mission statement.

The festival is spearheaded by a group who previously served as key volunteers from the Women's Film Festival, a project of - and for more than 20 years, a fundraiser for - the Women's Freedom Center.

“For some of us, after 21 years of looking at films only about women, it's refreshing to consider the whole range,” said Lissa Weinmann, a member of the festival steering committee, which also counts counts Merry Elder, Kevin Burke, Gail Haines, Diane LaVerdi, and Jaki Reis among its members.

Instead, organizers will turn their organizational efforts to create a new event that will reflect, in film, “a real love of and celebration of Brattleboro,” Elder said.

The volunteer-driven festival will look at a broader range of films on issues that may strike a nerve with area residents - and ultimately use the films to stimulate broader community discussion.

“Films are a catalyst for debate that foster audience participation,” Weinmann said, citing the success of forums that were organized around the films shown in the Women's Film Festival.

“We want to bring a new audience in to learn more and to stimulate debate,” she said.

The BFF is assembling an advisory council, a mix of county leaders and filmmakers that will include Gail Nunziata, the executive director of Latchis Arts; filmmaker Andy Reichman; documentary filmmaker Robbie Leppzer of Wendell, Mass.; and Michelle Moyse of the Center for Digital Art in Brattleboro.

Film and community engagement

Elder, who had previously volunteered with the Women's Film Festival for 21 years and has watched hundreds of movies in the selection process, said the new festival is negotiating the rights to screen the films and cannot release the titles under consideration.

But she readily disclosed some of the themes of the films they want to show - themes that can't help but resonate with readers of letters to the editor in local media this summer.

“Dogs,” she said, describing what she characterized as “a powerful film about shelter dogs.”

In a nod to local concern about environmental issues, another film will look at the effects of a nuclear power plant on a small town. Elder described a third as a “breathtaking film” that illustrates the melting of glacial ice around the world.

There will be a film that touches on gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender issues. Another one will look at the life of a Chinese arts activist.

A documentary about aging pioneers of the sport of skateboarding, she said, is intended to bring out “a different side of a tough issue.”

Weinmann and Elder emphasized that while the films they show will be provocative, they do not seek to indoctrinate viewers with one side of any given issue. The festival will choose films that will connect with a local audience and local issues, but in the end, “The top priority is that they have to be great films - period,” Elder said.

The committee members noted that the festival needs to generate its own resources during this first festival, truncated to one weekend from the 10-day-to-two-week event that they envision in coming years.

But they also pointed to the natural synergy between other Windham County nonprofits and the themes that will emerge, noting that those organizations will likely independently piggyback on the new festival as a fundraising opportunity.

“In the future, we plan to raise funds for different organizations by showing films that you can plan an event around,” Weinmann said.

“It always felt personally good to raise funds for the Women's Freedom Center [as a result of the festival],” Elder said. “We want an event for the town that will really be appreciated.”

Organizers are acutely aware of the arts as an increasingly important economic engine for Windham County.

“We're happy to be part of a growing trajectory,” Weinmann said. “It's a propitious time to be launching a film festival.”

The new festival will “add to the growing positivity for why culture can be an engine for economic growth,” she said.

A parting of the ways

Weinmann, Elder, and other volunteers of the nascent festival severed their ties with the Women's Freedom Center and the WFF after the nonprofit's board publicly announced that the festival would no longer accept films by men.

In previous interviews with The Commons, the staff of the Freedom Center - which offers shelter and resources to women escaping domestic violence - have taken a strong position that representation of women by the media is a catalyst for violence.

That philosophy had previously put the center's staff and board at odds with provocative content in some of the films in previous festivals, particularly a 2009 documentary about Marilyn Monroe, My Marilyn, that screened at the 2011 festival.

In a letter dated March 29 of this year and published in the Brattleboro Reformer, the Freedom Center board and staff pointed out that “over 90 percent” of movies are made by men.

“We believe that women's film festivals have the opportunity and responsibility to call attention to this issue,” they wrote, citing the film Missrepresentation, which explored the issue in depth in the 2012 festival.

In a response dated April 9, Arlene Distler, a longtime Women's Film Festival organizer, and Elder wrote that “A community of women in tune and in touch with each other is at the heart of the festival, but it is not the entire story.”

“We feel limiting films to those made by women creates an exclusionary cast to the festival that we find very unfortunate,” they wrote in explaining the WFF organizers' decision to break from the project.

“We wish the Freedom Center well and will continue to support its work,” the steering committee wrote in a recent letter to supporters to announce the launch of the new festival.

BFF organizers declined to talk about the acrimony. Organizers are taking pains to schedule the new event for fall so as not to compete with the WFF.

Vickie Sterling, co-director of the Women's Freedom Center, confirmed this week that a “slightly smaller” Women's Film Festival will take place from March 8 through 17, 2013.

“Our work is ending violence against women who don't have a voice, who don't have control in their lives,” Sterling said, pointing out that the shift in focus of the WFF will be more appropriate for the “mission-driven” nonprofit.

“The Brattleboro Film Festival looks like it's going to be great,” Sterling said. “We absolutely feel that way.”

Sterling said that the WFF will be run by a group of several Freedom Center advocates, some community members, and some members of the organization's board.

She added that the Women's Film Festival will issue a notice toward the end of the year, looking for additional volunteers.

And, despite the rift over the inclusion of male filmmakers in the WFF, the BFF organizers are acutely aware of issues of media access and underrepresentation - not only of women, but also of young people.

The new film festival could become a catalyst for helping people create films as well. “I think of the In-Sight Photography model a lot,” Weinmann said, referencing the youth photography project on Flat Street.

“The real emphasis will be characters and issues that are underrepresented in mainstream media,” Weinmann said. “That's the spirit of the Women's Film Festival, and we'll carry it on.”

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