If you like film as an expressionistic art form, two dramas - Bluebird and Lake Los Angeles - should be at the top of your 2014 Brattleboro Film Festival list.
At first glance they are an unlikely pair. Lance Edwards' debut film Bluebird is set in a northern Maine mill town in while Mike Ott's Lake Los Angeles, the third in a trilogy, takes place near an arid crossroad northeast of L.A.
In Hannah Arendt, we see the world through the eyes of those who have witnessed atrocities beyond imagination and now must find a way to learn from experience. In The Act of Killing, we are asked to identify directly with the perpetrators of similar horrors. In both films, we...