WFF AT THE LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL

The Los Angeles Film Festival (June 19-29) kicked off last Thursday, featuring an exciting line-up of films, panels, parties, and other fabulous events.

On Sunday, June 22, Woodstock Film Festival co-founder and executive director Meira Blaustein jetted into L.A. wth operations director Mike Burke, where they met up with Woodstock Film Festival programmers and advisors Michael Lerman, Ryan Werner, and Tom Quinn. In addition to all the fun they'll be having attending screenings, parties, and events, they're also hoping to find potential films for this year's Woodstock Film Festival (October 1-5.)

Several films connected to WFF and the Hudson Valley will be featured throughout the festival, including Courtney Hunt's Frozen River (starring WFF's close friend Melissa Leo and shot in Upstate NY) and the Oscar-nominated short documentary, Salim Baba, which was featured in last years Woodstock Film Festival. Man on Wire (featuring Hudson Valley resident Phillipe Petit), the Duplass Brothers' Baghead (featuring Hudson Valley native Ross Partridge), Dana O'Keefe's short, The New Yorkist (edited by Tze Chun), and Nanette Burnstein's captivating documentary, American Teen (produced by WFF sponsor A&E Indie Films) will also be featured at the LA Film Fest.

Meira will be in Los Angeles for the film festival until the 26th. To reach her, contact
(914) 466.5728 or e-mail info@woodstockfilmfestival.com

SUMMER FILM INTENSIVE

Woodstock Film Festival presents Summer Film Intensive Program for Teens In Collaboration with the Center for Creative Education.

This year will herald a new, dynamic film intensive course aimed at teens at-risk. The week long program set for late June ad early July will immerse a group of a dozen young people in the creative art of filmmaking and visual storytelling. Having backgrounds in performance and visual arts, the teens selected for this unique opportunity have diverse backgrounds in the arts, garnered at the Center for Creative Education in Kingston, NY.

This film immersion course looks at moving images as pathways of expression. Using their own voices, talents, and minds, this hands-on experience gives urban teens a means for expressing themselves using cutting-edge equipment and technology. At the close of the course, the students will have completed two short films, which will be screened in the Woodstock Film Festival’s youth screening in October. ((Ivy Roberts)

ON DVD

New Video has partnered with the filmmaker of the documentary The Cool School to bring this intriguing film to iTunes. The Cool School (winner of Best doc at the 2007 WFF) is the story about how LA learned to love modern art. It's a lesson in how a few renegade artists built an art scene from scratch. Check it out on iTunes

If ever a case were to be made that a unique contribution to the modern art movement was conceived in Los Angeles in the 1940's and born in the infamous Ferus Gallery, The Cool School does so convincingly. A stellar array of artists, John Altoon, Frank Gehry, Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha, Ed Kienholz and a host of others, reminisce about the early days. "Art offers the possibility of love with strangers," intones Walter Hobbs, visionary co-founder of the Ferus. Later joined by partner Irving Blum, his polar opposite, the Ferus bucks the notion of the supremacy of the New York art scene. The very kitsch of Los Angeles, it's lack of history, becomes the inspiration for a whole generation of renegades. Punctuated with dismissive asides from New York's Ivan Karp, these artists crash through the barriers of convention, leaving behind a fresh, new legacy that endures to this day. The Cool School is a feast for lovers of art. (Barbara Pokras, A.C.E.)

ON THE TUBE AND DVD

Long-time friend to the Woodstock Film Festival, Larry Fessenden, once again sets out to send chills ringing down the spines of horror lovers everywhere with Skin and Bones, one of the first planned episodes for the new NBC series, FEAR ITSELF. In the episode, when a man returns to his family after being lost in the mountains for ten days, he is changed. Episode #9 of the NBC horror anthology FEAR ITSELF broadcasts Thursday nights at 10PM.

His most recent work of thrilling, chilling genius, The Last Winter, available on DVD  July 22nd, has left audiences tingling after the experience that can only exist with a story told by Fessenden. Gotham Award nominee, The Last Winter, raises a bar that is sure to be raised even higher, by Skin and Bones.

"elegantly restrained ... metaphorically resonant ... Feverishly Real, Terrifying." — NY Times

CRAZY SEXY BOOTCAMP

From Kris Carr (Crazy Sexy Cancer)
My health continues to be KICK ASS STRONG (thanks for all your prayers, beautiful notes, soul shimmying goodness and thank you JUICING). Brian and I moved from Brooklyn to Upstate NY full-time and opened an "official" office, the Crazy Sexy Cancer DVD and Tips book continue to spread hope around the world, we launched our online social network, my.crazysexylife.com, for all you health seekers and spiritual pom-pom shakers (if you haven't joined us already whatcha waitin' for?

The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY will be hosting the next retreat from July 4th-6th. What better way to spend INDEPENDENCE day? Meet other amazing canSer babes and chaps. Learn how to successfully navigate the road to recovery with nutrition classes, wellness tips and tools, creative writing, sun salutes, deliciously divine healing circles, and get this, FLYING. That's right, zoom through the air on the fear smashing trapeze.

Come spend time with Kris Carr, Life Coach Terri Cole, Beth Villandry MD/ Director of Development for CSL, and other inspiring guest teachers. Together they will lead you through a dynamic and fun weekend of self-transformation.

Relax, release, rejoice. These workshops are open to all patients and survivors young or young at heart. Join the revolution. We dare you!

A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR: A&E INDIE FILMS

A&E IndieFilms' most recent documentary, American Teen, will be released by Paramount Vantage in theaters this July. American Teen, directed by acclaimed director Nanette Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture, On the Ropes), premiered earlier this year at Sundance, where it won the Documentary Directing prize and was nominated for a Grand Jury award.

American Teen intimately captures the lives of four teenagers in one small town in central Indiana through their senior year of high school. Filming daily for ten months, Burstein developed a remarkably close rapport with her subjects, and the result is a film that goes beyond the enduring stereotypes of high school -- the nerd and the jock, the homecoming queen and the arty misfit -- to render complex young people trying to find their way into adulthood. American Teen presents a candid portrait of being seventeen -- the insecurity, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, the experimentation with sex and alcohol, the parental pressures -- and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future.

Also in the A&E IndieFilms works are a behind-the-scenes documentary on Vogue and it’s enigmatic editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, by director R.J. Cutler (American High, The War Room, Black, White); and previous IndieFilms director Amir Bar-Lev’s (My Kid Could Paint That) film about Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals football star killed under mysterious circumstances while serving his country in Afghanistan.

A&E IndieFilms, the feature documentary arm of A&E Networks, develops, produces and acquires cutting edge films targeted toward a young, sophisticated audience. A&E IndieFilms have been featured at the nation’s top film festivals, and have gone on to theatrical runs through partnerships with such distributors as Paramount Vantage, Sony Pictures Classics, Thinkfilm and Picturehouse. In its first two years, A&E IndieFilms gained notice, with both Murderball and Jesus Camp being nominated for Academy Awards. Other A&E IndieFilms include Street Thief, One Strong Arm, Rock School, Abused, Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating, and Bearing Witness.