HUDSON VALLEY STREAM FEST
As we all try to make sense of COVID19 FACTS & related difficulties, it is important to stay informed and to keep a healthy and positive outlook. We recognize that this is a very distressing, confusing and hectic time. Many productions (including local ones) are postponing start dates for safety reasons. Like many of you, we are trying to figure it out, one day at a time, and trying to stay productive. It’s a good time to catch up on local films that are available to stream online.
Be well and take care of yourselves, and others.
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April 15, 2020 –– Today's streamfest recommendation is LINER NOTES, directed by Gregg Bray and starring Allen Enlow, Alyssa Carpenter and Nick Dawson. Production took place in August of 2014 with local cast and crew in Ulster and Dutchess Counties.
Upon learning of her father's death, a young barista, Alice, convinces her father's former guitarist, George--a middle age math teacher who left the music scene long ago--to take a road trip to her father's gravesite in Montreal.
April 14, 2020 –– Today's streamfest recommendation is AGAINST THE CURRENT, directed by Peter Callahan and starring Joseph Fiennes, Pell James, Justin Kirk, Elizabeth Reaser, Martin Shakar, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Mary Tyler Moore.
The film, which was produced by Mary Jane Skalski and Joshua Zeman follows a man (Joseph Fiennes) who tries to overcome his tragic past by swimming the 150-mile expanse of the lower Hudson River. In addition to making referrals, the film commission organized regional screenings as part of the Hudson Valley Programmers Group, which administered year round tours featuring films by established & emerging filmmakers.
April 13, 2020 –– Today's streamfest recommendation is episode 5 of THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA. It screens tonight on HBO. The series, which was filmed partly in 5 Hudson Valley counties, is a six-part re-imagining of history based on the Philip Roth novel of the same name. In episode 5, a working-class Jewish family is selected for a forced relocation to Kentucky.
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April 12, 2020 –– Today's streamfest recommendation is HIGHER GROUND, directed by Vera Farmiga, who also co-stars, along with Joshua Leonard, Norbert Leo Butz, Michael Chernus, John Hawkes and Dagmara Dominczyk, as a fundamentalist who faces a lifelong struggle with the tenets of her church.
The film was produced by Carly Hugo, Renn Hawkey, Jon Rubinstein, and Claude Dal Farra, and executive produced by Matt Parker, Lauren Munsch, Brice Dal Farra, and Jonathan Burkhart. Hudson Valley locations included Accord, Ellenville, Kerhonkson, Kingston and Stone Ridge, where hundreds also turned out for auditions. HIGHER GROUND premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and was distributed by SONY Picture Classics.
April 11, 2020 –– Today's streamiest recommendation is LEE'S 88 KEYS by Saugerties based director Susan Robbins. The 2015 documentary follows 88-year-old Lee Shaw, proudly known as Albany, New York's Queen of Jazz. From the piano bench Lee has bravely struggled with not only being a woman in a male dominated field, but with the financial challenges that come with pursuing a dream, and the conflict of her sharp musical mind's residence in an ever aging vessel. Her story is one of passion and triumph, which she attributes to her love of the 88's.
April 10, 2020 –– If you are looking for a mini series to binge over the weekend, check out Cary Joji Fukunaga's MANIAC, starring Emma Stone, Jonah Hill, and Justin Theroux. The Netflix series filmed part of the show in the mid-Hudson Valley in 2017.
Annie Landsberg and Owen Milgrim are two strangers who are drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial. Each has a different reason for participating in the experiment -- she is disaffected and aimless, fixated on broken relationships with her mother and sister, while he has struggled throughout his life with a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia. The radical treatment, using pills that the inventor claims can repair anything about the mind, draws Annie, Owen and 10 other subjects into a three-day drug trial that they're told will permanently solve all of their problems, with no complications or side effects. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned.
Several of the locations, including Lake Minnewaska were first referred to Fukunaga when executive producer Peter Pastorelli and location manager Kurt Enger scouted the region tor the film IT –– a project that was eventually produced elsewhere, after the director left the project. Tragically, Pastorelli passed away in 2019 after returning to the region to produce THINGS HEARD AND SEEN.
Laurent Rejto from the film commission first met Fukunaga when he won the Best Student Short award at the 2004 Woodstock Film Festival. "As the co-founder and head programmer for shorts, I came across VICTORIA PARA CHINO, and was totally blown away by the filmmaking," says Rejto. It's not hard to recognize that kind of talent. It usually happens once or twice a year but no one has ever had that kind of a career track after winning the best student short award. It's been amazing watching Cary's career skyrocket with projects like SIN NOMBRE, TRUE DETECTIVE, BEASTS OF NO NATION and of course, in 2019, he director NO TIME TO DIE - the 25th James Bond film which stars Daniel Craig.
April 9, 2020 –– Today, the film commission is recommending I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS by Leah Meyerhoff. The film, which stars Natalia Dyer, Peter Vack, Julia Garner, Amy Seimetz and Toni Meyerhoff was produced partly around Campbell Hall in 2013, and focuses on a teen's budding romance that takes a turn for the worse when her Prince Charming starts to reveal a volatile side. Among other things, the film commission posted for UNICORNS and circus performers.
I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS premiered at SXSW and later screened at the 2014 Woodstock Film Festival.
April 8, 2020 –– Today's local film recommendation is YOUTH IN OREGON. The feature film from Sundial Pictures is directed by Joel David Moore and features Frank Langella, Christina Applegate, Billy Crudup and Mary Kay Place. The movie was filmed in part in Dutchess County in June and July 2015. When 79-year-old curmudgeon Raymond (Frank Langella) makes arrangements to be euthanized in Oregon, his family refuses to accept his decision. But when another family emergency arises, Raymond's daughter Kate (Christina Applegate) turns to her husband, Brian (Billy Crudup), for a little help. So Brian reluctantly volunteers to drive the cantankerous Raymond and his wine-loving wife, Estelle (Mary Kay Place), to Oregon.