The
Rural Route Film Festival has been created to highlight works
that deal with rural people and places. While the term "rural"
is defined by Webster's Dictionary as: 1) Of or relating to
the country: RUSTIC 2) Of or relating to people who live in
the
country 3) Of or relating to farming: AGRICULTURAL, the creators
of Rural Route Film Festival leave it up to you, the film and
video artists, to explain your own definition of "rural."
Whether it be a documentary about an organic turnip farm in West
Virginia, a fictional backpacking drama set in Peru, or a personal/experimental
work about life in a small town in Wisconsin, we want to see
and hear what you have to say. Works that include alternative
country,
country western, and folk music are encouraged, as are those
that play loud rock in cornfields.
Rural Route Trailer
Rural Route Tour:
Every
year the Rural Route Film Festival takes highlights from its program
and tours them around the country (and to other countries). It's
a great opportunity for other communities (urban or rural) to
show some of our films.
If you'd like to have the Rural Route Film Festival come to your
town or hamlet, please email filmfest@ruralroutefilms.com w/TOUR
REQUEST in the subject heading and contact info. in the text of
your message. We do screenings at local theatres, colleges, clubs,
community organization centers, libraries, arts spaces, Dutch
squats, museums, and anywhere else with a wall and a screen.
Rural Route has an ambitious new plan for 2008-2009. We are calling this season, “Nomad,”
because it involves roaming through the ends of the Earth for a full year, screening our
programming and collecting rural stories in a travelogue-style documentary. The “Nomad”
tour is set to kick-off in October 2008, following a New York City festival in which Rural
Route will collaborate with local and international partners to screen a plethora of rural
shorts and features, and launch a brand new “Best of” DVD (subtitled in Spanish and French)
that will be a long-term staple of the festival.
NOMAD TOUR (Screenings)
Rural Route Director Alan Webber will be playing the part of the Nomad, traveling consistently for an entire
year with a backpack, video camera, mini-projector, and stack of DVDs. Webber will stay in hostels, camp,
and accept friendly invitations of lodging. He will be joined by several Rural Route volunteers for stints
along the way. Variables and spontaneity are being factored in, but the general plan is to start off riding
buses around South America (and taking boats across the Amazon and down to Antarctica) with definite screenings
in Chile, Peru, and Argentina. Throughout the voyage, the films will be screened at universities, film centers,
art spaces, and theaters. Webber will also set-up several “Rural Extreme” screenings in places such as jungles,
villages, and on icebergs. The tour continues from South America to Oceania with screenings amidst the beauty
of New Zealand and Australia. Rural Route then flies into India, making a Nomadic path through the Himalayas
(w/a screening in Kathmandu, Nepal), into Tibet and across China to Beijing. From there, it’s down to South
Africa for safari and screenings planned with African diaspora film group, Image Nation, in the townships of
Johannesburg. The tour rounds out with screenings throughout Europe, and side treks into the Middle East and
Western Africa.
NOMAD BLOG/VLOG
Webber will keep an ongoing public blog on the Rural Route website, detailing his travels, the Rural Route
screenings and the people he encounters. Video (vlog) clips will be uploaded whenever possible to supplement
Webber’s writing. A world map will also be featured alongside the blog on the Rural Route website with lines
marking the Nomad’s progress. Mass emails will be delivered every few weeks, summarizing the Nomad blog to the
Rural Route mailing list.
NOMAD DOCUMENTARY
While screening rural films in venues around the world, Rural Route will be documenting its travels on video
to be put together in a comprehensive film and for use with the Rural Route blog and website. The documentary
is at the core of Rural Route’s mission of bringing together and highlighting diverse rural voices from around
the globe. We will look for stories from contemporary farmers, villagers, indigenous people, fellow vagabond
travelers, and urban transplants who are adapting to new ways of life.
King Corn:
KING
CORN OPENS IN THEATRES OCTOBER 12, 2007 @ NEW YORK CITY’S CINEMA
VILLAGE! NATIONAL SCREENINGS TO FOLLOW – SEE HTTP://WWW.KINGCORN.NET FOR
DETAILS.
Don’t miss one of the year’s most important and entertaining films! With
all the talk surrounding Michael Pollan’s newly infamous “The Omnivore’s
Dilemma”, this movie has come at the perfect time! It’s the smarter,
hipper “Super Size Me” for a hopeful new age in which people have realized
that our current state of agriculture is in big trouble.
“King Corn” is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn,
and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In “King Corn”,
Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast,
move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help
of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers,
and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s
most-productive, most subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when
they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find
raises troubling questions about how we eat – and how we farm.
Rural Route is proud to co-present a special one-time-only ‘Sneak Peak’
screening of “King Corn” on September 22nd in Brooklyn, NY – see
http://www.rooftopfilms.com for details.
Goodie
Rural Route T-Shirts for Sale! $12 (includes shipping
and handling!) New 5th Anniversary gold on brown "bark" shirts for $15!
White on black, green, or orange. Also brown, green and orange
women's ringer shirts
Tractor design by former Iowa City artist, Dustin Kelly (who now
resides on an island)
Sizes: S, M, L, XL
State what you want and send with
check made out to “Rural Route Films”
The
Rural Route Film Festival has been created to highlight works
that deal with rural people and places. While the term "rural"
is defined by Webster's Dictionary as: 1) Of or relating to
the country: RUSTIC 2) Of or relating to people who live in
the
country 3) Of or relating to farming: AGRICULTURAL, the creators
of Rural Route Film Festival leave it up to you, the film and
video artists, to explain your own definition of "rural."
Whether it be a documentary about an organic turnip farm in West
Virginia, a fictional backpacking drama set in Peru, or a personal/experimental
work about life in a small town in Wisconsin, we want to see
and hear what you have to say. Works that include alternative
country,
country western, and folk music are encouraged, as are those
that play loud rock in cornfields.
Every
year the Rural Route Film Festival takes highlights from its program
and tours them around the country (and to other countries). It's
a great opportunity for other communities (urban or rural) to
show some of our films. 
KING
CORN OPENS IN THEATRES OCTOBER 12, 2007 @ NEW YORK CITY’S CINEMA
VILLAGE! NATIONAL SCREENINGS TO FOLLOW – SEE 
Rural Route T-Shirts for Sale! $12 (includes shipping
and handling!)