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Asparagus, gardens, and all things green were the theme of this year’s big show at Anthology Film Archives. “Asparagus! (A Stalk-umentary)” opened our Saturday in Michi-grandiose fashion. The head of the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board and Mrs. Asparagus 1987 took the stage following the screening alongside filmmakers Kirsten Kelly and Anne de Mare to answer questions and accept the award of Best Documentary for RRFF 2006. After viewing a gorgeous 16mm print of our ‘retro pick’, “Green Streets”, all were treated to a one-of-a-kind discussion between filmmaker Maria de Luca and Green Guerillas founder Donald Loggins, talking up the history of NYC gardens and the dynamic history of our city through the 1980s. Double features were a new hit at this year’s fest, as were rural women…. “The Beauty of the Hunt” brought us Teresa Davidson (assistant director of “Dressed to Kill: Women who Hunt”) up from Austin, TX, and Amy Nicholson (director of “Muskrat Lovely”) from around the block here in Manhattan. There might’ve been a bit of squirmin’, but the crowd still sat still to watch Texas women shoot their guns and Maryland girls compete in a beauty contest alongside a muskrat skinning competition. Sunday’s “Experimental Road Trip” brought together two cutting edge films from the first and third person. Bill Brown (“The Other Side”) told his story upfront from the Southwestern borders while Brigid McCaffrey and Danielle Lombardi let their unconventional subjects do the talking – until afterwards of course when Brigid talked to us after screening the beautiful 16mm print of “Lay Down Tracks”. Our closing night consisted of appearances by two of the masters of rural documentary and fiction – David Sutherland (“Country Boys”) and Jay Craven (“Disappearances”). Sutherland made his way down from Massachusetts to screen an episode from his Television Critics Association Award-nominated series, and Craven brought the family down from Vermont to put up a 35mm print of his new Kris Kristofferson vehicle. Stars from our gem-filled shorts programs came from far and wide to be a part of this year’s festival. Canadian Dan Sokolowski made the trip from Kemptville, Ontario with a 16mm print of “Land of the Pines” in hand, and Paul Rickard (a native of the Omuskego Cree tribe) joined us from Montreal. Others made the trek from northern and southern California, Iowa, and Ohio. This year’s shorts were so solid all the way through that the new touring program will be full length without a dud in the bunch. And, that includes films from this year’s “Horror Program,” which scared the pants off everybody so bad that we had to walk half the audience home Saturday night. It was all a good time and well worth all the work everyone put in. We praise our sponsors for allowing us to do what we do. A big, big, big thank you goes out to: The Iowa Film Office, New York State Council on the Arts, Pabst Blue Ribbon, The National Development Council, Empress Media, The Canadian Consulate, Experimental Television Center, Tent and Trails, and Film Video Arts. We’d also like to tip our hats to Doc Holliday’s for supplying us with a quiet spot amongst their rowdy honky tonk good time setting for our festival party. 2006 WINNERS Best Narrative – Allison Cook’s “Junior” Best Documentary – Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly’s “Asparagus! (A Stalk-umentary)” Best Experimental – Cindy Stillwell’s “High Plains Winter” Click
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Thirty
years ago, Oceana County, Michigan proclaimed itself the Asparagus
Capital of the Nation! Hailed as “Green Gold,” asparagus
was exactly what this poor rural community needed - a spring
cash crop at the end of a long cold winter. But in a twist of
fate, the U.S War on Drugs ushers in a free trade policy that
bolsters a rival Peruvian asparagus industry, and threatens
to take it all away from these Michiganders. Virtually overnight,
Oceana’s asparagus farmers find themselves smack-dab in
the middle of a turbulent global economy. They decide to pull
up their bootstraps and jump head-on into the fray. While ‘Mrs.
Asparagus’ advocates at home in Oceana’s National
Asparagus Festival, the farmers take their fight from Senate
Trade Hearings to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, from high-powered
marketing think-tanks to the Peruvian Andes. This is the story
of one rural American community scrambling to keep its proud
identity and source of survival against impossible odds. Asparagus!
(A Stalk-umentary) journeys to the heart of the Asparagus Capital
of The Nation to discover why one little vegetable matters so
much. 
Nominated
for "Outstanding Achievement in News and Information"
by the Television Critics Association!
Disappearances
completes Jay Craven’s trilogy of films based on stories
by Vermont author, Howard Frank Mosher. A spellbinding tale
of high-stakes whiskey-smuggling, a family's mysterious past,
and a young boy’s rite of passage, Disappearances stars
the legendary Kris Kristofferson as Quebec Bill Bonhomme, Gary
Farmer (Dead Man, Adaptation) as a professional whiskey runner,
Academy Award-nominee Genevieve Bujold as magical realist sage,
and newcomer Charlie McDermott as a boy on his first whiskey
running adventure across the Canadian border. Incredible production
design was headed up by Carl Sprague (Royal Tennenbaums), costume
designer Jill Kliber (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind),
and cinematographer Wolfgang Held (Children of the Underground).
Hunting:
an age-old rite of passage for American men takes an interesting
turn when the so-called gentler sex enters the picture. Do these
women have something to prove? Find out as this documentary
opens an absorbing and often startling window into a world of
strong-willed and likable characters that make no excuses for
their zeal about hunting.
Long
before Park and Rec. created the Greenstreets program in 1996,
Maria De
Everyone’s
got a notion about hillbillies: hicks from the sticks, Beverly
Hillbillies, rednecks in beat up old pickups, illiterate in-breeds.
But what about neobillies - the offspring of the original pioneers
who homesteaded the Ozark Mountains 150 years ago? 
Lay
Down Tracks is a non-sync, 16mm, experimental documentary about
five traveling American workers. We enter into the intimate
surroundings of a carny, female trucker, railroad executive,
chimney sweep/surfer, and a nun/riverboat pilot, learning from
voiceover and environmental portraits about their jobs, their
daily lives, and the places that they move through. The chosen
vocations of our subjects highlight romantic notions of freedom
and independence in American culture while reflecting a cross-section
of economic needs and personal challenges. As each subject comes
from a different background and region, their various styles
of narration begin to inform and distinguish each other. Despite
their various backgrounds, our subjects share the desire to
set out against convention and find strength and stability within
constantly shifting surroundings.
Every
skinning competition needs a queen… Every year in the
town of Golden Hill, contestants gather for two important competitions
in the National Outdoor Show. Local high school girls compete
to become “Miss Outdoors,” queen of the show and
its representative for the year. On the same stage, the world’s
best muskrat skinners compete to see who can skin the fastest.
As
narrated by legendary counterculture filmmaker John Waters,
there was time when the Salton Sea, tucked into the southeast
corner of California was known as the Riviera of the West-a
haven for jetsetters and vacationers. Originally created by
accident, it's now one of the country's worst ecological disasters:
a fetid, stagnant, salty lake, coughing up dead fish and birds
by the thousands. Still, a hardy few have hung on there, hoping
for help to come along and restore the lake to its former glory.
Congressman Sonny Bono himself was once dedicated to saving
the lake, until he went skiing one day. Eccentrics abound in
this surreal landscape: the naked guy who waves to passing RVs;
the man who built his own holy mountain; beer-loving Hungarian
Hunky Daddy; the guys who plan to get rich someday when this
virtual sewer becomes a Riviera again. Hair-raising and hilarious,
part history lesson, part cautionary tale and part portrait
of one of the strangest communities you've ever seen, this is
the American Dream gone as stinky as a dead carp. 
A
2000-mile journey along the U.S./Mexico border reveals a geography
of aspiration and insecurity. While documenting the efforts
of migrant activists to establish a network of water stations
in the borderlands of the southwestern U.S., Brown considers
the border as a landscape, at once physical, historical, and
political. 
High Plains Winter (the final installment of an experimental
outdoors trilogy) is a film about the winter landscape and how
it affects the human spirit on the high plains of Montana. The
American/Scandinavian sport ski joring, which involves a horse
& rider pulling a skier, is the centerpiece of this visual
study of winter on the high plains. Alongside the sport imagery
are majestic, winter landscapes and signs of domestic life:
horses, dogs and people. These elements weave together to explore
the nature of human life in this environment, the mythologies
and the realities. Stillwell is an RR alum, whose film, A Season
on the Move (the 2nd in her Montana trilogy) won Best Experimental
honors in RRFF 2004. High Plains Winter has screened earlier
this year at Sundance, Rotterdam, Full Frame, PDX, and Edinburgh.
Toby, a sullen teenager, must descend into the depths of small-town
Texas to spend the summer with his dad, Darrell. Pulled from
the comfort of his middle-class existence, Toby has to cope
with his father, an overbearing carouser who makes his living
as a ranch hand, and try to get through this visit with no disasters.
When Darrell goes overboard, trying to impress his son at the
local rodeo and the visit turns sour, Toby is forced to see
his dad clearly, and choose whether to forgive him or not. 
Horses need shoes, but what kind of person puts them on? Dan
Krinbill's father died on his way home from a farrier competition.
This spurred young Dan into giving up his job as a taxi driver
and following in his dad's footsteps. He approached his father's
old instructor, Hank McEwan, and begged him for instruction.
Dan gradually learned the ancient craft of the farrier from
Hank and has never looked back.
In this music video for The Shins, a young man and a grand-fatherly
figure drive through the country side taking snap-shots of the
passing landscapes. Matt McCormick runs the Portland, OR based
indie distribution outfit, Peripheral Produce, and is the director
of the PDX Film Festival. 
In 1892, in this tiny village (population still only 8) in Northeast
Iowa, John Froelich (1849 -1933) invented the first successful
gasoline-powered engine that could be driven backwards and forwards.
The word “tractor” wasn’t used in those days,
but that’s what it was. Visit 
Black Bears forage for food in their current natural habitat
- the township dump, while an intermittent parade of people,
SUVs and minivans toss out garbage. While sometimes humorous,
a fragile and disturbing biological relationship is portrayed.
Through photographic evidence, we take a journey through real
and imagined
Ohio is known for many things: Ohio State football, crop festivals,
humidity, and small towns. In a weekend in late October the
filmmakers visited an Ohio State football game, a chain-saw
sculptor, elderly cheerleaders in a parade, a hog-calling contest,
the “World’s Largest Pumpkin Pie” and a children’s
Halloween costume party. Boord and Valdovino’s film Two
or Three Things I Know about Ohio graced last year’s RRFF.
This excerpt from the feature length documentary, Homeland,
focuses on Evon Peter and the Swich’in tribe in Alaska.
Homeland tells the stories of four remarkable Native American
activist communities who are fighting "new Indian Wars"
- each in their own way passionately dedicated to protecting
Indian lands against disastrous environmental hazards, preserving
their sovereignty and ensuring the cultural survival of their
peoples. With the support of their communities, these leaders
are actively rejecting the devastating affronts of multi-national
energy companies and the current dismantling of 30 years of
environmental laws. 
A
short glimpse into the life of Siberian folk artist, Polikarp
Sudomoikin, who worked for a collective farm for most of his
life, and the many ‘vocal’ peasant women of the
village. Situated 300 miles from Baikal Lake, the village, Bichura,
is dwelt by traditional old believers, who where forced to Siberia
during Katharine the Great and still preserve their traditions.
An experimental musical western starring John Wayne and Roy
Rogers. Lawman saves outlaw; lawman loses outlaw; lawman becomes
outlaw. Found footage gleaned from over 20 public domain films
was edited, composited, and set to Don Robertson’s classic
1964 story-song to spawn this rapid-fire saga of male bonding
with a vengeance. Monahan teaches film production at the Univ.
of North Carolina, Wilmington.
What exactly goes on at Jack Rowin's bootmaking school in rural
Manton, California? The folks down at the diner have been wondering
that very thing for years. In this slice-of-life documentary
short, a former 4-H'er and junior rodeo rider escapes San Francisco's
tech world and returns to the country to learn how to make footwear.
Now grown up and contemplating the exponential possibilities
of ants, Myra recalls her childhood fight to save all the six-legged
crawlers in her big backyard. The cruelty of life and more importantly,
nature’s ability to cope and regenerate are the lessons
learned in her crusade to guard the lawn against big brothers
with big boots. 
Cedar Rapids, Iowan artist Jane Gilmor brings us a short film
that is part of a larger performance/installation. A handicap
accessible hunting blind (w/filmmaker inside) insinuates itself
into highly charged religious sites in rural Portugal--Druid
stone circles, 5000 year-old Dolmens and 15th century Catholic
convents. “The grotesque hilarity of building a contraption
that allows the physically challenged to maim the odd passing
duck is only vaguely acknowledged. Everyone and everything in
this film seem caught in a viscious cycle of goodwill, bloodlust,
vanity and stupidity that seems close to the core of Gilmor's
take on the human condition.” Matt Freedman.
The industrious mole leads a dreary boring life. But one day,
he meets Miss Hedgehog, and digs thousands of mole hills in
the shape of a giant heart on his meadow. Aliens discover the
heart from above instead, and decide to pay a visit...
In the rolling foothills of Southeast Ohio exists a movement
of small-scale farmers who cultivate without chemicals or major
mechanical input. For these visionary men and women of the earth,
pesticides are an unnecessary hazard, while one’s own
sweat and toil proves more efficient than fossil-fueled machines.
Farming for the Future escapes from the grocery store to tromp
through the fields with a diverse group of forward-thinking
yeomen, illuminating the subtler and oft-forgotten aspects of
the vital commodity we call food.
A toy cowboy writes postcards to his lost love in the suburbs.
Can he win her back, or is he just being played with? 
Unhitched is a portrait of a community that has transformed
travel trailers into permanent homes. Tucked away in a redwood
grove in Northern California, Faerie Ring Campground and RV
Park serves as one of the only options for low income housing
in the area. Through the residents' experiences, this film illustrates
the value of having a place to call home while expanding our
notions of community. Erin Hudson’s film Rotation was
part of RR 2005. 
The filmmaker visits a Sikh temple in Amritsar, India, to investigate
a Langar Seva, a religious service in which 100,000 people will
be served free food. His attempts to get at the truth of the
event are thwarted by the dubious answers of some interviewees
as well as the disruptiveness of his own presence. Gradually
he learns that in order to discover the truth behind Langar
Seva (“to serve everyone”), he must discover and
accept his own special role in the service, not as an outside
observer but as an active participant. 
The Geographical Center of North America is an experimental
documentary that examines the home movie footage of Chester
Swavel (1909-1982) and its significance as a cultural artifact.
Adrian Goycoolea, a former Anthology Film Archives programmer
and publicist, currently lives in Iowa City.
A Ken Burns style mockumentary telling the struggle of a proud
people overcoming adversity. Winner for “Best City –
Des Moines and Best Film” in the 2005 48-hour Film Project.
Farm auctioneers sell off the last pieces of old farms with
a rolling, hypnotic cadence. Their melody is replacing the sounds
of tractors and cows in the American west, but it's also paving
the way for a new generation of farmers. Meet one family in
Idaho and the auctioneers who help them close a door on their
past.
If
you haven’t seen the rural classic Children of the Corn
in awhile, this film will quickly scare you into remembrances
of He Who Walks Behind the Rows… 
Enjoy
this document of life on the farm - a timeless scene that could
be occurring yesterday, 100 years ago, or 100 years from now.
Follow this pillar of the American work ethic as he feeds the
chickens, chops the wood, digs up the garden, and deals with
incursions from other realms into his idyllic world. This film
was produced for the 'Film Kitchen' screening series (sponsored
by the Pittsburgh Citypaper).
A
young couple in love, friends spending time together on a quiet
afternoon, small-town kids looking for a good time. And zombies.
Lots of flesh-eating zombies (done up with a superb low budget
fx job by self-taught make-up artist Emersen Ziffle). Small
town Saskatchewan is doomed when a zombie outbreak threatens
the prairies. Lowell Dean’s primary interest is in fantasy
films. He also has an 'unhealthy obsession' with zombies. 
A
soundman descends into an isolated cave. Only when it may be
too late does he begin to suspect that he might not be alone.
A traveling satellite dish salesman is stranded near
the wrong farm.
In
this perfectly unsettling horror-comedy, small town homophobia
manifests itself in a hick hobgoblin, clad in flannel and trucker
cap. 
It’s
the end of the world and all Alice and Brian want to do is have
sex, but not without a condom! Brian is too afraid to go outdoors
so it’s up to Alice to race to the car, dodge flesh eating
zombies and retrieve a condom from the car for some good old
safe sex. Will she make it back in time? Or is 28 minutes too
long of a waiting period?
Bill
Badgley (Federation X lead singer and video co-producer) is
being stalked by a Northwestern mythological being - a tall,
creepy man who carries around an old doctor’s bag, and
has scars covering his entire face. Webber has two rules for
his music video productions: they must be narrative, and they
must be rural. “The Hatchet Man” was shot after
a rare Northwestern blizzard in January of 2005. 
Complete
with snowmobile action, The Winter Chill follows a young Cree
man into the bush where he is reluctantly tending his father’s
trapline only to run headlong into the legendary Cree creature,
Pakaaskokan. At first terrified, he is shocked to learn that
there was far more in his father’s stories than he ever
dared realize. Paul Rickard (an Omuskego Cree originally from
Moose Factory in Northern Ontario) is the president of Achimist
Film, an Aboriginal production company specializing in films
and videos about the Native experience. 
Rural Route alums Hamilton and Thrasher (who, in ’04,
brought us The Visitor, about an alien who presents a farmer
with a magic screwdriver to help fix his tractor) have outdone
themselves this time – puppets who brainwash people to
kidnap people so they can perform experimental surgery involving
the swapping of animal body parts?! That’s right, folks
- it doesn’t get any better than this…
Northern
Arizona, 1880's - A frontier family is visited by an other-worldly
visitor. Have no fear, this interplanetary stranger is here
to do chores…!