Bethel Film Festival Returns to Library Jan 8 & 9, View Trailers and Schedule
Schedule For January 8 & 9
Wednesday January 8
Documentary Shorts Program 90min
12:00pm - 1:30pm
“Sustainable Nation” 60min Watch The Trailer
1:45pm - 2:45pm
Sustainable Nation is an hour-long documentary from Imagination Productions, follows three individuals working to bring sustainable water solutions to an increasingly thirsty planet.
International Shorts Program 75min
3:00pm - 4:15pm
“American Road ” 90 min Watch The Trailer
4:30pm - 6:00pm
Winner of many awards, this feature documentary explores the artistic, musical and literary resonances of the mystique of the road – and especially of going off the beaten track ‐ in American lore: Westward expansion, the Dust Bowl era, hobos, post‐war suburbanization and the Beat critique of it, hitchhiking, the upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the current generation of backpackers clutching their Lonely Planet and Rough Guides. The American road ‐ from the frontier iconography of John Ford’s films through rent‐a‐car cross country itineraries of the US – has inspired poetry, art, folk music, novelists and playwrights. In Hollywood the road film is a major genre.
The thematic touchstone is the egalitarian ideal of the “open road” first expressed by poet Walt Whitman. Whitman clearly inspired Woody Guthrie through the hard traveling times of the 1930s, the purposeful meanderings of Jack Kerouac and his scruffy associates through the early post‐war years, and the adventures and misadventures of much of the 1960s generation.
Thursday January 9
Dramatic Shorts Program 75min
12:00pm - 1:15pm
Latin American Shorts Program 90min
1:30pm - 2:45pm
“Madagasikara“ 90 min Watch The Trailer
3:00pm - 4:30pm
Three resilient women fight for better futures for their children in one of the most misunderstood countries in the world - Madagascar - a beautiful African island nation crippled by decades of political instability and crushed by international sanctions imposed in 2009.
Comedy Shorts Program 60min
4:45pm - 5:45pm
“The Catskills” 84 min Watch The Trailer
6:00pm - 7:30pm
"The Catskills" is a feature-length documentary film on the rise and fall of the Borscht Belt.
With a trove of lost-and-found archival footage and a cast of characters endowed with the gift of gab, "The Catskills" journeys into the storied mountain getaway north of New York City that served as refuge for Jewish immigrants fleeing poverty as well as a lavish playground for affluent Jewish families.
These screenings were made possible by the generous support of the Connecticut Office of the Arts, which also receives funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a federal agency.