2008 NIFF Award Winners

Lifetime Achievement
David Klieler
Program Director
Advisor & Board Member

Best In Festival
Bestor Cram/Northern Lights
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison

Best Local Feature
Tyler Masse/Michael Shea
Turkey Bowl

Best Short
Jesse Barrett-Mills
El Bracero (The Laborer)

Best Local Documentary
Brendan Toller
I Need That Record!

Best Emerging Filmmaker
Alexander White/Edmund Metzold
Bounce

 

 

Film Schedule & Ticket Info

This unique film event showcases regional, national and international works of independent filmmakers and will feature a variety of films at this year’s festival, including notables “The New World,” “Delta Rising,” “Mulligans” and “Two Looks/Dos Miradas.”

The festival will also include local New England films: “In League with Us,” “Rebuilding with Ritchie,” “Smoke House,” "Shout it Out," “Maine Story” and “Turkey Bowl.”

Jump to highlights of the 2008 festival.

 

 

Venues:

Academy of Music 274 Main Street, Northampton

Pleasant Street Theater 27 Pleasant Street, Northampton

Tickets:

Tickets will be available at the Academy of Music box office during the festival before each screening.

VIP All Access festival pass: $30, plus $5 discount for students, WGBY Members, and Comcast customers.

Individual screening tickets: $8, or $6 students/seniors/WGBY Members

 

Highlights of the Festival

 

The New World, by Etienne Dhaene

In France, gays and lesbians cannot legally adopt children so the only alternative possible is artificial insemination. But artificial insemination is solely reserved to sterile heterosexual couples.  Lucie and Marion are a happy French lesbian couple. But when Lucie's biological starts to kick in, it will spark a whole series of events that will bring them happiness but also threaten the stability of their relationship. A delighfully modern lesbian story about conception and misconceptions. 

 

Traces of the Trade:  A story from the Deep North, by Katrina Browne, Alla Kovgan and Jude Ray

In the feature documentary filmmaker Katrina Browne discovers that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine cousins retrace the Triangle Trade and gain a powerful new perspective on the black/white divide.  Browne tells the story of her forefathers, the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. Given the myth that the South is solely responsible for slavery, viewers will be surprised to learn that Browne’s ancestors were Northerners. The film follows Browne and nine fellow family members on a remarkable journey which brings them face-to-face with the history and legacy of New England’s hidden enterprise.

 

Killer Poet, by Susan Gray

Killer Poet tells the story of Norman Porter, a convicted double murderer from Massachusetts who served 25 years in prison before escaping to Chicago. There he spent the next two decades living as a poet/intellectual by the name of JJ Jameson - an elaborately crafted false identity - until he was apprehended in 2005, thanks to a relentless police investigation and a compromising trail left by his audacious personna. He had just been named Chicago’s “Poet of the Month” when the law finally caught up with him.

 

Two Looks (Dos Miradas) by Sergio Candel

“Two Looks” is an exquisitely filmed story of love as it unfolds between sunsets in the Chilean desert.  The film is magnificently shot in San Pedro de Atacama (Chile) where Sofía and Laura are in the final days of a vacation.  The peace and beauty of the desert contrasts the high conflict which arises when the two women awaken a side of their relationship that had been previously unexplored. Spain’s El Mundo hailed the film as extraordinary and calls Sergio Candel as “a director who is already part of the new Spanish Cinema avant-garde.” Film contains brief nudity and sexual situations. 

 

Shout it Out, by Bess O’Brien

“Shout it Out” is based on the lives of Vermont teenagers with original music by VT teens. Shout it Out is the REAL “High School Musical”---about real kids, their struggles and triumphs.  The film follows Jericho, VT high schools students through some of the more tumultuous moments of teenage hood: (academic pressure; friction with peers, sexuality, relationships with parents and first love.  The film was shot summer, 2007 in Jericho, Vermont  primarily on location at Mount Mansfield Union High School. The stories and characters in the film were developed during an intensive, yearlong statewide research phase in which more than 1000 teens participated.

“Shout it Out” is a raw, real, revealing, compassionate, powerful, funny and ultimately affirmative look at the transformative powers of young people The original songs, written by Vermont youth are dynamic and range from love songs to rap and hip-hop.

 

Mulligans, by Charlie David

Like the American classic, The Graduate - secrecy, betrayal, and a painful coming of age face a family in Mulligans, by first time feature film director Chip Hale. Produced by Border2Border Entertainment, the film takes a fresh and honest look at the inner workings of a family and if there should be a second chance after an affair.

 

The Flyboys

On September 28, 2004 two twelve-year-old boys landed a twin-engine airplane on highway 89 approximately thirty miles east of Cooper, Arizona.  The details of how Jason McIntyre and Kyle Barrett came to be alone on the aircraft were never confirmed.  What happened to the boys after the police returned them to their home is unbelievable…

 

Delta Rising: A Blues Documentary

"Delta Rising", depicts the lives of blues singers in Clarksdale, MS, bringing the viewers from the cotton fields to the jukes throughout Clarksdale providing a wide angle view of the origins of blues and its translation to other genres on the American music landscape. This film shows the struggle and the passion of blues, what Morgan Freeman calls “America’s classical music.”

The film features: Morgan Freeman, Willie Nelson, James Montgomery, newcomer Grace Kelly along with local legends Jimbo Mathus, Big Jack Johnson, Ruby Wilson and many others.