Rural Route Film Festival

Butter on the Latch

The lineup was announced earlier this week for the 10th annual edition for the Rural Route Festival taking place August 8 to 10 at Museum of the Moving Image in New York City.  Some of the highlights of this year’s festival include a 50th anniversary presentation on restored 35mm of Parajanov’s legendary Ukraine/Carpathian-set Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, plus a new DCP Director’s Cut restoration of the British cult classic, Wicker Man, and a rare 16mm print of the great ethnomusicologist, Alan Lomax’s film on British May Day celebrations, Oss Oss Wee Oss.  

Cutting-edge new films include Josephine Decker’s Butter on the Latch, alongside the North American Premiere of Ukrainian documentary, Krasna Malanka, the one-of-a-kind mythological fiction about one of the most unique ethnic groups within Russia, Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari, the World Premiere of renowned fashion casting director, Daniel Peddle’s Sunset Edge, and the new documentary on Yugoslavian Black Wave director, Karpo Godina, Karpotrotter.

Full Program available at http://ruralroutefilms.com/2014-festival/

Trailers

http://youtu.be/eTs4JCS_TnQ

 

http://youtu.be/yXFYU3v-wL4

 

http://youtu.be/GA_e3LV6z0E

 

http://youtu.be/Qee4IEZ-ErY

 

http://youtu.be/oafgQWJ0nNM

 

http://youtu.be/Tj3naQeuTcg

 

http://youtu.be/z6A5Cd1Wn5U

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TALL AS THE BAOBAB TREE

The Rural Route Festival which ran July 27 – August 4, 2013 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York City, is calling this year’s festival, ‘one of the best yet.”  The festival announced this year’s winning films which included Best Narrative: “TALL AS THE BAOBAB TREE”;  Best Documentary: “THE MOSUO SISTERS”; and  Best Experimental: “MAGNETIC RECONNECTIONS”

TALL AS THE BAOBAB TREE directed by Jeremy Teicher is the story of a Senegalese teenage girl who hatches a secret plan to rescue her 11-year-old sister from an arranged marriage. Coumba and her little sister Debo are the first to leave their family’s remote African village, where meals are prepared over open fires and water is drawn from wells, to attend school in the bustling city. But when an accident suddenly threatens their family’s survival, their father decides to sell 11-year-old Debo into an arranged marriage. Torn between loyalty to her elders and her dreams for the future, Coumba hatches a secret plan to rescue her young sister from a fate she did not choose.

THE MOSUO SISTERS

THE MOSUO SISTERS directed by Marlo Poras is the story of Juma and Latso, both are thrust into the worldwide economic downturn when they lose the only jobs they’ve ever known in Beijing. Left with few options, they leave for home, a remote village in the foothills of the Himalayas. But home is no longer what it was, as growing exposure to the modern world is changing the provocative traditions the Mosuo have built around ‘walking marriage,’ in which a couple is not officially unified and does not live together. Determined to keep their mother and siblings out of poverty, Latso sacrifices her dream of an education and stays home to farm, while Juma leaves again to try her luck in Lijiang and Chengdu. Ultimately, though, it’s the sisters’ relationship with one another that hangs in balance as they struggle to navigate the vast cultural and economic divides of contemporary China.

With an intricate weave of real-time scenes and original interviews, “The Mosuo Sisters” serves as a rare window into a sibling relationship and a one-of-a-kind culture. Marlo Poras is an accomplished documentarian with prior wins at SXSW and critically-acclaimed work for HBO.  “Mosuo Sisters” had its N. American debut last fall at Doc NYC.

MAGNETIC RECONNECTIONS

MAGNETIC RECONNECTIONS by Canadian filmmaker Kyle Armstrong, is described as  a short documentary film contrasting the Northern Lights with decaying manmade debris surrounding the Arctic Canadian town of Churchill, Manitoba. The film touches on the regenerative power of nature and the futility of mankind’s struggle against natural processes of decay. The film features an original score by Jim O’Rourke, a voice-over by Will Oldham and some of the best footage of the aurora borealis ever captured. 

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BAIKONUR

Rural Route will screen what the festival describes as “4 of the BEST new independent films to the beautiful big screen” at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York City on August 3 and 4, 2013.  The 4 films are TALL AS THE BAOBAB TREE directed by Jeremy Teicher, SALT directed by Diego Rougier, THE MOSUO SISTERS directed by Marlo Poras and BAIKONUR directed by Veit Helmer.

Festivial Official Trailer

http://youtu.be/6NAUxFILLdo

TALL AS THE BAOBAB TREE

http://youtu.be/og05DpepTi0

SALT

http://youtu.be/3GGtGu4DZuM

THE MOSUO SISTERS

http://youtu.be/1QT-e9e5siQ

BAIKONUR

http://youtu.be/_-90Pfde1rM

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TALL AS THE BAOBAB TREE

The Rural Route Film Festival is back for 2013 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York City, and kicks off with a special July 27 environmental ‘Green’ screening of director Jared Fletcher’s  “SOURLANDS” and will close with a Sunday night shorts party on August 4. 

The film lineup for the 2013 Rural Route Film Festival includes some of what the festival describes as ‘the best-but-least-seen’ new indie features, such as a fairytale space romance on the Kazakh Steppe, a Chilean western, a touching Senegalese drama, and a documentary about sub-Himalayan sisters caught in the crunch of modern China. 

Highlighted films include 

Opening Night Film | NY Premiere SOURLANDS. Dir. Jared Flesher. 78min. Documentary. 2012. Sourlands, NJ.

“SOURLANDS” weaves a provocative tale of ecology, energy, and agriculture through a deep forest surrounded by the sprawling suburbs of New Jersey. It’s a rampaging deer herd, invasive plants, and wholesale habitat destruction threatening the local ecosystem. Farmers in the surrounding valley struggle against high land prices, high property taxes, and increasingly erratic weather patterns; a local entrepreneur struggles to find a market for his innovative clean-tech product. But pay close attention, and the challenges facing this community look a lot like the challenges facing ecosystems, farmers, and visionary entrepreneurs everywhere. The message of cautious hope presented in the film is just as universal: to start solving complicated environmental problems, we need to forgo quick fixes and start restoring the natural world – and people’s connection to it – from the forest floor up.

Director Jared Flesher is an award-winning reporter, photojournalist, and documentary filmmaker. His articles have been published by The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Grist, The Huffington Post, The Columbia Journalism Review. His first feature documentary, The Farmer and the Horse, has aired more than 40 times on PBS and is distributed nationally by Chelsea Green Publishing and Passion River Productions.

TALL AS THE BAOBAB TREE. Dir. Jeremy Teicher. 82min. Narrative. 2012. Sinthiou Mbadane & Mbour, Thiès, Senegal.

Coumba and her little sister Debo are the first to leave their family’s remote West African village, where meals are prepared over open fires and water is drawn from wells, to attend school in the bustling city. But when an accident suddenly threatens their family’s survival, their father decides to sell 11-year-old Debo into an arranged marriage. Torn between loyalty to her elders and her dreams for the future, Coumba hatches a secret plan to rescue her young sister from a fate she did not choose.

“As Tall as the Baobab Tree” was shot on location by a U.S. director who did work in the same region two years earlier, receiving an Academy Award nomination for a piece in which he gave locals cameras to film their own stories. This is the first feature film in the Pulaar language, with a cast made up of local villagers playing roles that mirror their own lives: the two main characters are played by real-life sisters who actually are the first kids from their family to go to school. The actors’ improvisational approach culminates in a dramatic and uniquely authentic ensemble performance, with scenes often resulting in spontaneous truthful moments that blur the lines between fiction and reality. A highlight of this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival ‘Bright Futures’ section

SALT Dir. Diego Rougier. 112min. Narrative. 2011. Región de Tarapacá, Chile.

Sergio is a washed-up Spanish director, obsessed with making a western in Chile’s Atacama Desert (the driest place in the world).  Producers in Barcelona tear his screenplay to shreds, sending him on a journey to northern Chile in search of the inspiration that will salvage his story. Once Sergio arrives, however, he is mistaken for the region’s long-lost gunslinger hero, pitting him up against thugs involved with ‘shady business’ across the Bolivian border. The local crime boss suddenly has an old score to settle with him, and apparently so does his attractive wife. Sergio will have a good script…if he leaves alive.

“SALT” is the journey of an author becoming his own character and his impossible return. This gorgeous widescreen film pays loving homage to Sergio Leone while playfully subverting the old school western genre in modern South America. Rougier’s feature film debut has been winning awards around the world, including Best Film at First Time Fest in NY earlier this year.

For the complete lineup, visit Rural Route Film Festival

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