Panels

DIRECTORS ON DIRECTING

Broken Wings Barn at White Feather Farm  Fri Sept 30  12:00pm

Meet some of today’s most prolific filmmakers as they discuss in depth their directorial choices and

process, both in the documentary and narrative

space.

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MODERATOR

Geralyn White Dreyfous has a wide, distinguished background in the arts, extensive experience in consulting in the philanthropic sector, and is the Founder and Board Chair of the Utah Film Center.

PANELISTS

Oscar, BAFTA and Emmy nominee Ramin Bahrani is the Iranian-American writer, director of such films as Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo, 99 Homes and The White Tiger.

Roger Ross Williams Oscar and Emmy Award-winning director, producer and writer, and the first African American director to win an Academy Award®, with his film Music By Prudence.

Ondi Timoner’s work focuses on “impossible visionaries.” She’s won the Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize twice - for Dig! and We Live in Public, both which MoMA-NY acquired. Other films: Join Us, Cool It, Brand, Jungletown, Coming Clean, and Mapplethorpe starring Matt Smith.

CHAT with this year’s Fiercely Independent Award recipient DEBRA GRANIK

Broken Wings Barn at White Feather Farm  Sat Oct 1  10:00am

CHAT with this year’s Fiercely Independent Award recipient filmmaker DEBRA GRANIK

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MODERATOR

Film critic and bestselling novelist Thelma Adams has spent three decades in entertainment journalism and was twice chair of the New York Film Critics Circle.

Since Debra Granik’s Down to the Bone played WFF in 2004, she’s defined fiercely independent. She later directed Winter’s Bone, Leave No Trace and Stray Dog. We’ll discuss career choices, contemporary filmmaking, and what’s currently obsessing a filmmaker known for her storytelling chops, humanism and a keen eye for talent. [See pg 35 for full bio]

WOMEN IN FILM: Then and Now

Presented in collaboration with New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT) Broken Wings Barn at White Feather Farm  Sat Oct 1  12:00pm

When festival founder Meira Blaustein and noted critic Thelma Adams programmed their “Amazing Women in Film” panel for the first time in 2004, the morning events were the B-side of the male-heavy producer’s panel that followed. The audience was all women. And they were curious and engaged. Over the years, the panel gathered notable high-profile women directors, producers, and actors. And we began a dialogue that started in that quiet corner at Utopia Studios, and then blossomed with each new year, becoming part of a wave of advocacy for the women’s gaze in the media. Where did we come from, how far have we gotten, and what can we manifest for the future? That’s the goal of this now popular panel that began in relative obscurity and fought to be heard.

Additional Panelists TBA

MODERATOR

Thelma Adams Film critic and bestselling novelist Thelma Adams has spent three decades in entertainment journalism and was twice chair of the New York Film Critics Circle.

PANELISTS

Karen Allen is a theatre and film actor and director. She has made over 50 films as an actor starting with Animal House, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Starman and Scrooged and most recently A Year By the Sea, Colewell and A Stage of Twilight. She has directed in the theatre for the past 12 years and directed her first film in 2017, A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud based on a Carson McCullers short story.

Julie Goldman is an Oscar-nominated and Emmy Award-winning producer and executive producer of documentary features and series, including The Mole Agent, In The Same Breath, The Velvet Underground, A Thousand Cuts, One Child Nation, Life, Animated, to name a few.

Broken Wings Barn at White Feather Farm  Sat Oct 1  2:00pm

CHAT with this year’s

Trailblazer Award

recipient and IFC Film’s

President ARIANNA

BOCCO moderated by

Marianne Koltai-Levine

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MODERATOR

Marianne Koltai - Levine President of Marketing and Communications at AGBO, with an esteemed track record of representing highly regarded directors, producers and production company including the Russo Brothers and AGBO.

Arianna Bocco is the President of IFC Films. Previously, she has spent over a decade overseeing acquisitions for IFC Films and IFC Midnight, the multiplatform film distribution labels owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc. [See pg 35 for full bio]

Broken Wings Barn at White Feather Farm  Sat Oct 1  4:00pm

Ethan Hawke in a talk

with John Sloss about

his unparalleled

career and what’s in

store going forward.

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MODERATOR

John Sloss is an entertainment lawyer, film producer, talent manager, sales agent, and founder of Cinetic Media, whose credits include The Velvet Underground, Green Book, Boyhood, I’m Not There, Before Sunset, and Far from Heaven, among others.

Ethan Hawke is a four-time Academy Award® nominated artist and one of Hollywood’s most multi-faceted stars: actor, screenwriter, director, producer, and best-selling novelist. This year’s Maverick Award honoree. [See pg 34 for full bio]

FILMMAKERS RESIDENCY / INCUBATOR SHOWCASE First Annual Woodstock Filmmakers Residency Showcase

Broken Wings Barn at White Feather Farm  Sun Oct 2  4:00pm

Meet several extraordinary emerging filmmakers and preview their diverse slate of work-in-progress feature films — projects that live in that provocative space between dramatic and

documentary; between social justice and fine storytelling; between timely and timeless. The residents spent a month living together at the Theoria Foundation in Woodstock, developing their projects with professional mentorship.

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MODERATOR

Alex Smith, is a screenwriter, filmmaker, fiction writer and educator. He and his twin brother Andrew wrote and directed the feature films Walking Out, Winter In The Blood, and The Slaughter Rule. Alex is an Associate Professor of Fiction Film at the University of Utah and the Artistic Director of The Woodst ock Film Festival Filmmakers Residency / Incubator.

PANELISTS

Natalie Zimmerman, whose work has been exhibited worldwide, is a Bay Area-based filmmaker and educator, with a focus on social issues and climate change activism.

Erica Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American raised in California, belongs to the modern diaspora that seeks to transform generational trauma into a reclaimed sense of belonging, using film as her medium to explore other cultures.

Nirav Bhakta, whose zero-budget short films focus on the immigrant experience, is an award-winning director, actor, and writer who grew up as an undocumented immigrant living in motels.

Adewale Olukayode is a writer, director, educator, and comedian, born in Lagos, Nigeria, and raised in New York, whose films address themes of justice, transformation and healing.