Editor

The Rural Route tour is set to kick out great dates in 2013!

That includes Iowa shows in Donna Reed’s hometown of Denison and across the state at the spiffy Oneota Film Festival in Decorah.  We dip down in the desert to Oro Valley Library, AZ, then come back SE with a mini Appalachian tour that includes stops at Abingdon Community College in VA, Appalshop in KY, and Mechanical Eye in Asheville, NC.  Later on, shows back east at universities and art spaces in Boston and Philly, with more to come soon…!

Other big news is that the Rural Route tour program is available on Tugg.com, the online booking source that lets anyone anywhere create a film event w/Tugg’s help and promote it to get the required RSVPs to put on the show!  Check out the RR Tugg page and read more about how it works here.

Book yer dates now for this year’s killer ‘best of/shorts’ tour program!  You can browse program details here! We also invite you to look through our feature programming to mix & match in creating a more extensive mini-festival of your own.  This year alone we were chosen as a critic’s pick by Time Out NY, NY Times, Gothamist & Flavorpill, so you can be assured the content is solid!  (We also have more ‘green/ag’ films available – just ask!)

“’Eat locally, think globally’ would make a good theme for this edition...” -Steve Dollar wrote in the Wall Street Journal, and you’ll see his point through homegrown U.S. features like Rudd Simmons’ 1st time farmer doc, “The First Season”, and “A Man Named Pearl”, the inspiring story of a racial boundary-defying S. Carolina topiary artist.  A bit further away, you’ll find 1st time Indian director Ajay Singh’s family friendly, “Upside Down”, Roberts Rubins’ stylish Latvian doc about a misfit/self-taught teenage filmmaker, “How are You Doing, Rudolf Ming?”, and award-winning Tibetan director, Pema Tseden’s first film, “The Grassland”, about an old nomadic couple searching for their stolen yak.  Also note that we have 2 films from famed ethnographer, Robert Gardner, in our ‘best of’ line-up; 2013 will be the 50th anniversary of Gardner’s break through full-length, “Dead Birds”, which we also encourage in combination w/the ‘best of/shorts’ if it fits your bill.  And, one of our favorite films of the year, “Now, Forager” continues to garner critical nods with a ‘best director(s)’ nom at the Gotham Awards and screenings through fungi-friendly Europe and in the U.S.; read Ebert’s review here