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FILM FESTIVAL CELEBRATES 15 YEARS OF INNOVATIVE FILMS IN ONE OF AMERICA’S GREAT SMALL ART TOWNS

Brattleboro Vermont, lying between the West and Connecticut Rivers with lush, dramatic Mount Wantastiquet as a backdrop, is listed as one of the Top Ten Art Towns with populations less than 30,000 (The 100 Best Art Towns In America, by John Villani). Only a three and a half hour drive from New York City and two hours from Boston, Brattleboro is also referred to as “the college town without a college.” Perhaps because considering the size of this funky, welcoming town, it has unusually strong offerings: great coffee houses and a bakery café, a number of excellent independent bookstores, galleries and interesting shops, ethnic restaurants--including Thai, Korean, Lebanese and Indian--several upscale restaurants (notably: the sublime Peter Havens and charming red dining car which is TJ Buckley’s), a wine bar, two brew pubs, and an art cinema and hotel housed in an Art Deco building called The Latchis. It is also known for a wide and eclectic array of year-round artistic events and live performances in the music, literary, theater, puppet and circus arts.

Brattleboro is also home to the Women’s Film Festival, which for 15 years not only has rooted out, selected, and screened films by and about women, but has enthralled, educated and galvanized the sold-out audiences who have come to watch them. This year’s festival also promises to create excitement and discovery for filmgoers who can choose from over 20 films—several of which have already garnered awards from film festivals such as those in Berlin and Cannes—to be shown over three weekends from Friday, March 3-Sunday, March 19. “A lot of attention was given to showcasing films that address many aspects of women’s lives,” festival coordinator, Marilyn Buhlmann said, “whether it be in sports, political activism, health, sexuality, history or music.”

The festival spans a range of subjects and style: from the Double Dutch Divas!, a documentary featuring middle-aged women who are seen in show-stopping jump-roping performances in the US and abroad, to A Rape in a Small Town: The Florence Holway Story about a 76-year-old women attacked in her New Hampshire home who not only survived, but affected change in the criminal justice system.

Whether it be the world-renowned, and deaf, percussionist Evelyn Glennie demonstrating how she feels sound through her body in Touch the Sound, African-American midwives in Bringin’ in Da Spirit, a transgendered female on a women’s national mountain biking team in 100% Woman, or Sophie Scholl, an Academy Award nominated film about Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroine, the Women’s Film Festival presents rich, complex, and often surprising, perspectives about women of all ages from the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, South Africa, Nicaragua, Turkey and France.

Opening night of the festival, Friday, March 3, coincides with Brattleboro’s monthly Gallery Walk and will feature an art exhibition and silent auction, Visions and Voices, and a gala reception at the Sanctuary: Hooker-Dunham Theater & Gallery at 139 Main Street. The art opening and reception will take place from 5 to 7:45 PM.

Following the reception, there will be a showing of the festival’s first film, V-Day: Until the Violence Stops, at 8 PM at the Sanctuary: Hooker-Dunham Theater. This film that captures spirited events and performances around the world on “V-Day,” a global, grassroots movement to end violence against women and girls founded by playwright/performer Eve Ensler.
www.womensfilmfestival.org.