Some selected photos by Chris LaFountain, Rick Marshall, and Jordan Craig from Sleepless in Lake Placid showcase.

Congratulations to Team Marist for winning the Robin Pell award and RIT for winning Audience Choice. Also congrats to Jessica Marshall for winning Best Actress in Marist’s “Allure” and Chris LaFountain for winning Best Actor in the same movie.   

Here are some photos by Jordan Craig featuring Nathan Farb! 

Some photos by Jordan Craig from Day 1 of the Lake Placid Film Forum! 

Today we have a full slate: starting with First Cousin Once Removed, Fairhaven with director Tom O’Brien, Syrup, Nathan Farb’s Home Movies, and concluding with the Sleepless in Lake Placid student competition!  

Here’s today’s schedule and descriptions. 

The Go Digital or Go Dark campaign stops at the Lake Placid Film Forum.  From ANCA’s newsletter: 

The 2013 Lake Placid Film Forum, June 13-16, will focus on the role of independent theaters in a world of Netflix and wireless devices. 

 

The 13th annual Forum will host narrative and documentary features, special guests,“Coffee and Conversation,” the seventh Sleepless in Lake Placid film making competition, and the fifth North Country Shorts.  

Download a copy of the schedule here and the program here

The forum kicks off Wednesday, June 12 at dusk, with a free screening of “The Mountains Will Wait for You,” the  story of Grace Hudowalski, matriarch of the Adirondack 46ers club, at Mid’s Park off Main Street in Lake Placid. Director Fred Schwoebel will be there to share in his remarkable story. 

 

One of the centerpieces of this year’s Forum, “Coffee and Conversation,” at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 15, features the topic of arthouse convergence and how North Country Theaters can continue to play a vital part of the shared experience in the digital age. Special guest Ira Deutchman, Columbia University professor and Managing Partner of Emerging Pictures, a New York-based digital exhibition company, will lead a discussion about movie theaters adapting to new models and fording the current digital sea change, which ties into the current “Go Digital” Campaign that the Adirondack Film Society helped spearhead a year ago.

News and updates can be found on the Film Forum blog — http://lpfilmforum.com/ — and on Facebook. Tickets are sold at each venue at the screening time.  Passes for the entire event will be available online by visiting adkfilmsociety.com or calling 518-523-3456. 

Listen to an interview at WFPK after Dark with A Band Called Death directors Jeff Howlett and Mark Covino, and come see the movie tonight at 6:30 at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts!

—Dr. Seuss. Here are the elements for the 2013 Sleepless in Lake Placid student competition.

Hi everyone.  Well, here they are- this year’s elements.  As always, we tried to tie  these in with the Lake Placid region and with other aspects of the festival.  Hope you find them interesting, and I hope they free up your creativity rather than the opposite! Keep in mind that the goal here is to integrate these elements in as organic a way as possible with the other elements of your story, and not as items on a treasure hunt checklist.  We’ll talk a bit more about the difference between the two at the orientation.

A drum roll, please.  This year’s three required elements are:

1.  An opening quote about mountains, followed by an establishing shot of a mountainous, Adirondack skyline (see attached list of quotes).

2.  A scene with one or more people watching something on a device, oblivious to the world around them.

3.  A fishing lure.

Read the rest of Sleepless coordinator Barry Snyder’s requirements for the student competition.

Playing Tonight!

An outdoor screening?  Yes, please. (Hopefully this rain stops – if it doesn’t, the show will be at the High Peaks Resort in the Lakeside building.)  And what better film for an outdoor show than Fred Schwoebel’s The Mountains Will Wait For You, an inspiring, family-friendly documentary about the legendary Adirondack 46er club and one of its most influential members, Grace Hudowalski.

The movie will begin around dark.  Prior to screening, the director (who made the film over 20 years) will speak about his incredible experience.  Come down to Mid’s Park on Main Street in Lake Placid and pull up some lawn for this FREE event, a one-of-a-kind experience watching a movie under the stars, sharing a story about our own unique Adirondack Mountains.

Our opening night films will be shown in a basement.

That’s right.  That’s how we roll.

A Band Called Death and The Summit will play at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts on Thursday, June 13th starting at 6:30 PM downstairs…
in the basement.

Well, it’s also referred to as the “addition studio,” but we like “basement.”

Both of these films will play again throughout the weekend in a  more “normal” venue, but the downstairs screening (where fans got to watch the much-talked-about Joe Papp screening last year) is a unique experience.

Bring a flashlight, just in case.

P.S. Also screening in the underground lair will be American Masters: Mel Brooks – Make a Noise and Nathan Farb’s Home Movies.

Perfect.

Snowdysseus by Evan Curtis added to the North Country Shorts Program.

Snowdysseus is a stop motion animation that explores the vulnerability in Nostalgia for One’s Home. It is shot on location in the miniature snow-mountains of the Adirondacks.

Lake Placid Film Forum t-shirts! Prepared by the brilliant Chris Federico, who will have a bunch of these handsome suckers tomorrow at The Mountains Will Wait For You screening. 

For more info on the festival go to adkfilmsociety.com. 

Next week is the Lake Placid Film Forum!

We’re kicking off at Mid’s Park for a screening of The Mountains Will Wait For You. For trailers of the films, we’re screening click here; for a schedule, we’ve got you covered; and for all of our 2013 Lake Placid Film Forum related coverage, click here.

If you’re interested in the latest Hollywood offerings here is what will be playing at the Palace through next week. 

The Fast and Furious 6
7:00 ONLY
Hobbs has Dom and Brian reassemble their crew in order to take down a mastermind who commands an organization of mercenary drivers across 12 countries. Payment? Full pardons for them all. Starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibbons, Dwayne Johnson, and Michelle Rodriguez. Directed by Justin Lin.

The Internship (PG-13) 
7:00 & 9:30
MATINEES SAT. & SUN. at 2:15
Two salesmen whose careers have been torpedoed by the digital age find their way into a coveted internship at Google, where they must compete with a group of young, tech-savvy geniuses for a shot at employment. Starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, directed by someone. 

Epic (PG) 
7:00 ONLY 
MATINEES SAT. & SUN. at 2:15
A teenager finds herself transported to a deep forest setting where a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil is taking place. She bands together with a rag-tag group characters in order to save their world — and ours.

Now You See Me
7:00 & 9:30
MATINEES SAT. & SUN. at 2:15
An FBI agent and an Interpol detective track a team of illusionists who pull off bank heists during their performances and reward their audiences with the money. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, and Woody Harrelson. Directed by Louis Letterier.

STARTS TUES. JUNE 11TH
This Is The End (R) 
7:00 & 9:30 
While attending a party at James Franco’s house, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel and many other celebrities are faced with the apocalypse.Starring Jonah Hill, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride. Directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen.

Nathan Farb’s “Home Movies”.

You’ve seen his photographs featured in calendars, posters, and galleries throughout the area, but Nathan Farb is finally releasing some of his personal home movies.

Three of them to be exact.

Read the rest over at FADE IN. The Lake Placid Film Forum’s blog.
Photo by Jack Skinner.

Sometimes making a film is by the numbers.  Sometimes it is an odyssey – it may even span decades from concept to completion.

That’s the case with The Mountains Will Wait For You, the story of Grace Hudowalski, matriarch of the Adirondack 46ers club – an organization whose members climb the 46 peaks in the Adirondack Park.  Grace, the first woman to ascend all 46 peaks, was an avid proponent of members writing about their experiences, and corresponded with thousands of climbers – a feat in itself.  Director Fred Schwoebel’s incredible journey making the film was not unlike climbing the rugged peaks.  After many stops and starts and years of working on the film, as it turned out, the mountains had waited for him.

Come see the inspirational film which recently screened at the Conference Center in Lake Placid.  The screening will take place at Mid’s Park off of Main Street in Lake Placid.  Director Schwoebel describes this new venue as “nothing could be better than to watch the movie outdoors against a mountainous backdrop.”

The free screening will be on Wednesday, June 12 at dusk, and the director will be there to share in his remarkable story.

Here’s the poster for this year’s film forum! Also: here is a page o’trailers full of the movies we’re screening. 

Here is the film that won the Cannes We Made It short film contest. Done by Burlington College students, “One Day” features a homeless man living his wish to be one of the wealthy for a day.

The Cannes competition gives students a week to make a film that runs less than five minutes. Not as hardcore as our Sleepless competition but “One Day” is pretty well-made. 

It earned awards for Best Editing (Gretchen Schroeder), Best Script by DeWolfe Morrow and Joe Mulherin, and Best Actor (Kevin Marshall Pinkney). 

We heard Michael Fisher (Jonathan Volcrum in THE DEAL, and Sleepless participating actor) advised the same group last year at the Sleepless in Burlington competition.

Congrats!  

The schedule is being changed to make some repairs on the eighty-seven year old building so here we go: 

The Fast and Furious 6
7:00 ONLY
Hobbs has Dom and Brian reassemble their crew in order to take down a mastermind who commands an organization of mercenary drivers across 12 countries. Payment? Full pardons for them all. Starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibbons, Dwayne Johnson, and Michelle Rodriguez. Directed by Justin Lin.

The Hangover Part III (R) 
9:30 ONLY 
Apparently there was demand for a third one. “This time, there’s no wedding. No bachelor party. What could go wrong, right? But when the Wolfpack hits the road, all bets are off.” Starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zack Galifianakis. Directed by Todd Phillips.

Star Trek Into Darkness (PG-13)
9:30 ONLY
MATINEES SAT. & SUN. at 2:15
After the crew of the Enterprise find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction. Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Directed by the non-philosophical J.J. Abrams.

Epic (PG) 
7:00 ONLY 
MATINEES SAT. & SUN. at 2:15
A teenager finds herself transported to a deep forest setting where a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil is taking place. She bands together with a rag-tag group characters in order to save their world — and ours.

Now You See Me
7:00 & 9:30
MATINEES SAT. & SUN. at 2:15
An FBI agent and an Interpol detective track a team of illusionists who pull off bank heists during their performances and reward their audiences with the money. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, and Woody Harrelson. Directed by Louis Letterier.

Announcing the ever-growing list of actors participating in the Sleepless in Lake Placid student competition.  

More than a short film, really, “Monhegan Light” approaches the mid-length genre at almost thirty minutes running time.  The film was produced by a team of Ohio University students, led by Associate Professor Frederick Lewis (who executive produced) and directed by Joe Battaglia, an OU student.  Money was raised to produce the film ($18,000) which was shot on location in four days on Monhegan Island, Maine.

The story comes from Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo, and concerns a Hollywood cinematographer who receives a nude painting of his recently deceased wife in the mail. When he learns that the artist was his late wife’s lover for 10 summers, he journeys to Monhegan Island, where he is forced to see her through the eyes of another man.

The Lake Placid Film Forum will screen the film Saturday, June 15th during the North Country Shorts.  The late Anthony Lucas, a board member of the Adirondack Film Society, initiated the North Country Shorts program in 2007 and championed Frederick Lewis and his Ohio students for many years.  The screening of “Monhegan Light” honors Tony, his wife Ellena, and their invaluable contributions to our event.

Here is the complete schedule of events for the 2013 Lake Placid Film Forum.

We’re hoping it doesn’t change because it is only the two of us here and we’re not sure how we feel about cloning. 

Whitewash, starring Thomas Haden Church will be the closing night film for the Lake Placid Film Forum, Saturday, June 15 at 9:30pm in the newly converted digital theater at the Palace.

It was a colossal hit at the Tribeca Film Festival and here is Holly Voges describing it: 

The brutality of winter and the power of the mind are aptly portrayed in this dark comedy starring Thomas Haden Church. Bruce is lost. His wife has died and he lost his job. He is merely trying to survive a harsh Canadian winter when he meets Paul and only too late realizes the newcomer is more than he appears. When conflict leads to a death, Bruce finds himself even more isolated in the forests of Quebec, grappling with guilt and creating a prison from which he cannot escape. 

Director Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais co-wrote Whitewash with Marc Tulin, creating an intense and entertaining one-man show centered on the landscape of a guilty mind. Against the harsh terrain, Thomas Haden Church delivers a wry, captivating performance, illustrating that where the mind goes, the body follows. When Bruce begins to comprehend the possible consequences of his actions, he flees. However, much to his chagrin, and as Whitewash cleverly reveals, the worst possible punishment is often the one we construct for ourselves.