BELLOWS FALLS-A film series centered on resistance, activism, and related politics launches in September for four Thursdays at Bellows Falls Opera House (BFOH).
Each film a documentary and each produced by Green Mountain Post (GMP) Films, the series - "Movies About Changing the World" - chronicles the people at the center of this culture, known or unknown, as well as pivotal events, actions, and movements that have had a lasting effect on today's sociopolitical scene.
[See column for interview with Guilford filmmaker and Green Mountain Post Films co-founder Charles Light.]
• The series opens Sept. 4 with a six-minute short, Waves in the Woods, about the tenacity and resilience of Vermonters in the face of Tropical Storm Irene's floods, followed by Far Out: Life On and After the Commune.
An 85-minute documentary, Far Out opened a year ago to a month's worth of full houses at Brattleboro's Latchis Theatre and has since played movie houses from Amherst, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles.
With contemporary interviews and footage shot over several decades, the film tells the story of two communal farms - one at Packer Corners in Guilford, the other in Montague, Massachusetts - from their founding in the summer of 1968 by a group of radical journalists from New York City's Liberation News Service.
Of Far Out, the Portland Press Herald reported: "Not shying away from the ingrained blind spots and prejudices (homophobia and sexism were inescapable themes) that mark even the most outwardly progressive groups, 'Far Out' features interviews with the aging but still involved former residents as they relate how they worked to make these communal living spaces truly equal."
Joining Light for a discussion after the film will be Verandah Porche, poet and longtime resident of Packer Corners; and Patty Carpenter, who composed and performed most of the original music.
• Sept. 11's showing is Lovejoy's Nuclear War (1975), a 61-minute documentary that, as described on greenmountainpostfilms.com, tells of the "earliest major act of civil disobedience against atomic power": Sam Lovejoy's winning fight the previous year "to warn his community of impending danger" and his destruction of a 500-foot weather tower that was an early part of a local utility's "attempt to build one of the largest nuclear power plants ever planned."
The filmmakers describe Save the Planet, on the same bill, as "a fast-paced montage film history of the atomic age, a unique documentary" originally shown at the 1979 Madison Square Garden No Nukes concerts.
Sam Lovejoy, Montague Farm resident and anti-nuclear activist, will join filmmakers Light and Dan Keller, Green Mountain Post co-founder, for a post-film discussion.
• On Sept. 18, the anti-nuclear theme endures with The Last Resort (1977), a 62-minute film described on GMP's website as "chronicl[ing] the fight over the controversial nuclear power plant at Seabrook, New Hampshire."
Also showing: Early Warnings, a 17-minute short from the era that depicts the events at Seabrook and "presents a tight outline of the anti-nuclear case, as well as a look into one of the movement's most inspiring moments - its biggest and best-publicized rally before Three Mile Island."
Light, Keller, and Lovejoy will host a discussion after the film.
• The series' focus switches to the Vietnam War on Sept. 25 with Vietnam: The Secret Agent, which employs war footage and interviews with "veterans, scientists, attorneys, the U.S. Air Force, the Veterans Administration, Dow Chemical, and more," as described in the filmmakers' synopsis of the 1983 56-minute documentary, to document the "extraordinary history of chemical warfare, agricultural herbicides, damage to the world environment, and the plight of Vietnam veterans and their families" seeking treatment for exposure to Agent Orange.
The evening also offers a lens to the horrors of that war in a 30-minute music video, The Vietnam Experience, which the San Francisco Chronicle called "a gripping mix of wartime and post-war film footage, without commentary, except for anti-war songs by Country Joe McDonald," who co-produced and co-directed the film with Keller. In its 1987 review, the newspaper called the film "more harrowing and more eloquent than all the Hollywood movies on that subject."
"Movies about Changing the World" is presented by special arrangement with Bellows Falls Films and Rockingham Entertainment Development with Green Mountain Post Films. Tickets are $18 per evening or $54 for all four dates.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and each evening's films begin at 7 p.m. or soon thereafter.
For more information about the series, visit bellowsfallsoperahouse.com/special-events. For more information about the films, visit greenmountainpostfilms.com.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.