Besides showing films from all over the world, the festival is known to provide a forum for discussion, direct action and an opportunity to meet filmmakers, community organizers and activists. The festival’s past guests include Naomi Wolf, Ralph Nader, Amy Goodman, Alex Gibney, and Bernie Sanders who spoke at the Big Picture Theater. In recent years the focus has shifted from filmmakers and luminaries to social activists and community groups that give people a chance to get involved in direct action within the Vermont community.
This years festival will include Q&A’s with filmmakers Cecily Pingree, BETTING THE FARM, Eugene Jarecki, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, a climate panel discussion following CHASING ICE, and a panel discussion with environmental coalition Beyond Nuclear after THE ATOMIC STATES OF AMERICA screening.
The festival strives to use film to tell human stories that have the power to move and to educate. The MountainTop Film Festival offers an educational outreach program to area high schools and makes daytime screenings free and available for interested students and teachers. Students with valid ID attend the festival for free.
Festival founder and director Claudia Becker started the festival out of what was then the Eclipse Theater in 2003. She ended up buying the theater with her partner in crime documentary filmmaker Eugene Jarecki and has since turned it into the Big Picture Theater & Café: a movie theater, restaurant, event and community space. The mission was to “create a local gathering place with a global dimension” which the festival and theater have both become!
Opening night will feature Vermont resident and filmmaker Ed Pincus’ early work - BLACK NATCHEZ - a cinéma vérité account of the attempt to organize a black community in the Deep South in 1965 during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement.
Other films highlighting opening night are - CLOUDBURST - starring Oscar-winning actresses Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker, an aging gay couple who escape from a nursing home in Maine and drive to Nova Scotia on a quest to be legally married, - INSIDE STORY - about South Africa’s struggle with Aids, and a film about a small school in Kenya where hundreds of children are jostling at the chance for the free education newly promised by the government. A Mau Mau veteran in his eighties, who fought for the liberation of his country, feels he should have the chance of an education so long denied — even if it means sitting in a classroom alongside six-year-olds - THE FIRST GRADER -.
An opening night reception will be held in the lounge with live music by Anthony Santor and Friends and light refreshments from 6-8pm.
Films and events will run in both theaters starting at 3pm Friday-Monday (Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday) and 5pm Tuesday-Thursday. For a full schedule of events, film descriptions and to purchase tickets, please visit the festival website: http://www.mountaintopfilmfestival.com.
Tickets and festival passes are available at the Big Picture Theater Box Office or online through Brown Paper Tickets: http://www.mountaintopfilfest.bpt.me. Tickets are $8/6 and $10 for Special Event films.
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