About Woods Hole Film Festival...Festival-goers can still see as many films as time allows! There are also Q&As with filmmakers, panel discussions, workshops, parties featuring some of the best Cape Cod musical acts, and master classes, including one with Oscar winning Filmmaker-In-Residence Doug Blush for such documentaries as 20 FEET FROM STARDOM, THE ELEPHANT WHISPERERS, and PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE (he also executive produced three of this year's festival entries).
Many films will also be available for streaming on the Festival's virtual platform from August 4-11.
Check out Blue Green Union at Redfield Auditorium, a naturally dyed textile installation printed with seaweed and created for the first of many installations as part of Water World on Water Street©, an immersive experience transforming the street and landscape to integrate the sea and land, highlighting the delicate ecological nature of Cape Cod.
Be among the first in the world to see THE COMPATRIOTS, writer/director (and Wayland, MA resident) Spencer Cohen's debut, filmed in Brighton, Natick, Milton, Wayland and Worcester. It's a loosely autobiographical DACA and Dreamers-themed film about an undocumented immigrant facing imminent deportation, who reunites with his long-lost best friend. They hatch a plan to marry to help keep the Dreamer's status.
Several films star recognizable actors. Josh Radnor ("How I Met Your Mother") stars in a pair of films: Haroula Rose's ALL HAPPY FAMILIES, a comedy about a dysfunctional family gathering in Chicago, and Jane Weinstock's THREE BIRTHDAYS, about a family wrestling with revolutionary ideas around sex, race, and class in the 1970s. In Tyrrell Shaffner's narrative film KATIE'S MOM, the character played by Aaron Dominguez (Selena Gomez's love interest in "Only Murders in the Building") gets seduced by his girlfriend's mother, who tells the story from her point of view in a twist on the Mrs. Robinson character. Portland, Maine couple Matt Cascella and Jennifer Cordery's HANGDOG, about a couple who move to Portland from New York, stars Catherine Chilton (Wanda Bell in "Orange is the New Black," "Stranger Things," "Insecure") and Desmin Bourges ("You're the Worst").
The festival also attracts films shot on Cape Cod, so area residents will find several films of interest. In the mystery/thriller CROOKEDFINGER by Julia Halperin and Jason Cortlund a woman returns to her Cape Cod childhood home after her parents' sudden death and is forced to work with her estranged brother as they settle their parents affairs. Frequent festival participant and Boston filmmaker Mark Kiefer's latest short comedy, THE DAY KEEPER, about a Cape Cod lighthouse keeper who struggles to keep his own inner light shining, was shot in Woods Hole at the iconic Nobska Lighthouse. Charlie Norton's short drama THE LOST WEEKEND, which portrays a teenage boy grappling with his own definition of masculinity, was shot in Sandwich.
As part of the Film and Science Initiative, the Festival includes a substantial number of science-focused films that encompass its Bringing Science to the Screen program. Niobe Thompson's documentary HUNT FOR THE OLDEST DNA, in which scientists discovered the oldest DNA ever found while examining dirt (as opposed to fossils), reveals the genes of long-extinct creatures in the Arctic (August 1). David Baker's THE WONDER AND THE WORRY follows the careers of former National Geographic Magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Johns and his photographer daughter, who together examine the soul of journalism and its role in preserving the planet. Actor Ted Danson narrates FOLLOW THE JOURNEY directed by Martha's Vineyard residents Liz Witham and Ken Wentworth. The work-in-progress screening chronicles a group of endangered North Atlantic right whales on an epic journey from Florida to the Canadian Maritimes.
Venues include Redfield Auditorium, Cornelia Clapp Auditorium and Meigs Room at the MBL, and the Woods Hole Community Hall in Woods Hole, and Morse Hall at Falmouth Academy.