WRIF wants to make these films as accessible as possible--use the discount code WRIF2021FORALL if you're a student or need accessible pricing. If you have purchased a pass, make sure you're logged into your account to claim your $0 ticket.
The light of Vermont, with its own texture, minutely unique to everyone, is refracted across three films by filmmakers embedded deeply in its glow. These films represent ‘documentary’ in the broadest, most essentially evocative sense. Seeming translucent, Nature’s Optical Toy spins through the visual delights of a Spring morning. Man of the Land proves that preserving an endangered mode of living is as complicated as baling hay. Susan Bettman crafted a supreme example of audio-visual ethnography, encapsulating the fleeting brilliance of an increasingly rare man like Joe Picard. It is a mode of documentation that vanishes daily even as our need for it skyrockets. Self taught, Rich Fedorchak may be the quintessential experimental filmmaker of a purely Vermont ethos. His film, an epic distillation of years of living and breathing in the Upper Valley, demonstrates, perhaps more than any imaginable piece of art, how necessary it is to live, not just to breathe.
This film is about the work of Joe Picard caring for the land in the Vermont town, Middlesex, where he was raised. Plowing snow, haying, cutting firewood and more, Joe's knowledge of tending the land throughout the seasons represents an intimacy with nature that, in our contemporary computer age, is fast dying out. His work ethic is informed by his Native American and French Canadian heritage.
- Year2020
- Runtime31 minutes
- DirectorSusan Bettmann
WRIF wants to make these films as accessible as possible--use the discount code WRIF2021FORALL if you're a student or need accessible pricing. If you have purchased a pass, make sure you're logged into your account to claim your $0 ticket.
The light of Vermont, with its own texture, minutely unique to everyone, is refracted across three films by filmmakers embedded deeply in its glow. These films represent ‘documentary’ in the broadest, most essentially evocative sense. Seeming translucent, Nature’s Optical Toy spins through the visual delights of a Spring morning. Man of the Land proves that preserving an endangered mode of living is as complicated as baling hay. Susan Bettman crafted a supreme example of audio-visual ethnography, encapsulating the fleeting brilliance of an increasingly rare man like Joe Picard. It is a mode of documentation that vanishes daily even as our need for it skyrockets. Self taught, Rich Fedorchak may be the quintessential experimental filmmaker of a purely Vermont ethos. His film, an epic distillation of years of living and breathing in the Upper Valley, demonstrates, perhaps more than any imaginable piece of art, how necessary it is to live, not just to breathe.
This film is about the work of Joe Picard caring for the land in the Vermont town, Middlesex, where he was raised. Plowing snow, haying, cutting firewood and more, Joe's knowledge of tending the land throughout the seasons represents an intimacy with nature that, in our contemporary computer age, is fast dying out. His work ethic is informed by his Native American and French Canadian heritage.
- Year2020
- Runtime31 minutes
- DirectorSusan Bettmann
