Robert Redford as Dan Rather in ‘Truth’
LAURIE ANDERSON FILM ESSAY and ROBERT REDFORD’S DAN RATHER FEATURE HEADLINE FILMCOLUMBIA LINEUP
(CHATHAM and HUDSON, N.Y.) – FilmColumbia brings prize-winning films, including recent work by masters of modern cinema, to Columbia County for seven days from Monday, October 19, through Sunday, October 25. FilmColumbia will screen narrative and documentary features, animated and live-action short films and contenders by regional filmmakers at venues in both Chatham and Hudson.
Highlights include “Heart of a Dog,” a unique experimental essay on film by musician/performance artist/painter Laurie Anderson; “Truth,” starring Robert Redford as Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett as CBS producer and Peabody Award winner Mary Mapes, in a film based on the 2004 investigative reporting scandal that cost Rather his job at CBS; “Brooklyn,” based on the bestselling novel by Colm Toibin; “45 Years, “about a couple on the eve their 45th wedding anniversary who receive startling news that threatens the foundation of their marriage and starring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, who both won Best Acting Silver Bears this year at the Berlin Film Festival for their roles; and “The Lady in the Van,” based on Alan Bennett’s short story and hit play of the same name, starring Maggie Smith as Miss Shepherd, a bag lady who lived out of her van parked in Bennett’s driveway for 15 years.
Restaurateur Nancy Thomas (photo Jason Houston)
BERKSHIRE TRENDSETTERS to SPEAK at HEVREH
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) – Author Simon Winchester, publisher Ty Allan Jackson, restaurateur Nancy Thomas, and theater impresario Sara Katzoff are among a half dozen Berkshire trendsetters who will take part in the 2nd Annual BerkshireSPEAKS at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire on Sunday, October 18, at 1:30pm. Using the TED Talks model, the afternoon will feature brief presentations in which the feature guests will discuss their work, their passions and their visions for the future.
Melora Creager (photo Seth Rogovoy)
RASPUTINA BRINGS NEW LINEUP and ‘UNKNOWN’ TOUR to HELSINKI HUDSON
(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Melora Creager’s ever-evolving indie-rock cello band Rasputina returns to its hometown rock venue Club Helsinki Hudson on Thursday, October 15, at 8pm, as part of its “Unknown” tour, so named for the latest album of original material by the group, its first in six years. Since 1991, singer-songwriter and cellist Melora Creager – who calls Hudson home — has been exploring the affinities among modern rock, cello, and Victorian folk with Rasputina. Her original songs connect the dots between Renaissance madrigals and Nirvana-like grunge-rock. In fact, Creager toured as a cellist with Nirvana on the group’s final European tour.
Tara Franklin plays Ruth, one of the greatest female roles in modern drama, in Harold Pinter’s ‘Homecoming’ at BTG
PINTER CLASSIC ‘THE HOMECOMING’ GETS BTG STAGING
(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) – “The Homecoming,” one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, by Harold Pinter, one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, runs at Berkshire Theatre Group’s Unicorn Theatre now through Sunday, October 25, at 2pm. The play, ostensibly about a family reunion, written in 1964 by the Nobel Prize-winning playwright and first staged in London in 1965 and on Broadway, where it won a Tony Award for Best Play, in 1967, is often considered the quintessential of Pinter’s “comedy of menace” plays, which gave birth the term “Pinteresque.”
Donnetta Lavinia Grays
NEW PLAY ‘VEILS’ GETS REGIONAL PREMIERE at BSC
(PITTSFIELD, MA)— “Veils,” a new play by Tom Coash that deals with acceptance and discrimination, gets is regional premiere at Barrington Stage Company now through Sunday, October 18. Directed by Leah C. Gardiner (BSC debut), the production stars Hend Ayoub (Samar) and Donnetta Lavinia Grays (Intisar), in their BSC debuts.
Carl Hancock Rux and Theo Bleckmann
CARL HANCOCK RUX and THEO BLECKMANN PERFORM ‘THE EXALTED’ at BARD
(ANNANDALE-on-HUDSON, N.Y.) – Writer/performer Carl Hancock Rux and composer/musician Theo Bleckmann perform their two-man show, “The Exalted” – the story of the last days of German-Jewish art historian Carl Einstein, one of the first critics to affirm the importance of African sculpture, thus influencing the development of Cubism and the European avant-garde – at the Fisher Center at Bard College on Friday, October 16, and Saturday, October 17, at 7:30 p.m. Through music, video, text and installation, Rux and Bleckmann re-imagine the atrocities of occupation, the ‘discovery’ of African art by the West, and Einstein’s dream-like encounter with a metaphysical Diorama, as a metaphor for survival and self preservation.
FRED EAGLESMITH’S TRAVELING STEAM SHOW SWINGS BACK into HELSINKI HUDSON
(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Fred Eaglesmith’s Traveling Steam Show rolls back into Club Helsinki Hudson on Saturday, October 17, at 9pm. A longtime favorite of Helsinki audiences, rootsy singer-songwriter Eaglesmith headlines this old-fashioned roadshow, which includes an opening set by singer-songwriter Tiffani “Tif” Ginn, who is also a member of Eaglesmith’s band.
Acclaimed singer, songwriter and bandleader Eaglesmith is a genuine iconoclast and true original. He’s also hysterically funny, and a Fred Eaglesmith concert is nearly as much a stand-up comedy show as it is a musical performance.
A still from ‘Very Semi-Serious’
FILM FESTIVAL SHINES SPOTLIGHT on NONFICTION WORKS
(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – Wind-Up Fest, the rebooted version of the Williamstown Film Festival, kicks off on Thursday, October 15, with “Olmo and the Seagull,” directed by Petra Costa and Lea Glob, followed by an opening night party with Northampton music favorites And The Kids offering up “apocalyptic pop” along with The Sun Parade. The festival will also include filmmaker Luke Meyer (“Breaking a Monster”), Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert (“The Sixth Extinction”), New Yorker cartoonist Bruce Eric Kaplan (BEK), award-winning cinematographer Kirsten Johnson, radio man Scott Carrier (“This American Life”), dancers Monica Bill Barnes & Anna Bass, and more. Events take place throughout Williamstown and North Adams, at various locations on the Williams College campus, at MASS MoCA, Images Cinema, and at restaurants and other venues.