The Lake Placid Film Festival is built around education, networking, and watching movies. All three are united by a love of movies and experiencing stories through film. From the beginning, the film festival did away with red ropes, the barriers that are a standard method at many festivals of separating the public from the filmmakers. Removing such obstacles was a mantra of co-founder Kathleen Carrol when the festival started and remains true to this day.
Kathleen had attended hundreds of film festivals when the Lake Placid Film Festival (Forum) was founded 24 years ago. Growing up in Lake Placid, Kathleen was used to the public having access to Olympic and World Champion athletes who came to Lake Placid for competitions and training, as well as the many who lived here. The athletes, officials, and the public, many of whom were active volunteers, all shared a love of sport and working together to enable the athletes to do their best. Kathleen cherished that approach and thus sent the message of what to expect to the film industry she wooed to bring to Placid, a message they welcomed with open arms and do to this day.
“I love being at the Lake Placid Film Festival because it’s big, it has a lot of material, and many people,” said film producer Barbara de Fina. “It’s intimate enough that you can talk to people. Everybody is very accessible; it’s a great feeling to be here and talk with everyone. I always talk with the students; they are such a great group. Shorts, many made by the students, don’t always get shown; here, they show many of them and give out awards. So, the Film Festival has a great mix of films and filmmakers, including students and people.”
The Festival’s opening film was Miracle, the 20th-anniversary screening of the inspiring true story of how Herb Brooks and the young U.S. men’s hockey team took on and beat the heavily favored Soviet team during the 1980 Olympics. Attending was Buzz Schneider, a pivotal member of the U.S. squad. He took questions from the audience and chatted before and after the screening with the many fans who came to meet him.
“The screening provides a lot of nostalgia for me,” said Jeff Potter, a co-founder of the annual Miracle hockey camp held at the Olympic Center. “It’s always great to see Buzz back here in Lake Placid, and the screening provides an opportunity to celebrate the legacy of the 1980 team once again. You can’t imagine what it would be like if that moment hadn’t happened; what would Lake Placid be like today? Great is seeing so many younger kids coming to see the movie tonight; that legacy continues when you see an eight-year-old kid who is only living through that moment through this movie.”
Many of the educational sessions were very well attended, such as the Art of Adaption, led by Nathalie Thill and Jacob Kruger, and How to Write Your Best Story, led by Pamela Cederquist. Another well-attended seminar was Made Upstate: Building a Crew Base. Hosting a film production in a community can have a significant economic impact, as did the Ninja Turtle filming in Tupper Lake and Succession in Lake Placid.
Eric Granger, head of the Greater Adirondack Film Commission, faces a challenge in landing such opportunities when he can’t provide the full range of tech support desired. “Producers love the beauty of our region, but that’s not enough to get them to come,” said Granger.
The presenters Yoni Bokser, Shaelyn Giampetroni and Jerry Stoeffhass from the New York state Governor’s of Motion Picture & Television Development and Beth Davenport of Stockade Works, shared how they were working to address that challenge and the many opportunities available, especially when partnering with a public university and veteran agencies. For example, they have been working with upstate colleges to train students to create film costumes. They pointed out that veterans have many transferable skills that can be valuable in film production. They urged people to look at the vast array of jobs outlined in the film credits and to reach out to Granger if they had an interest or ability to fill any of them.
The Festival closed with another packed house, this for the documentary Nathan Farb and the Cold War, directed by Nathaniel Knop. The film provided a deep dive into Farb’s growth as a photographer, shifting from covering the early sixties in New York City to his move up here, where, with his large format 8“x10” Deardorff camera, he developed a well-deserved reputation as one of the foremost nature photographers in the U.S. The other aspect was the outcome of Farb’s participation in the 1977 landmark Photography in the USA exhibition in Novosibirsk, Russia, where he photographed over 200 Soviets from all walks of life and sent home the negatives in diplomatic pouches. In 2017, Farb returned and connected with many whose portraits he took in ’77, shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“There were certain similarities, said Farb. “In Russia, I saw older men with WWII medals on their jackets; they were scarred veterans who looked just like the WWII veterans I saw as a boy in the American Legion in Lake Placid. That’s what my work was about at that time. I was trying to share the similarities and bring back what I saw without interference.”
To Farb’s surprise, he found the people were as diverse in their dress as we in the U.S., be they farmers, shopkeepers, families with kids, two girlfriends, or people in business attire. On his return to Novosibirsk in 2017, everyone had cell phones, but while they were open about many things, some were guarded, and others felt some “small” war to be unleashed. Change was in the air.
“Nathan, thank you for revealing so much of yourself,” said Martha Swan. “There is something so poignant and powerful, not in just seeing the historic photographs of the 70s, but to hear these people talk about what it meant, the hours they walked, distances they traveled, the clothes they put on to have their photograph taken.”
“We had tremendous participation in all the seminars, the student programs, and overall for the films,” said Gary Smith, artistic director. “We have sent many enthusiastic ambassadors out into the world. Larry Jackson, one of our board members, said this was the best selection of films he has seen. I think we did great. We are very proud of it and glad it’s over. In a week, we’ll start work on organizing for next year.”
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