Day six of the Woods Hole Film Festival begins with a workshop on Visual Effects for Independent Films, at 3 p.m., at the Old Woods Hole Fire Station. Learn how to get the most for your visual effects money, and create professional, blockbuster images on an independent film budget.
The films begin at 5 p.m., with Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, showing at the MBL’s Lillie Auditorium. The documentary follows the acclaimed photographer, and delves into his use of detail and internal, implicit narrative to capture haunting, surreal images. Crewdson is famous for using technicians, special effects, and elaborate lighting, blurring the line between photography and film.
Also at 5, at Redfield Auditorium, check out the festival’s sixth installment of shorts, titled Backward and Forward.The six documentary and animated shorts highlight life, death, success, and survival in a variety of conditions.
Next up at Redfield, at 7 p.m., it’s Bay of All Saints, a documentary focusing on the people of Bahia, Brazil, who live in poverty, but are nonetheless willing to fight to save their homes. When the government threatens to drive them from the area around the bay, three single mothers who call the place their home decide to do whatever is necessary to keep what’s theirs.
Also at 7, back at Lillie, it’s Booster, a narrative feature examining the sometimes conflicting imperatives of family loyalty and individual freedom. When his brother is arrested, Simon must decide whether to help him get acquitted at any cost, even if it means embarking on the same criminal lifestyle.
Meanwhile, the Fire Station has The Light in Her Eyes, a documentary about one Syrian woman’s quest to educate girls in the Quran. Challenging contemporary interpretations of Islamic teachings, even as she uses the original texts to center girls in their faith, Gouda al-Habash established, and continues to run, a girls’ school in Damascus. Filmed right before the Syrian uprising began, the film is both timely and touching.
At 9 p.m., back at Redfield, check out The Selling, a horror-comedy hybrid in which a mild-mannered real estate agent is forced to sell a haunted house in order to save his sick mother, and himself.
And wrapping up day six, back at the Fire Station, it’s round seven of the shorts, All in the Family. The six narrative shorts included in the schedule center around the often rewarding, sometimes wearing obligations and expectations of family.