Local Luminary

Meira Blaustein

by Jay Blotcher and photographs by David Cunningham, August 27, 2009

"Fiercely independent” is not a mere slogan for The Woodstock Film Festival (September 30 to October 4), which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. A scrappy, idealistic spirit infuses every screening, reception, discussion panel and musical performance planned for the annual five-day event.

If not the industry leader that Sundance is, neither has WFF compromised its progressive values for the sake of growth. At the helm since the beginning, film festival veteran Meira Blaustein, WFF co-founder with husband Laurent Rejto, spends the year attending film festivals across the globe to build her program. (Selections are augmented by submissions of nearly 2,000 films, of which 120-140 eventually are booked.) For yet another autumn, the town of Woodstock—and the neighboring towns of Rhinebeck, Hunter and Rosendale—will play host to indie film stars and cinephiles alike in a low-budget but high-energy movie lovefest. Our festival preview coverage begins on page 30. The festival’s 2009 screening schedule is online at www.woodstockfilmfestival.com.

Two months before the festival begins, Meira Blaustein took a break from the signature chaos of her work as festival director at WFF’s Mill Hill Road office in Woodstock to reflect on a milestone anniversary she never expected to see.

A decade ago, if someone said you’d be celebrating 10 years of The Woodstock Film Festival, how would you have reacted?
I’m sure I would have said that the person is crazy. I remember so well in 2000, when we first came to Woodstock, and we talked to just a few locals and struck the notion of playing a film festival here. People thought it was the most wonderful thing on the face of the earth. It doesn’t often happen that way. Here, because of the nature of the community, because of the nature of the event and organization, because of what we had already in place, and because of where things were at, at that particular moment in time, everything just jelled so beautifully and so quickly. It’s not to say that immediately we began with all the money in the world. That was certainly very far from the truth; we had no money. But what we had was the enthusiasm and true interest and true love of everyone involved.

Was there a philosophy for the festival from the beginning?
It was really about bringing the arts and culture of the 21st century—film and new media—to a community that has supported the arts for over a hundred years. While music and theater and painting and poetry and culture have been the mainstay in this artist community for so many years, film was still a new notion—and yet it is the contemporary art form. From the very beginning, we had three specific focuses: music, political, and environmental issues.