BRATTLEBORO — The Latchis Theatre announces the return of its Off the Beaten Path film series, which showcases recent films that might have slipped under the radar but are worth seeing.
The series, presented with the Brattleboro Film Festival, continues each weekend through Jan. 3 and 4, 2015, with films for a variety of tastes, including a wickedly funny psychodrama, a timely comedy-drama about the issue of race, and an absorbing and deeply personal documentary about surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden.
“We love our Hollywood blockbusters like 'The Hunger Games' and 'The Penguins of Madagascar,' but they're not everyone's taste in films. Some people like a little more steak with their sizzle, and for them we've uncovered these wonderful films,” said Latchis Executive Director Jon Potter.
Potter said the first Off the Beaten Path series, this summer, was very popular and exceeded the organization's expectations, “so we knew we had to bring it back.”
The latest series features “Force Majeure” on Dec. 20 and 21, “Dear White People” on Dec. 27 and 28, and “Citizenfour” on Jan. 3 and 4, 2015.
A critical favorite and word-of-mouth sensation at this year's Cannes Film Festival, where it took the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard, “Force Majeure” (Rated R) is a wickedly funny and precisely observed psychodrama.
It tells the story of a model Swedish family - handsome businessman Tomas, his willowy wife, Ebba, and their two blond, pre-teen children - on a skiing holiday in the French Alps. The sun is shining and the slopes are spectacular but, during lunch at a mountainside restaurant, an avalanche turns everything upside down.
Off the Beaten Path continues on Dec. 27 and 28 with the comedy-drama “Dear White People.” At prestigious Winchester University, biracial student Samantha White begins her radio show, “Dear White People: The amount of black friends required not to seem racist has just been raised to two. Sorry: Your weed man, Tyrone, doesn't count.”
Sam becomes president of the all-black residential hall Parker/Armstrong, which faces extinction in the name of diversification. TV reality show “Black Face/White Place” sees gold in Sam's story and decides to follow it, rejecting the proposal of fellow black student Coco Conners, who pitched her show, “Doing Time at an Ivy League.”
The clamor over Sam's rise also becomes a career-defining opportunity for black misfit Lionel Higgins when he is asked to join the school's lily-white newspaper staff to cover the controversy, even though he secretly knows little about black culture. Directed by Justin Simen, “Dear White People” is Rated R.
The series concludes on Jan. 3 and 4, 2015, with the compelling documentary “Citizenfour.” In January 2013, filmmaker Laura Poitras was in the process of constructing a film about abuses of national security in post-9/11 America when she started receiving encrypted e-mails from someone identifying himself as “citizen four” who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive, covert surveillance programs run by the NSA and other intelligence agencies.
In June 2013, she and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her.