What do you do when your only child is heading off to college, leaving you alone with your husband of 20 years? Documentary funder-turned-filmmaker Lyda Kuth decided to make a movie about it.

Kuth gets anxious not only about how her daughter will fare in today’s world of love and romance, but also about her own marriage. What is the real meaning of love and long-term commitment?

Kuth queries experts and non-experts alike, such as indie filmmaker Josh Safdie, playwright and musician Kyle Jarrow, author and scholar Stephanie Coontz, about their successes and failures of the heart. Love and Other Anxieties, a midlife story, is both personal and poetic. With the help of editor/co-writer Lucia Small (My Father, the Genius), Kuth has crafted a meditative documentary that is poignantly intimate yet surprisingly universal.

There will be discussion with director Lyda Kuth following the film.

Sponsored by Colleen and Paul Bozuwa

The wonder and awe that must have filled the first viewers of Pieter Bruegel’s 16th-century masterpiece painting “The Way to Calvary” gets rebooted from the very first shot of this extraordinary film.

Polish director and video artist Lech Majewski constructs an amazing amalgam of live action, blue screen, actual locations, animation, and CGI to take you on a breathtaking voyage into the painting. Characters come to life, stories unfold, lives proceed through glory and violence, all in a visual feast that does for cinema what the Flemish master once did for oils and canvas.

Starring Rutger Hauer, Michael York, and Charlotte Rampling, the film is stunning to see and, as the New York Times says, leaves us “to savor an inspiring, alluring meditation about imagery and storytelling, the common coin of history, religion and art.”

Shown with short film "Night Hunter," by Stacey Steers, featuring music by Dartmouth's Larry Polansky.

There will be a panel discussion with Larry Polansky, Mason Daring, Alex Barnett and others about music in film, following the screening. (See listing below.)

Sponsored by Keeper Barn

A perennial WRIF favorite, Richard Waterhouse's "Acting for Film" workshop returns to give beginners and more experienced actors a chance to learn from an insider.

A long-time acting teacher in both New York and LA, Richard now lives in the Upper Valley. He is the director of the exquisite short film, "Pearl," starring Dan Butler and Frances Sternhagen, which WRIF will be showing during the festival.

Richard's workshop will give you a chance to explore, through exercises and scenes, the craft of acting and, specifically, what acting for the camera entails. Learn what to do between "Rolling!" and "Cut!"

Running along side John Sayles's outstanding film career is his award-winning work as a fiction writer. He's published four novels and two collections of short stories, and has been nominated for a National Book Award. WRIF breaks out of film and goes over to the literary side with this chance to hear John read from his latest novel, A Moment In the Sun (McSweeney's, 2011).

Sprawling in narrative, epic in scope, Moment takes us back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the American empire: the Spanish-American War. The book follows an array of characters from all across the social and geographic map. Stories intertwine, lives and loves cross, battles rage, historical figures come alive. It's a great read.

And John, who is also a professional actor, is a great reader. He'll give you one helluva story.

Donations for WRIF at this event greatly appreciated.

Returning Fire – Video war games revenues now far outpace even the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. The games are stunningly realistic simulations of ground combat and the virtual world of long-distance, push-button warfare.

But what happens when some brilliant and subversive culture jammers go inside the games and wage peace? Filmmaker and media expert Roger Stahl follows three activists on their mission “behind enemy lines” as they seek to break the hypnotic spell of "militainment."

Shelter In Place – It’s the vast, sprawling complexes of oil refineries and petrochemical plants that help make the Texas economy one of the biggest in the world. But does the wealth come at too a high a price for the local community?

Texan industries are legally permitted to release millions of tons of toxic pollutants into the air each year, plus thousands of tons more in “accidental” or “unscheduled” releases. When these incidents happen, local residents are told to “shelter in place”: stay in their homes and tape up their windows and doors. Communities living on the fence line of Texan industry are usually poor, African American and powerless to protest.

Shelter in Place is a compelling look at the volatile compound you get when you mix civil rights, pollution, and corporate power.

Shelter: Short Pitch Prize at the 2008 BRITDOC Film Festival

Sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing

Heard any good movies lately?

WRIF has gathered a group of musicians experienced in scoring film soundtracks for what promises to be a lively - and most likely listenable - panel about music and film.

As part of our John Sayles special weekend, we have Mason Daring, who has collaborated with John on scoring almost all of Sayles' movies since 1984's Return of the Secaucus Seven. He's scored numerous indie and Hollywood films and has sung the national anthem at Fenway Park.

Larry Polansky, composer, guitarist, mandolinist, and professor at Dartmouth College, wrote the music for the WRIF short "Night Hunter." Polansky is a founding member and co-director of Frog Peak Music (a composers' collective).

Other musicians, including Tyler Gibbons (music for Freedom & Unity), Michael Clifford (music for Strength of the Storm), and Alex Barnett (music for Orgasm, Inc.), will join to discuss and probe what it is we hear when we watch a film.

A WRIF Rarity. A super panel with John Sayles, his producer/collaborator Maggie Renzi, and their long-time musical director Mason Daring, together, reminiscing and answering your questions about their entire 30-year career.

It'll be a free-wheeling, audience-participation, up close and personal chat and Q&A with clips thrown in for fun.

As Maggie said when we came up with the idea with her, "You know, it's something we've never actually done together." (Chalk up a first for WRIF!)

Seating at Main Street Museum is limited, so don't be late.

With the United States in the grip of the worst economic recession since the 1930s and an unprecedented budget deficit, the conclusion that our country is broke seems unquestionable. At least that's what politicians and pundits want ordinary citizens to believe as they call for massive spending cuts.

Karin Hayes and Victoria Bruce's exposé reveals this rhetoric ignores that multibillion-dollar corporations are based in the U.S., make money from American consumers, and often receive lucrative contracts from the government, yet pay nothing in U.S. income taxes. By exploiting tax-law loopholes and spending millions on lobbyists to pressure politicians to protect corporate interests, companies pocket billions while the middle class disappears and the poor get poorer.

Filmed before last autumn’s protests, We're Not Broke actually beat the Occupy movement to the punch. The film follows seven activists who’ve had enough, take their frustration to the streets, and are demanding that corporations finally pay their fair share.

WRIF is proud to feature a pair of fine locally made films. The team of Dan Butler (former co-star of TV’s Frasier) and Richard Waterhouse (director of WRIF 2010's crowd-pleaser, “Respect for Acting”) brings us an exquisite short film that Butler adapted from a poem by Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet, Ted Kooser. Featuring a touching and nuanced performance by Frances Sternhagen (Julie & Julia; Independence Day) this brilliant miniature shows us the effect of a man’s visit (the man played by Butler) on the mind of an elderly, grieving woman.

Norwich filmmaker Ben Silberfarb (producer) and Hanover native John Daschbach (director) teamed up to create a spooky psychological thriller which they filmed two summers ago just up the road in Lyme, NH. Brief Reunion spins out the ramifications of Facebook “friending” gone horribly wrong. What happens when your “friend” finds a way to blackmail you? Starring Joel de la Fuente (The Adjustment Bureau) and off-Broadway acting sensation Scott Shepherd (Gatz, Hamlet) Daschbach invents one “what if?” after another as Shepherd’s character insinuates his way into his friend’s life, business, and soul, leading to disastrous results.

The film uses locations around Lyme to wonderful effect. Daschbach has said he wanted to shoot “a dark movie in a beautiful place.” He did, and it works. Adding to the mood are inserted shots by Silberfarb using striking time-lapse photography. Other WRIF friends and family also worked on the film: Matt Bucy and Jay Beaudoin as swing grips, Jane Applegate as line producer, Antoinette Jacobson and Jenny Lynn Hall in the art department, Perry Allison and Wendy Simpson as associate line producers, and Faith Catlin in the role of Cynthia.

There will be a post-show discussion with the filmmakers following the show.

Sponsored by Farnum Hill Ciders

Just check out this LA Times rhapsody:

”Raucous and vibrant, Hipsters is set in 1955 Moscow, where a group of pre-rock 'n' roll young people fight to wear what they want, listen to what they want, dance how they want, and live the lives they want with every bit of the same rebellious passion as the music that's just around the corner.

”Buying their bright, colorful clothes on the black market, they must try to stay one step ahead of the drab, scissors-wielding government enforcers who look to tone them down and keep them in line.

”Director Valery Todorovsky keeps the film moving by balancing its more serious undercurrents with a liberating sense of fun, buoyed by musical numbers — there are musical numbers! — big, bold set-pieces around carnivals and jazz clubs and bopping through the streets.

“Fans of Baz Luhrmann's high style should delight in the film's distinctive production design and close-eyed appreciation for a fine-fabric, well-cut suit and skirt hem that hits just so.

”The film's joyous finale tosses aside strict narrative unity for a spirited number that nods to Grease in its salute to punks, hippies, hip-hoppers and virtually every other rebel youth tribe, declaring ‘hipster style conquers all fear.’”

Shown with "Job," a short-short by Portland (OR) filmmaker, Sue Ball (40 seconds).

Tim Wolff directed - and WRJ’s own Matt Bucy helped shoot - this joyous, fun doc about the hottest, coolest, bon-temps-est Mardi Gras crews in all New Orleans. Sons tells the story of the gay men of NOLA who created a vast and fantastic culture of wildly popular “drag balls” starting in the late 1950s.

These men worked within the traditions of Mardi Gras to bring gay culture into public life in the early 1960s. By 1969, there were four gay Mardi Gras clubs legally chartered by the state of Louisiana, throwing yearly extravaganzas at civic venues around the city.

As one reveler observes, ”Society matrons begged for ball tickets from their hairdressers.”

The crews succeeded in bringing down the “Jim Crow”-type laws that targeted gay people during this period, staging a flamboyant, costumed revolution that won freedoms during a time, as now, when laws and people fought against them.

This is a high-stepping, fun-filled story of an honorable, brave, and good-time revolution.

There will be an onscreen, Skype Q&A with Matt Bucy following the movie.

Get down and get happy. Dance to the tunes of Sol Food following the screening of the rockin' Mardi Gras doc, Sons of Tennessee Williams.

WRIF demands, "Laissez les bons temps rouler!"

Admission included in ticket for Sons of Tennessee Williams, otherwise $9.