Glimmerglass Film Days Festival

Join us for the 12th annual Glimmerglass Film Days, November 7-11, 2024 in Cooperstown. We will have our signature combination of compelling independent films, filmmaker talks, art, books, parties, guided walks, and collaborations with local museums, nonprofits, restaurants, and businesses.

Schedule:

5:30 - 7:15 PM: The Night Visitors

Recently discovered fossils date the earliest moths back over 200 million years. Since then, they have evolved to become one of the most diverse living organisms on our planet, with close to 160,000 known moth species. Filmmaker Michael Gitlin’s fascination with moths started with the 200 or so species that gathered around the lights in his backyard. Gitlin uses his camera to overcome the focal limitations of the naked eye and examine these nocturnal creatures at a mesmerizing level of detail. These images give us a sampling of the awe-inducing array of patterns, textures, and colors to be found within this vast corner of the animal kingdom. The film takes us on a series of discursions as Gitlin highlights the stories of others who have found themselves similarly transfixed: a contemporary scientist logging moth flight patterns hoping to uncover clues about climate change and habitat degradation; a mid-20th century Russian entomologist who spent World War II drawing 40 million year old moth specimens bound in Baltic amber; and a mid-19th century French artist, astronomer, and amateur entomologist living in Medford, MA who conducted moth breeding experiments with hopes of making a fortune reviving the American silk industry (with wildly unintended consequences). Gitlin’s close study becomes a meditation on the ways proximity can both clarify and distort, and how obsession can become a means of reflection. As one moth enthusiast puts it in the beginning of the film: “I think the longer someone goes at this, one sees how everything is intertwined.”

Generously sponsored by DeNicola Design LLC

Post-screening Q&A discussion with director Michael Gitlin

Michael Gitlin makes work about some of the intricate conceptual and ideological systems out of which ways of knowing the world can be constructed. His films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Full Frame Documentary Festival, the London Film Festival, and the Whitney Biennial Exhibition. Gitlin’s experimental documentary, The Night Visitors, premiered at the 2023 New York Film Festival. His 2015 feature documentary, That Which Is Possible, screened at The Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. His 16mm film, The Birdpeople, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Gitlin was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. Gitlin received an M.F.A. from Bard College. He teaches at Hunter College in New York City.

Location:
National Baseball Hall of Fame Grandstand Theater
25 Main Street,
Cooperstown, NY 13326

7:30 - 9:00 PM: Opening Party and Exhibition

Come celebrate a new season of Film Days! Catered by chef Alex Webster, the Opening Party will feature Chicken Tikka Masala, Vegetarian Saag Paneer, Basmati Rice, Crispy Papadums, Vegetable Samosas, and for dessert, Pistachio Almond Rasmalai with saffron and cardamom.

Mix and mingle with filmmakers and fellow film lovers. Enjoy the Film Days companion art exhibit, In Play: Borders & Edges, with works by Richard Barlow, Amy Cannon, Mark Mastroianni, and Gail Peachin.

Ticket includes buffet and one complimentary beverage. Cash bar.

Wines donated by Rudy’s Wine & Liquor

Location:
The Smithy
55 Pioneer Street,
Cooperstown, NY 13326

9:00 - 10:45 PM: Incident at Loch Ness

After the opening party, hop over to our newest venue, Cooperstown CoWorks, for a retro screening of the Zack Penn/Werner Herzog classic mockumentary, with cash bar featuring whisky, a selection of aged cheeses, apples, and salty oat cookies from Chloe's Bake Shop. The film does take place in Scotland, after all.

Released in 2004, Incident at Loch Ness, marked the debut of Zak Penn as both a director and producer. Penn was well known at the time as a screenwriter of action- adventure films (Behind Enemy Lines, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Last Action Hero, Elektra). Co-written and featuring Werner Herzog (as himself), Incident at Loch Ness was filmed in tandem with a documentary (Herzog in Wonderland, an overview of Herzog’s work as he embarks on a new project) directed by John Bailey. Tensions between the novice director/producer and Herzog soon develop as it becomes clear that Penn intends to steer the film onto the more familiar ground of his previous blockbuster genre films. For those more familiar with Werner Herzog from his iconic brutalist documentaries and films (Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo), Incident at Loch Ness presents the famously iconoclast director and revered pioneer of New German Cinema in a different, yet somehow consistent, light (Herzog once famously filmed himself cooking and eating his own shoe after losing a bet, later released as Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe). What finally emerges with Incident at Loch Ness is a film within a film within a film that veers far afield from Herzog’s original intention to explore society’s collective psychological need to create legendary, unknown, or extinct monsters.  

Generously sponsored by blackstanleystudios

Cash bar with a selection of whiskeys; complimentary bread and cheese, salted oat cookies

Location:
Cooperstown Coworks
6 Doubleday Court,
Cooperstown, NY 13326

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