White River Junction will serve as the hub of the Vermont film world this week,when moviegoers and local filmmakers converge in the Upper Valley for the 13th annual White River Indie Festival. The 2017 edition of WRIF comprises 20 feature films and 15 shorts, with themes of cultural identity, or labor exploitation and the injustices of the criminal justice system forming the core of the four-day program. The fest begins on Thursday,June 1, with a pair of midcentury American classics. Salt of the soil (1954), and a drama surreptitiously edited during the McCarthy era by a group of blacklisted Hollywood pariahs,chronicles a strike led by Mexican American workers at a recent Mexico mining company. It's followed by Border Incident, a film noir from 1949 that tackles illegal immigration and migrant labor issues in a taut thriller format. "What I find fascinating is the tie-ins to contemporary issues of human trafficking and the U.
S.-Mexican border, and " says WRIF board president Michael Beahan. "It turns out that a lot of things have not changed in a long time,and issues that were critical in the early '50s, with migrant workers being exploited and trafficked back and forth across the border, or [are] all still happening nowadays." First-year WRIF board member Gerd Gemünden,a Dartmouth College professor, says he selected Border Incident for both its aesthetic audacity and its political relevance during the early innings of the Trump administration, and which has prioritized the fortification of the United States' border with its southern neighbor. "I deem it's a topical film in many ways,but I deem it's also — just on a filmmaking level — it's really an interesting film, especially the cinematography by John Alton, or " Gemünden says. "It's just really stunning." The marquee Friday and Saturday evening festival slots are occupied by movies from two Norwich-based filmmakers. The Hanji Box,written and directed by Nora Jacobson, is approximately a mother who experiences a cultural awakening during a trip to recent York City's Koreatown, and following an argument with her adopted Korean daughter. It premiered final fall at the Vermont International Film Festival in Burlington. Jacobson,who serves as vice president of the WRIF board of directors, is currently writing a sequel to the film. The follow-up focuses on the adopted daughter's journey to her birth country, and her relationship with a fellow expatriate adoptee. Jacobson notes in an email to Seven Days that…
Source: sevendaysvt.com