Jay Craven explores this year’s festival themes

MNFF co-founder and Artistic Director Jay Craven explores the themes of this year’s film fest, which will come to Middlebury Aug. 26-30.

MNFF co-founder and Artistic Director Jay Craven offers an overview of this year’s film fest, which will come to Middlebury Aug. 26-30.

“Jane Fonda has shown extraordinary compassion and taken uncommon risks to show that an artist’s influence need not end when the credits roll.” — Jay Craven

The 12th Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival features 120 films and some exciting names.

Slip away to the “Secret Mall Apartment” on Wednesday, and spend an evening in the secret hideout of this film’s imagination.

Learn more about the Academy Award winning Deaf actor Marlee Matlin from Jay Craven’s review — then go see the film on April 15 at the Middlebury Marquis.

Jay Craven gives a review of “Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion” that will screen on March 11 in Middlebury as part of the MNFF Selects series.

MNFF Selects brings “Ask E. Jean” to the Marquis Theater in Middlebury on Wednesday, Feb. 11. Don’t miss a talk-back with the film’s editor Ferne Pearlstein after the screening.

In mysterious ways, each year’s MNFF selections tend to fall into clusters, thematically. Artistic Director Jay Craven says this year’s crop of films includes characters acting on deeply principled stands — win or lose.

This year’s Middlebury New Filmmakers Festivals features 107 films. Here are a few from Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven’s must-see list.

Jay Craven offers a look behind the curtain of the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival guest-list.

Winter’s Bone,” Debra Granik’s 2010 four-time Academy Award-nominated rural film noir, won multiple awards and it introduced the larger world to fast-rising star, Jennifer Lawrence, who plays teenage, poverty-stricken Ree Dolly in the neglected rural Ozar … (read more)

The film is a Revolutionary War-era action drama set in the early upstart Republic of Vermont. It features Vermont founding father and rebel schemer, Ethan Allen, who leads resistance to New Yorker land claims, launches an ill-fated attack on British forc … (read more)

Last week, before Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, Washington Post film critics reviewed Oscar choices over the last 50 years, weighing in on which films they thought should have won Best Picture. They mostly chose nominees that didn’t win.

The Friends of the Union Meeting Hall in Ferrisburgh will present a special screening of Jay Craven’s award-winning 1997 film, “A Stranger in the Kingdom,” based on the novel by Howard Frank Mosher.