Images Cinema

Alvin Ouellet, an Adams-based artist, will present an Artist Talk on Sunday, October 15th from 4:45 pm to 5:15 pm at Images Cinema, 50 Spring Street, Williamstown, MA. His exhibition in the cinema lobby is on view through October 31.

Images Cinema presents its 14th annual farming and food film festival: Fresh Fest. Fresh Fest seeks to connect local farmers and food producers with the community around important conversations that impact all of us.

Stephen R. Lawson, 73, a longtime resident of Williamstown died on February 7, 2023, of natural causes. In varying capacities he was an associate of the Williamstown Theatre Festival for some five decades. For 13 years he curated the Williamstown Film Festival which was produced at Images Cinema and MASS MoCA.

“Recent Paintings – Alvin Ouellet” is on display for all of May at Images Cinema, 50 Spring Street, Williamstown, MA. He is an Adams-based painter, printmaker and digital artist.

 Images Cinema will host a “sneak preview” of the first episode of Hudson Falls, a new comedy/drama/mystery series, on Wednesday, July 21st at 7:30 PM. This special event will be a fundraiser for the nonprofit theater and will include an onstage conversation with the cast and the creator/producer of the show, independent TV/movie producer Elias Plagianos of Clarkstown, New York.  

Images Cinema, an art house in Williamstown. has been shut down going on eight months. Here is an update from executive director, Doug Jones.

The 16th annual Williamstown Film Festival was launched with a hilarious contest last night and runs through this sindey afternoon. The festival is special for both its local, grass roots feeling as well as a lively mix of Indy and big time Hollywood productions and stars.

Images Cinema is hosting an event organized by the Muslim Student Association of Williams College, a film screening of “Valley of Saints” with director Musa Syeed on Friday, 2/8 at 5pm. The film will be introduced by Syeed, and the film will be followed by a Q&A with the director..

During the Academy Awards celebration there is mostly apathy for categories like best Animation Shorts. Most of the home viewing audience have not seen the nominated shorts. On February 16 Images Cinema in Williamstown will screen all five nominated shorts. The hour and a half program on Saturday morning provides terrific family entertainment.

The ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance presents a novel species of theatre that combines the wit, poetry, and charisma of a great rapper with the accuracy and rigor of a scientific expert, Baba Brinkman’s The Rap Guide to Evolution uses hip-hop as a vehicle to communicate the facts of evolution while illuminating the origins and complexities of hip-hop culture with Darwin as the inspiration.

The second and final part of Williamstown Film Festival covers events on Saturday and Sunday. The five day festival drew some 1,200. With so much to absorb in a short time we offer some higlights and insights for the 14th annual WFF.

Now in its 14th year the Williamstown Film Festival has been compressed from two weekends to one Wednesday through Sunday stretch. That saw an increase of guest artists and visitors who hung in for the duration of the unique cinematic event. Yet again, artistic director, Steve Lawson, concocted a heady mix of many short films and several stunning features. There was a sell out for the thursday opening night of Dreamscape, followed by a party at Mezze. On Friday Mass MoCA was packed for Knuckleball. This is the first of two reports and several interviews.

The documentary film Dreamscapes by Wolfram Hissen will be screened on Thursday October 18 at the annual Williamstown Film Festival. Following the film, its subject the artist Stephen Hannock, and Top Chef producer and chief judge, Tom Colicchio, will engage in a dialogue with tasting at the restaurant Mezze. Hannock has been involved by creating paintings for a dozen new restaurant projects with Colicchio and his partner Danny Meyer. We met with Hannock in his Berkshire studio to discuss the film and his latest art projects.

The Williamstown Film Festival's 14th season will run October 17 through 21. On the schedule: 37 films (many of them premieres) a half-dozen parties, and events at MASS MoCA, the Clark Art Institute, and Images Cinema.

In a storefront on Summer Street in Adams, Ma., formerly a clothing store, five years ago the multi media artists Matt Belanger and Marianne Petit opened the alternative Greylock Arts. This summer they are celebrating with an anniversary exhibition including many of the artists from New York and the Berkshires that have been included in their edgy program. Their alternative, artist run space, is, hands down, the best in the Berkshires.

The 13th Season of the Williamstown Film Festival ended amidst the first Nor Easter during Fall season 2011. Call it lucky 13 ! This is the sixth and final BFA article, highlighting some of the 21 Shorts, which were screened throughout the two week long festival.

After three days and nights in the dark there is much to sort through in the particularly rich, varied, fertile and provocative 13th annual Williamstown Film Festival curated by its tasteful and insightful artistic director Steve Lawson. The festival continues through October 29.

For the opening night of the 13th annual Williamstown Film Festival, Steve Lawson, the executive director of WFF, selected a film he first viewed at Sundance. Before a capacity audience at Images Cinema, last night, Lawson introduced the feature film, The Lie, and followed that with a talk back and Q&A with the writer/ director/ star Joshua Leonard and his co star Jess Weixler.

Surgery for a brain tumor left the actress Caris Corfman with long term memory but no short term memory. In a struggle to overcome a cornucopia of health and memory issues she developed a one woman play. It is the culmination of a documentary film by Gaylen Ross which will be screened as a part of the Williamstown Film Festival. Her friend and one of the producers, the comedian Lewis Black, discussed Caris, his approach to comedy, and the play One Slight Hitch which was produced at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this past summer.

Over two weekends (October 21-23 and 27-29), the Williamstown Film Festival's "Lucky 13th" season will include two East Coast and four New England premieres, family and late-night slots, titles from Sundance, Tribeca, and Toronto, and films featuring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Carol Channing, Ezra Miller, Lewis Black, Kate Burton, Tony Shalhoub, Campbell Scott, and Christo. WFF will conclude with a salute to legendary director Sidney Lumet at the Clark Art Institute.

Images Cinema in Williamstown will host the Secrecy and Scandal in New French Film series on Mondays, February 7 – March 7 at 7pm. Admission is free; all films will be in French with English subtitles.

The feature length, award winning, documentary film Marwencol was screened for one night at Images Cinema. It tells the story of a severely beaten, cross dressing, former alcoholic, Mark Hogancamp, who has created a World War II model village in Belgium. Using Barbie and GI dolls, jeeps and tanks he exorcises his demons by creating and photographing elaborate narratives. The Q&A that followed evoked comparisons of his brain damage to that of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

In addition to a superb schedule of seminars, an evening with Alec Baldwin and Robert Osborne, features and short films the Williamstown Film Festival explored new approaches to independent films. A case in point was the final film Nice Guy Johnny. It was written and directed by Edward Burns on a minuscule budget of $25,000 in twelve days.

The founders of the first Berkshire Forum Tina Chase and Mary Collins George intend to move forward with planning next year. Despite a thin attendance for the three days of lectures, panels and performances they report nearly breaking even. A daunting range and depth of information and insights was provided. It evoked expanding and redefining the branding of the Berkshires. A highlight among many was the dialogue with Boston Globe editor Martin Baron.

A large part of the success of Nicholas Martin's final of three seasons as Artistic Director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival has been the year round presence of the Williamstown resident, General Manager, Joe Finnegan. With a strong background in finance, for the past year, he has brought a professional status to his passion for theatre. With WTF back on track signified by rave reviews and sold out shows he looks forward to working with the new artistic director, Jenny Gersten.