This double feature of shorter films brings together two filmmakers living in Vermont who made films about Vermonters in Vermont. 

Angelos Madsen Minax’s lovely One Night at Babes is certainly a left-turn from Madsen’s more experimental work, but it’s a fabulous cinematic snapshot of a town feeling its way towards positive change. At a small-town dive bar called Babes, cribbage tournaments overlap afternoons of karaoke and nights of raucous queer dance parties. When the aging conservative townsfolk of Bethel, Vermont, and the younger queer leftists begin sharing the same watering hole, a delicate alliance flourishes.

Susan Bettmann’s Painting the Dandelion Resurrection trains the camera on Vermont icon Peter Schumann, co-founder and creative force of Bread and Puppet Theater. And basically he does what the title says—he paints. Schumann narrates in real time as he begins and completes the painting over the course of the film’s half-hour, offering us the rare opportunity to hang out with an artistic heavyweight. ~SM

There is an in-person Q&A with both filmmakers at the 10/23 screening.