WFF SETS NEW RECORDS

Bob Ware, Steve Lawson, Matthew Reeve and Stephen Hannock

The eighth season of the Williamstown Film Festival set new attendance records. 3,200 people showed up during WFF's two weekends, surpassing the previous high-water mark of 2,850 set last year.

Sellouts included the U.S. premiere of 10 Items or Less on opening night, a joint screening of Alfred Hitchock's Blackmail with MASS MoCA, the romantic comedy The Treatment starring Chris Eigeman and Ian Holm, and the season finale Shut Up and Sing. Other popular titles were the wry documentary Wide Awake, the annual all-shorts slot, Off the Black with Nick Nolte and Trevor Morgan, the haunting Islander and Little Fugitive, the provocative 21 Up America, the ruefully funny
Full Grown Men, and Stephanie Daley, winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance.

Ron Canada and Gordon Clapp in Trailer Talk

For the first time ever, the Festival gave a prize: the Christopher and Dana Reeve Audience Award, named for two major supporters of WFF. The winner - announced at the October 28th Gala by Reeve's son Matthew - was the short Trailer Talk, which just edged out Gayle Knutson's If There Were No Lutherans, Would There Still Be Green Jell-O? and Available Men by David Dean Bottrell. Trailer Talk director William Dixon will receive an original work painted for the occasion by artist and WFF board member Stephen Hannock.  
 
Dates for the ninth season in 2007 will be announced soon.