About:

The Rural Route Film Festival has been created to highlight works that deal with rural people and places. While the term "rural" is defined by Webster's Dictionary as: 1) Of or relating to the country: RUSTIC 2) Of or relating to people who live in the country 3) Of or relating to farming: AGRICULTURAL, the creators of Rural Route Film Festival leave it up to you, the film and video artists, to explain your own definition of "rural." Whether it be a documentary about an organic turnip farm in West Virginia, a fictional backpacking drama set in Peru, or a personal/experimental work about life in a small town in Wisconsin, we want to see and hear what you have to say. Works that include alternative country, country western, and folk music are encouraged, as are those that play loud rock in cornfields.

Rural Route Trailer

Best of Rural Route DVD Now Available!

13 of the very best films from the first 5 years of the Rural Route Film Festival are now available on this Collector's Edition DVD!

Hand-picked through five solid years of Rural Route programming by a jury comprised of key RR staff and New York area professionals, this DVD showcases farms, deserts, snow-capped mountains, the Appalachian South, the Midwest, the Wild West, Siberia, Canada, and the Argentine desert. Rural Route presents the sad and funny stories of a toy cowboy, a dental farmer, a bear hunter, Oxycontin addicts, riding lawnmower racers, dancing tractors, and more!
Click here for ordering instructions.

Upcoming : Year of the Nomad, 2008-2009

(To read the Nomad Blog click here)

Rural Route has an ambitious new plan for 2008-2009. We are calling this season, “Nomad,” because it involves roaming through the ends of the Earth for a full year, screening our programming and collecting rural stories in a travelogue-style documentary. The “Nomad” tour is set to kick-off in October 2008, following a New York City festival in which Rural Route will collaborate with local and international partners to screen a plethora of rural shorts and features, and launch a brand new “Best of” DVD (subtitled in Spanish and French) that will be a long-term staple of the festival.

NOMAD TOUR (Screenings)

Rural Route Director Alan Webber will be playing the part of the Nomad, traveling consistently for an entire year with a backpack, video camera, mini-projector, and stack of DVDs. Webber will stay in hostels, camp, and accept friendly invitations of lodging. He will be joined by several Rural Route volunteers for stints along the way. Variables and spontaneity are being factored in, but the general plan is to start off riding buses around South America (and taking boats across the Amazon and down to Antarctica) with definite screenings in Chile, Peru, and Argentina. Throughout the voyage, the films will be screened at universities, film centers, art spaces, and theaters. Webber will also set-up several “Rural Extreme” screenings in places such as jungles, villages, and on icebergs. The tour continues from South America to Oceania with screenings amidst the beauty of New Zealand and Australia. Rural Route then flies into India, making a Nomadic path through the Himalayas (w/a screening in Kathmandu, Nepal), into Tibet and across China to Beijing. From there, it’s down to South Africa for safari and screenings planned with African diaspora film group, Image Nation, in the townships of Johannesburg. The tour rounds out with screenings throughout Europe, and side treks into the Middle East and Western Africa.

NOMAD BLOG/VLOG

Webber will keep an ongoing public blog on the Rural Route website, detailing his travels, the Rural Route screenings and the people he encounters. Video (vlog) clips will be uploaded whenever possible to supplement Webber’s writing. A world map will also be featured alongside the blog on the Rural Route website with lines marking the Nomad’s progress. Mass emails will be delivered every few weeks, summarizing the Nomad blog to the Rural Route mailing list.

NOMAD DOCUMENTARY

While screening rural films in venues around the world, Rural Route will be documenting its travels on video to be put together in a comprehensive film and for use with the Rural Route blog and website. The documentary is at the core of Rural Route’s mission of bringing together and highlighting diverse rural voices from around the globe. We will look for stories from contemporary farmers, villagers, indigenous people, fellow vagabond travelers, and urban transplants who are adapting to new ways of life.

 

 

email the webmaster: itsalive@gmail.com