Never underestimate the power of your dreams, or the power of printed words that can transform them into their own realities.

The Orange County Arts Council presents Orange County Open Studio Weekend 2009, a county-wide event during which Orange County artists and craftspeople open their studios to the public for the sale and demonstration of their work. This event will be held on Saturday, October 17 and Sunday, October 18 from 11am to 5pm

Over 40 artists and craftspeople are participating including Art In The Barn, Amity Arts Pottery, Beatrice Bloom Ceramics, Bertoni Gallery, Big Pig Designs, Boogiehouse, Cedarwood Center For the Arts, Daniel Mack Studio, Di Bello Gallery/ Frame Shop, Exposures Gallery, Fine Art Studios, Gallery Warwick, Gourd Art By Claudia, Holton – Smith Photos, J.Howard Fatta and Louis Fatta, Rahl Nadas Gallery and Potshop, Linton Designs, M.E Whitehill- Watercolors, Mary Cathryn Roth, Michael Tobin Fine Art, Orange County Ballet Theatre, Susan Miiller Fine Art, The Blue Rose Studio, Michael Piotrowski, RG Bruer, Roslyn Fasset Studio, Fine Art Studios, Strazza Fine Arts & Photography, and Wallkill River School.

A full, 17 page brochure is available for download here.  It gives a fantastic map broken down for each area making it easy to plan your driving between studios -

Peggy Abt, Professor Emeritus, SUNY Orange leads the discussion.  In this Pulitzer Prize winning novel the protagonist is Quoyle, a big man with a huge chin who is an established loser. A rapid succession of momentous events changes his life and that of his family.Film will be shown the following week. Oct. 13 at 7:00 PM.

Discussion:
Wednesday 7 October 2009
7-9 p
Film screening, 13 October 7 pm

Middletown Thrall Library
11-19 Depot St
Middletown, NY

Here’s a trailer for the movie itself:

First up, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby.  Bauby was the French editor of Elle magazine.  In 1995, he suffered a stroke that lead him to be paralyzed except for a little movement in his head and eyes.  He transcribed the entire book through a series of eye blinks, over 200,000 communicated over 10 months to a scribe. Bauby’s essays are remarkable simply because they exist. His observations are amazingly full of humor, generosity, and devoid of much self-pity.  More amazing, he died just two days after the publication of his work.

His story was turned into a movie directed by American Julian Schnabel.

Chris Godwin, Professor Emeritus, SUNY Orange will lead the discussion.  The story is fascinating, but does the movie hold up to the book?  Join the discussion

Tuesday, September 22, 2009
7:00pm-9:00pm
Film will be shown the following week. Sept. 29 at 7:00 PM.

Middletown Thrall Library
11-19 Depot St
Middletown, NY

Here’s the trailer to the movie:

This was done for the Fame Festival in Grottaglie, Italy.  It took 10 days to film and produce.

“A number of these women worked in Orange County and the Hudson Valley, generally, so there is a direct connection to our community,” explained Goldman. Some of the women he will discuss include Mary Pickford, Florence Turner, Ida Lupino and Dorothy Arzer and Anita Loos.

This event will be held at the D & H Canal Park Visitor’s Center, 58 Hoag Road, (just off Route 209) Cuddebackville, NY. Admission is $5.00. The Neversink Valley Area Museum is open Thursday through Sunday from noon until 4:00pm through October 28 and by appointment.

Friday 21 August -  7.30p

Neversink Valley Area Museum
26 Hoag Rd
Cuddebackville, NY

Joe Franklin, known as “the king of nostalgia,” will visit the Neversink Valley Area Museum, in Cuddebackville, N.Y. for a live taping of the talk show, Exploring Your World on August 22, 2009. The legendary Franklin hosted televisions’ very first talk show, The Joe Franklin Show. The show began in 1951 on WJZ-TV (later WABC-TV) and moved to WWOR-TV until 1999, becoming the longest running talk show in the history of television with one host, which put Joe in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Franklin’s long running Memory Lane radio program focused on the nostalgia of old time entertainers. Franklin currently interviews celebrities for the Bloomberg Radio Network. Franklin has written 23 books including his 1995 autobiography Up Late with Joe Franklin. Throughout his career he has interviewed some of the worlds’ greatest talents such as; Bing Crosby, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.

The Neversink Valley Area Museum’s current exhibit, The Star is Born: A History of the Movie Star in America, tells the story of such stars from the first, Florence Lawrence, to the latest stars. Most of the important early film companies worked in Cuddebackville including the Biograph Company, Thanhouser, and Pathe Freres. Early stars of the silver screen such as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Mabel Normand, and Mack Sennett filmed in Cuddebackville and director D.W. Griffith’s first ever use of a fade-out also occurred there.

Seth Goldman, director of the museum’s Institute for Early Film Studies and Whendy Lou, host and co-producer of Exploring Your World, will have an exclusive interview with Franklin discussing his encyclopedic knowledge of legendary entertainers and silent films.

The live taping of the show is open to the public and will begin at 4:00pm at the D & H Canal Park Visitors’ Center, 58 Hoag Road, Cuddebackville, NY. The show will air on August 19, 2009, on Time Warner Cable, channel 23, Wednesday evening at 7:00 pm, in Middletown and the surrounding areas. For details or directions call the museum at 845-754-8870 or Whendy Lou at 845 863 5548.

Lindsey Graham is a local film an video artist who has been working on a documentary of Orange County Artists and runs the FreeArtinNY.org web site.  She directed, edited and performed in this fun video, with locations around the country, including more then a few in Orange County.

About Lindsey:

I am an animator, performer, dancer, painter, sculptor and mainly a video artist. I first began using video as a medium while studying sculpture at SUNY Purchase (2003-2007). I believe that art has the potential to exist everywhere and can be created anywhere. This is one reason I am attracted to video.

By using video as an artistic medium, I am given the freedom to capture the world around me in real time and then change it through editing. I exploit mundane experiences by manipulating the relationships between sound, video, performance and linear time. I shoot intuitively and then find the common thread or story within the captured footage. Sometimes I plan to incorporate a performance before I start filming. These performances deal with a range of different themes and often use physical humor.

I have had video installations exhibited in numerous group gallery shows and screened at digital festivals in NYC and upstate New York including SUNY New Paltz and SUNY Purchase. In 2007, I worked as a production assistant and photographer on the set of an independent film in Manhattan. In 2008, I produced a performance based music video which received the first place audience award at “Bloodline: A Visual Album”, screened at The Art institute in Los Angeles. In April of 2008, I began work on FreeArtinNY.org, a web-based documentary film project focusing on Orange County artists and community. While I expand this site by profiling more artists through video, I maintain balance by continuing to bring my own artistic concepts to fruition.

On July 18^th Phanatiks Entertainment will be having a Vinyl Sale/Cook-Out Fundraiser to accumulate funds to start production of a feature movie to be produced in and around the city of Newburgh, NY. The fundraiser will be offering various grilled foods including chicken, hot dogs, corn, pasta salad, drinks and more; $5 dinner plates. There will also be a vinyl records sale from a collection of oldies, classics and rhythms of the 1960’s, ’70’s, ‘80’s and more. Records will be sold starting at $3 per record and could be more depending on the condition and worthiness. The fundraiser also includes a unique raffle for all artists, musicians and bands. There will be a raffle for one free video production by Phanatiks Entertainment and those raffle tickets will be $5 for six tickets or $10 for 13 tickets. All other bands, musicians and or artists who want video production done by Phanatiks Entertainment should download a copy of the Fundraiser flyer from their website (www.phanatiks.com) and bring to get $150 off of their own video. Gift cards will be raffled as well. All this will be happening in the city of Newburgh on South William Street, behind the Delano-Hitch baseball stadium, down the street from the Newburgh Armory – Kenney’s Apartment’s back courtyard.

Phanatiks Entertainment, LLC is a creative, independent video and audio production company growing out of the Hudson Valley of New York. The company consists of the creative minds of Newburgh native, SUNY Orange Visual Communications major, Shawn Strong and Highland Fall’s Umar Abdul-Mutakabbir. PE focuses on mass media in creating short and feature films, (music) videos, commercials and PSA’s to deliver visual messages. They also provide some audio production and engineering as well. Funding for the arts, mainly grants, have been rewarded to that of painters, photographers and or for sculptures. The medium of video has yet to be widespread in this area for funds to be readily available for such funding. Recently, Newburgh has been in a dark spotlight for negativity, although there is some talent in this area ready to blossom. Shawn Strong and Umar Abdul-Mutakabbir stand to make that transformation. “Video is an art medium. It is a means and visual communicator like any other art form and the most popular. The screen, TV and the net are our canvases,” suggests Strong. “The only issue is that we are in an area where it is not as yet known (for media art), but we plan to help make that change. We are not New York City,” replies Abdul-Mutakabbir. The company fails to get support from outside grants because they are a for-profit organization and also underexposed from the major film industry. For these reasons, they plan to reach out to their community for the support.

Not giving too much detail about the movie until after the hopeful success of the fundraiser, but mention that “it begins a little dark then glows with a light of creativity and positive progression.” ‘StraightLand, ’ they say, is about struggle. It’s about a young guy from the inner city who trials with a talent (poetry) and an inherited heroin habit while trying to break from his “environment” in order to get to StraightLand.’ The upcoming movie is conceived from a poem by Umar Abdul-Mutakabbir and will be directed and edited by his partner Shawn Strong.

All proceeds of the fundraiser will go towards all production costs including equipment, actors’ expenses and distribution of final products.

They have started a blog and website to follow their progress and adventures in filmmaking in the Hudson Valley. To check on their progress and to see their work, log on to their blog at http://phanatiks.blogspot.com/ and their site at http://www.phanatiks.com.

They of yet have no sponsors and are looking for so and other backing for future projects to be done in this area.

The Fundraiser will start at 2:00 PM, Saturday, July 18^th.  For more info and directions call Shawn (845) 321-9409/ Umar (845) 742-3773 or visit www.phanatiks.com. Follow on Facebook, www.facebook.com/phanatiks

The beautiful Mary Pickford, 1920

Pickford acted in nearly 250 films from 1909 to 1933, produced 34 films, wrote 12 screenplays and was one of the founders of United Artists. Seth Goldman, director of the Institute for Early Film Studies will give a brief talk about Pickford and introduce each of the several films being shown.

Ben Model has served as resident silent film accompanist for The Museum of Modern Art in New York City for over two decades, has played in many other venues around the Northeastern U.S., and produces The Silent Clowns Film Series with film historian Bruce Lawton.

Ben composes and improvises all his own scores, and performs in a style that is both evocative of the silent era and also aware of a contemporary (and younger) audience’s awareness of music and film scoring. In the spring of 2006, Ben co-organized MoMA’s two-month retrospective of the films of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, and in the fall of 2008 he co-taught a silent film class at MoMA, Cruel and Unusual Comedy: Social Commentary in the American Slapstick Film.

Ben has accompanied silent movies for noted film historian William K. Everson’s classes at NYU while attending film school there, and learned the craft and technique of silent film scoring from legendary silent film organist Lee Erwin. Ben has also made the silent film experience portable, by teaming up with fellow film historian Bruce Lawton. Together, Bruce and Ben have brought their projectors, films, music and knowledge to schools, universities libraries, museums, and churches all over the Northeastern U.S.

This very special event is part of the museum’s series honoring women pioneers in early film and was program was made possible by grants from the Orange County Historian’s Office, several museum members and The New York Council for the Humanities, a national affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

It will be held at the D & H Canal Park Visitor’s Center, 58 Hoag Road, (just off Route 209) Cuddebackville, NY. Admission is $5.00. The Neversink Valley Area Museum is open Thursday through Sunday from noon until 4:00pm through October 28 and by appointment.

For more information about the museum, its mission to preserve local history or any events, call 754-8870 or check the website: <http://www.neversinkmuseum.org/> www.neversinkmuseum.org.

Friday, June 26th
8:00pm
Admission is $5.00

D & H Canal Park Visitor’s Center
58 Hoag Road, (just off Route 209)
Cuddebackville, NY.