The Woodstock Film Festival’s 2011 Honorary Maverick Awards Gala will be held Saturday night, Sept. 24, at Backstage Studio Productions in Kingston, NY to celebrate the best in independent film.
A Pre-Awards Cocktail Party will be held at 7pm, followed by the Awards Ceremony at 9pm and there are still tickets available to both events!
“We are thrilled by this year’s outstanding Honorary Maverick Award Gala guests and participants,” said Meira Blaustein WFF co-founder and executive director. “Once again, this year we are screening a large slate of exciting and innovative films and we are eager to announce our award recipients which will be determined by our esteemed jury members.”
Nearly 500 filmmakers and guests are set to attend including special award recipients Tony Kaye (Honorary Maverick Award), actor Ellen Barkin (Excellence in Acting Award ), Creative Coalition CEO Robin Bronk (Honorary Trailblazer Award), actor/activist Mark Ruffalo (Inaugural Meera Gandhi Giving Back Award).
The WFF Awards Ceremony also includes awards for Best Feature Narrative, Best Feature Documentary, Best Short Narrative, Best Short Documentary, Best Student Short; also the Blue Sky Studios Animation Award, the James Lyons Editing Award, the Diane Seligman Awards, and the Haskell Wexler Award for Best Cinematography.
This year the Master of Ceremonies will be none other than Brendon Small, best known as the creator of the Adult Swim animated series Metalocalypse and Home Movies, and of the virtual death metal band Dethklok. His song Thunderhorse was featured on the hit video game Guitar Hero II.
And for the first time the Awards Gala will have a House Band to provide music for the show. The legendary Paul Green, founder of School of Rock and inspiration for Jack Black in Richard Linklater’s hilarious film School of Rock, will perform with his Band Of Monkeys, an eclectic group consisting of former star students of the School of Rock. Live music will begin as the doors to the ceremony open at 8:15pm.
This year’s Awards Gala presenters include Vincent D’Onofrio, Tim Blake Nelson, Timothy Hutton, Debra Granik, Barbara Kopple, Fisher Stevens, John Sloss, Ellen Kuras, Steven Nemeth, Bill Plympton, Meera Gandhi, Chris Wedge, Lori Singer, Jonathan Gray, Sabine Hoffman, Hugo Perez and other luminaries of indie film.
A special Tribute to Gary Winick will be included in the ceremony, to honor the filmmaker and pioneering producer who passed away in February of this year from brain cancer at the age of 49. Winick rose to fame directing mainstream films like Letters to Juliet and 13 Going on 30, but is perhaps more well-known for his independent films and for co-founding InDigEnt, a company that produced nineteen independent digital films over the next decade, including Winick’s own Tadpole, which sold for $6 million to Miramax at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Winick was an early supporter of the Woodstock Film Festival and a frequent participant in WFF programs.
For more information about WFF or to purchase tickets, visit www.woodstockfilmfestival.com.
