NHdocs is moving out of Yale and into the rest of downtown, as a reconfigured leadership team of the local annual documentary film fest severs its ties, for the most part, with the ivory tower.
NHdocs Executive Director Gorman Bechard and Co-Cirector Katherine Kowalczyk discussed those planned changes for the upcoming seventh annual New Haven Documentary Film Festival on a recent episode of WNHH’s “Deep Focus.”
Bechard, a celebrated documentary filmmaker in his own right, co-founded the festival in 2014 with Yale film studies professor Charles Musser and fellow New Haven-based documentarians Lisa Molomot and Jacob Bricca.
Bechard and Musser oversaw the growth of the festival over the past six years from a weekend-long showcase of the four founders’ movies to an 11-day, 110-plus movie extravaganza spotlighting the best in Connecticut, national, and international documentary filmmaking.
Almost all of the screenings over the history of the fest have taken place at Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center theater at 53 Wall St.
Musser stepped down from his role as co-director of the fest earlier this year, Bechard said. Kowalczyk, formerly the festival’s manager, has risen to the ranks of co-director.
Thomas Breen photo
NHdocs Co-Director Katherine Kowalczyk and Executive Director Gorman Bechard.
The festival will be only six days this upcoming summer, starting June 2 and running through June 7. The two lead programmers hope to have as many movies — 100-plus — on as many topics — rock’n’roll, animal welfare, refugee rights — as they’ve had in previous years.
The big change, Bechard said, is that the festival will be holding only a handful of its screenings in the main theater at Yale’s WHC. All of the other screenings, he said, will take place out in the community.
“It’s too get a broader audience base and be completely inclusive to anyone who wants to come,” he said. Plus, the second-floor screening room at the WHC is not handicap accessible, he said, which provoked some of the few complaints the fest received last year.
So instead of focusing the screenings on Yale’s campus, the festival will take place primarily at the Cafe Nine and State House music venues in the Ninth Square, at the main branch of the public library on Elm Street, at the New Haven Museum on Whitney Avenue, at the Educational Center for the Arts on Audubon Street, as well as at a number of pop-up locations still being planned.
Bechard and Kowalczyk said they also plan on shutting down Audubon Street for the day to have a block party’s worth of screenings, concerts, food vendors, and other art installations during the festival.
They’ll also host an expanded version of the student documentary competition at the Whitneyville Cultural Commons just over the town line in Hamden.
“There are days when we’re gonna have eight or nine venues going at one time,” Bechard said, with movies programmed for 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
All of the daytime screenings will be free, just as they’ve been throughout the history of the fest, while many of the nighttime screenings will now cost admission. That’s to cover the cost of renting new venues, Bechard said, and to pay for food, merch, musicians, and other attractions and installations associated with the fest.
Although the festival proper is still six months away, Bechard and Kowalczyk said NHdocs plans on hosting a number of screenings between now and June.
The two currently on the schedule include Bechard’s own Pizza, A Love Story, about the history of Modern, Sally’s, and Pepe’s. That screening will take place at the Whitneyville Cultural Commons on Saturday, Dec. 28, and will be followed by an ugly Christmas sweater competition.
The very next day, Bechard said, the festival will be hosting a screening of the new horror doc Scream Queen!, about Nightmare on Elm Street 2‘s reputation in cult movie circles as one of the gayest horror films of all time and the complications that presented for the movie’s star, who later came out of the closet.
Click here for more information on NHdocs, and for a complete schedule of upcoming screenings. Watch the Facebook Live video below to hear more of Bechard and Kowalcyzk’s interview on “Deep Focus.”
This is exciting news that NH Docs is expanding into the community. This is one of my favorite events and I expect the changes will a logistical challenge, but an opportunity for the larger community.
Gorman's masterpiece, "PIzza, a Love Story" is smart, funny and magical. Do whatever you have to, but see it.
He's a New Haven "living treasure"