Small-Town Festival Focuses On Films, Not Stars

By Dina Temple-Raston, NPR Think about famous film festivals and the words Cannes, Sundance or perhaps Toronto come to mind. But increasingly, movie buffs don’t have to travel to the south of France to get a film festival fix. Small towns across the country have launched down-to-earth offerings and film festivals for the rest of us. Main Street in Chatham, N.Y., is just a single block long and is anchored by the Crandell Theatre, a single-screen cinema announced by an old-style lighted marquee. When it was built in 1926, it was envisioned as a vaudeville theater. It has a stage, an orchestra pit — even dressing rooms. But that was then; this is now. Now the Crandell Theatre is the sun around which FilmColumbia — Chatham’s 10-year-old film festival — revolves. Go to one of those big festivals and 20…

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