Author Hallie Newton will celebrate her debut novel, Agnes Lives!, with a discussion about the process of writing and how it relates to movies with editor Callie Garnett.  New York City, 2014. Agnes Maurer seeks a willing murderer before her next SoulCycle and wonders what she should wear. Candidates include: an icy magazine editor with a special cutlery set; an eccentric designer from her past; and Agnes's cruel novelist boyfriend. As she Ubers from Upper East Side shopping to Craigslist gun deals, Agnes' desperation becomes an exhibition, a swan song of millennial sexuality as internalized abuse and consummate style, with the knob righty-tightened all the way. Although this is an SOS in written form, it's also a really fun read. "As mesmerizing as it is unnerving." — Joyce Carol Oates Books for sale at the event! Hallie Elizabeth Newton was born in Mississippi. A recipient of NYU’s Goldwater Fellowship, she won first prize for fiction in Columbia Journal’s 2020 Winter Contest. Agnes Lives! is her debut novel. She lives in New York. Moderated by Callie Garnett is the author of the poetry collections Wings in Time (2021), a New York Times Best Poetry Book of the Year, and Shit Hike (2026), both from The Song Cave. She works as Editorial Director of Fiction and Memoir at Bloomsbury Publishing (US) and lives in Esopus, NY.

Ten years in the making, COUP 53 tells the story of the 1953 the Anglo-American coup d'état that overthrew Iran's government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah. The CIA/MI6 covert action was called Operation Ajax. It was all about Iran’s oil and who gets to control and benefit from it. BP was at the heart of this story. Shot in seven countries, featuring participants and first-hand witnesses, and unearthing never seen before archive material, COUP 53 is a politically explosive and cinematically innovative documentary that lifts the lid on secrets buried for over sixty-six years.

If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This June, the truth belongs to seven billion people. We are coming close to … Disclosure Day.

Small town hairdresser Gail Daughtry is engaged to her devoted high school sweetheart, Tom. Her life takes a turn when a trip to a book signing leads to Tom meeting – and sleeping – with his “celebrity pass”. Reeling from the betrayal, Gail impulsively joins her friend Otto on a trip to Los Angeles, where a psychic convinces Gail that the only way to save her marriage is to “even the scales” with her own celebrity pass: Jon Hamm. Thus begins an epic journey through Tinseltown as Gail and Otto join forces with a talent agency assistant, a paparazzo, and actor John Slattery, all in the search for Hamm. Along the way, they collide with celebrities and are hunted by a group of Italian assassins as they get ever closer to finding the elusive star.

An intimate documentary following Johnson's journey from surfer to filmmaker to world-renowned musician through rare archives and present-day reflections on how experience, friendship, and exploration shaped his sound and stories.

Louisiana’s Way Home is a magical realistic play about a girl carried off by her unstable grandmother to combat an imagined family curse. They end up in the Good Night, Sleep Tight motel in Oatmeal, Georgia where Louisiana meets a boy with a pet crow and his loving family. She sings her way toward rescue and a new home. It is based on the novel by Kate DiCamillo. This comedic, moving story with its coming-of-age and identity themes is recommended for ages 8 to 12. Running time approximately 50 minutes. Q&A afterwards is a regular part of the program.

Before he rocked critics, audiences and the box office with 2026’s Obsession, director Curry Barker and his sketch comedy partner Cooper Tomlinson were making low-budget horror films for their YouTube channel that’s a bad idea. Filmed for only $800, their first feature, Milk and Serial, uses its production limitations and the conventions of the found-footage subgenre to its full advantage, creating something uniquely frightening. It follows a duo of online pranksters, Seven (Tomlinson) and Milk (Barker). When Seven stages an extreme prank during Milk’s birthday party, it spirals into a twisting and twisted series of events that ultimately leads to bloodshed and tests the dynamics of their friendship to the most extreme extent. Both an upsetting experience in its own right and a sly perversion of internet celebrity. Milk and Serial will be preceded by another that’s a bad idea production: the surreal short film The Chair, which was nominated for BEST FILM at Los Angeles Short Film Fest. Half as long but no less memorable, the short uses Barker’s dark humor and penchant for creating tension to show a couple’s relationship being tested when one of them brings home an antique chair that conjures up evil forces within their lives. (dir. Curry Barker, U.S., 2024, 84 min.)

In the 1960s, the iconic American folk singer Pete Seeger devised an audacious plan—to build a sailboat to save the polluted Hudson River. But the Clearwater was not just a beautiful wooden vessel; it was also a movement, intersecting environmentalism, civil rights, and antiwar activism. An intimate portrait of Pete and the grassroots community he anchored in the Hudson Valley for over forty years with his wife Toshi, Down by the Riverside shows how an unconventional campaign to save a beloved American waterway prompted a green revolution. (dir. Dan Messina & Jodie Childers, US, 2023, 85 min.)

This is a coming-of-age memoir, the tale of a naïve young man in a cultural whirlwind who learns some hard lessons about business, journalism, love and sex – all the while trying to get his own band a record deal. “POW! is quite an extraordinary achievement, at the very least for showing that Tony’s memories are as detailed and full as if these things happened just last week. Most autobiographies skim over the bad bits with a wry eye, a ‘whoops’ with a grin, but Tony has no such tone. His gods are as slammed as they are revered, by showing both their humanity and their human-ness, their own faults and problems.” — Hugo Burnham, Gang of Four.

A film commissioned by the Algerian government that shows the Algerian revolution from both sides. The French foreign legion has left Vietnam in defeat and has something to prove. The Algerians are seeking independence. The two clash. The torture used by the French is contrasted with the Algerian's use of bombs in soda shops. A look at war as a nasty thing that harms and sullies everyone who participates in it. The screening of this film is generously supported by Will Nixon and Sponsored by Bushwhack Books in Honor of Indivisible Saugerties. The Revival House series is presented by Ruge’s Auto Group. It is also generously underwritten by the Ettinger Foundation, Ray Nimrod, Patricia Alofsin, and Erik Stangvik. The Acts of Resistance series is generously underwritten by Bushwhack Books, publisher of Crossing Divides by Vernon Benjamin, in support of Indivisible Saugerties., This project is made possible with funds from the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.

Cantankerous, charismatic and passionately committed, this river keeper — John Lipscomb — reflects on his 25 years patrolling the Hudson, traveling more than 80,000 miles, by wooden boat, helping defend America’s First River. (dir. Jon Bowermaster, U.S.) Jon Bowermaster is an oceans expert, journalist, writer, filmmaker, adventurer and six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council. One of the Society's 'Ocean Heroes,' his first assignment for National Geographic Magazine was documenting a 3,741 mile crossing of Antarctica by dogsled. He is the founder of Oceans 8 Films and the One Ocean Media Foundation, making films about climate at home in the Hudson Valley and around the world. His podcast, "The Green Radio Hour with Jon Bowermaster” on Radio Kingston has recorded over 150 episodes with environmental activists, community leaders and friends from his vast rolodex of travels.

The Last Seat in the House, written and directed by John Kane, is a documentary that explores the life and legacy of Bill Hanley, the pioneering sound engineer known as the “Father of Festival Sound.” Best remembered for creating the sound of Woodstock in 1969, Hanley revolutionized live music by introducing clarity and scale to concerts at a time when large audiences were thought impossible to manage. Through extensive research and firsthand accounts from artists and industry insiders, the film traces Hanley’s innovations, his role in founding the sound reinforcement industry, and the personal and professional costs of building an industry that ultimately moved beyond him. By focusing on sound as the often-overlooked carrier wave of contemporary music, The Last Seat in the House reveals how one man’s vision permanently changed the way the world listens. (dir. John Kane, USA, 2025, 120 min.)

Christopher Nolan’s next film, The Odyssey, is a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX® film technology. The film brings Homer’s foundational saga to IMAX® film screens for the first time. The Odyssey stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o, with Zendaya and Charlize Theron. The Odyssey is produced by Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan for their company, Syncopy. The executive producer is Thomas Hayslip.

Danny Boyle's explosive film tracks the misadventures of young men in Edinburgh trying to find their way out of joblessness, aimless relationships and drug addiction. Some are successful, while others hopelessly are not. Based on Irvine Walsh's novel, Trainspotting melds grit with poetry, resulting in a film of harsh truths and stunning grace.