“So point this at the projector and hit on,” Vermont International Film Festival Executive Director Steve MacQueen tells me. I do, and Robert Altman’s 3 Women comes alive mid-movie on the broad Screening Room screen. Shelly Duvall’s Millie is walking down the balcony stairs at night in her strange yellow robe with the hood up, headed to the courtyard pool. She passes her uninterested crush and his jeering pals and naively offers a both agonizing and hilarious “hi Tom.”
I’ve seen the movie a half-dozen times, yet Altman’s strange bouquet of subtleties had never come through so well as it does in VTIFF’s 32-seat “micro cinema,” specifically engineered to make films look and sound nothing like they do at home.
The Screening Room is one of three theaters at VTIFF’s Main Street Landing headquarters, which also includes a 110-seat Black Box and the Film House, accommodating 210 guests. Since taking the organization’s reins in 2022, MacQueen has been renewing audiences’ love for understated indie classics here while introducing film fans to some of the stronger-proofed fare coming in from all corners of the globe.
I catch him in a flurry of last-minute preparations, as he and his team wrap up production on VTIFF’s namesake event, the 2024 Vermont International Film Festival. This is MacQueen’s second Festival in the director’s chair. His first was a collaborative effort with his venerated predecessor, longtime VTIFF director Orly Yadin.
"This is sort of the first one out on my own,” he says while also acknowledging the essential contributions of VTIFF’s associate director, Gail Clook.
The Festival runs October 18-27 and its 45 films are programmed mostly in the Black Box and Film House. I ask MacQueen how many films he watched over the summer in order to narrow down the final count: 80 personally, though the Festival’s film committee watched over 100 collectively. Each member of the 10-person team rated the films on a 10-point scale and submitted the results for MacQueen to consider.
"There’s one film that some committee members ranked a two while others ranked it a nine,” MacQueen says. “So of course you gotta do that one.” (Pressed on which film, MacQueen demurred.)
MacQueen and his staff don’t approach the Festival with a specific theme or focus.
"A specific focus can narrow the possibilities in an unhelpful way,” he says. “It comes down to the quality of the movies. I try to get representation across the world, but if the movies aren’t good, that’s the deciding factor.”
He notes that themes emerge naturally from the selection. Stepping back to look at his schedule, MacQueen was pleased to discover that half of the films in the Festival are directed by women, and that two micro-series of three Iranian films and three music documentaries are also on the roster.
"The movies announce their own sort of focus,” he says.
A personal favorite of his in the upcoming festival is Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.
"It’s a documentary about jazz and world politics, specifically the Congo,” MacQueen says. “I’m a jazz head and I’d never seen much of this stuff before.”
Headlining the parade of on-site guests is director Lizzie Borden, screening her films Born In Flames and Working Girls. The former, largely ignored when released in 1983, is now a critical darling. The Criterion Collection blurbed it breathlessly as a “postpunk provocation…a DIY fantasia of female rebellion…a Molotov cocktail of feminist futurism that’s both an essential document of its time and radically ahead of it.”
"Hindsight is easy sometimes,” MacQueen says.
Though film festivals can be criticized for heavy-handed subject matter, MacQueen was resolute on adding levity to the lineup. Among the top comedies are Shahid, from Iranian director Narges Kalhor, and The Balconettes, from French writer, actress, and director Noémie Merlant.
The full lineup of the Festival comes out Wednesday, October 9 during an unveiling reception at the Film House. With last year’s Festival welcoming sellout crowds exceeding expectations, MacQueen expects similar enthusiasm this year, though he seems less concerned with attendance than with sticking his curatorial landing.
"The biggest challenge is making the grid and pairing the films,” he says. “Making sure you’re not stealing your own audience.”
Having booked the Flynn’s performing arts fare during some of the boutique Burlington theater’s most artistically rich years, MacQueen knows that discerning Vermonters show up for inspired programming.
"So we’re just trying to pick the best movies we can find in this moment,” he says.
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Join us for this year's International Film Festival, from October 18-27. Check out everything that's happening over the 10 days of the festival…
