Hardyville Freedom Film Festival

Freedom writer Claire Wolfe (RebelFire 1.0, The Freedom Outlaw’s Handbook, and so much more) today kicked off the 2005 edition of the Hardyville Freedom Film Festival, when her “little mid-nowhere town of Hardyville becomes bigger than Cannes, Venice, or Telluride. This is the stellar event, the only one of its kind, that annually showcases great freedom films of every era and any part of the globe.”

This year, I’m honored that Claire invited me to join her and Backwoods Home Magazine webmaster Oliver Del Signore on the film nominating committee. After much discussion, the three of us chose 35 finalists in seven categories: Contemporary Dramas, Contemporary Comedies, Science Fiction (any era), Action-Adventure (any era), Animated Features/Family Films, Classics (more than 30 years old), and Foreign Language Films. In November, Claire will announce both a Judges Award and a Readers’ Choice Award.

Lemme tell you, friends — Claire, Oliver, and I may share a love for liberty, but we also have disparate (if occasionally overlapping) cinematic tastes. So there was some dispute on a few of the nominees...and there were one or two films dropped from the final list that I would have loved to see in the contest (as well as a few included that I just don’t care all that much for). But we three remain good comrades. And overall, I’m very happy with this bunch of finalists, especially the inclusion of one movie that stars...well, it stars puppets, fer crissakes. Also, we all agreed to nominate one film that hasn’t even been released to theaters yet and which none of us has seen!

All of this makes for an extremely exciting 2005 Hardyville Freedom Film Festival. So check out the list, hunker down with your popcorn to watch those movies with which you’re unfamiliar, grab a ballot, and vote before the October 20 deadline. This is gonna be fun!

-----
Technorati Tags: Movies, Libertarian, Anarchism