17th annual / 2025 Ashfield Filmfest
The 2025 FilmFest took place on September 19th and 20th at Ashfield’s Town Hall. It was fun-filled and fabulously filmic!
Friday’s Program - Fanny: The Right to Rock
June Millington and her sister Jean Millington were founding members of the legendary rock group Fanny, the first all-women band to issue an LP with a major record label (Warner/Reprise, 1970). Rolling Stone Magazine quoted David Bowie:
“One of the most important female bands in American Rock has been buried without a trace: Fanny. They were one of the finest f#*@king bands of their time. They’re as important as anybody else who’s ever been, ever.”
June later went on to establish the Institute of Musical Arts (IMA) in Goshen. On Friday, September 19, the Ashfield FilmFest was thrilled to screen the 2021 biographical film Fanny: The Right to Rock.
Saturday’s Short Film Competition
On Saturday, September 20, the community gathered and packed the town hall for the short film competition where they watched a juried collection of community-created films on the big screen. Here is this year’s list of prize winners.
Audience Grand Prize - The Journey Home, by Cole Whitaker
History Prize - The People’s Steeple - by Buz Eisenberg and Mary Patierno
Best Animation Entry - Flood Line, by Helen Hummel
Best Narrative Entry - The Journey Home, by Cole Whitaker
Best Music Video/Spoken Word Entry - Not the Only One, by Kris Delmhorst and J. Elon Goodman
Best Youth Entry - Mystery Lies Upon Us, by Cole Raffa, Lincoln Lafleur, Colton Kingsbury and Simon Helenek
Best Technical Achievement Entry - Red Wolf in Time Out, by Dave Russo and Calliope Mary
Tip o’ the Hat Prize - Our Schools, Our Towns, by Talia Miller
Please Consider Submitting a film for next year’s FilmFest
Find details on our submissions page.
The following review was anonymously submitted to FilmFreeway from one of the 2023 contributing filmmakers.
This was roughly my 20th festival in 2 years. Since Ashfield is such a little rural town and the films are supposed to have some sort of local connection, I was expecting it to be small and campy compared to the international fests that we'd just come from. I imagined it would be like attending an elementary school talent show. WOW was I surprised.
The event was packed with enthusiastic energy of all ages. The films were extremely creative and diverse. Even after sitting for hours, I was just "more more more!". I mean, even the kids' projects were captivating.
The antics of the hosts and the overall experience of being there was just... big city level. They're too humble to flaunt it, but there is some big name Hollywood cred hidden in ranks. This is high art masquerading as a community pageant. Or perhaps community pageants are the new high art in this technological age.
Everyone leaves in a good mood. Perhaps I'm reviewing the community as a whole, but after my second year attending, this is something I'm scheduling my calendar around from now on.