Standing room only at Woodstock film fest

WOODSTOCK, N.Y., Oct. 12 (UPI) -- A standing-room-only crowd attended a series of short films opening the independent Woodstock Film Festival in the New York Catskills artists' colony.

The seventh annual festival, celebrating 130 "fiercely independent" films, includes actors Timothy Hutton and David Strathairn talking about their craft.

Hutton ("Kidnapped" on NBC) and Strathairn ("Good Night, and Good Luck") are to participate in a Sunday panel with Mary Stuart Masterson ("Fried Green Tomatoes") and Griffin Dunne ("After Hours").

The panels "are like a graduate-level course," artist-attendee Donna Whitte-Davis told The Daily Freeman of Kingston, N.Y.

Featured films include the Truman Capote biopic "Infamous," "Off the Black," starring Nick Nolte, and "Shut Up and Sing," chronicling the furor surrounding the Dixie Chicks after an anti-Bush comment by singer Natalie Maines in 2003.

"Shut Up and Sing" director Barbara Kopple, a two-time Academy Award winner, is to receive the festival's Maverick Award Saturday.