This weekend, the Big Eddy Film Festival returns to Narrowsburg, New York, showcasing independent films that challenge, entertain, and unite audiences. Radio Catskill is proud to serve as a media partner for this celebration of countercurrent, independent storytelling.
Among the featured films are Melody Roscher’s Bird in Hand and Elegance Bratton’s Move Ya Body: The Birth of House. Bird in Hand, the Saturday Night Spotlight film, is a comedy-drama exploring family, desire, and the surprises that unfold during a mother-daughter visit in the Catskills. Move Ya Body: The Birth of House traces the origins of house music in Chicago, highlighting the genre’s roots in queer and Black culture and its global impact.
Roscher said, “The story is is driven by a main character that I feel is very underrepresented in mainstream movies. She’s a biracial woman who’s failing at most things in her life and really trying to understand herself better and her identity and how to build it … I feel that it’s a story that resonates for a lot of people, no matter who they are, but also really spotlight spotlights the difficulty of of being biracial.”
Elegance highlighted the communal power of house music:
“House music is the music of togetherness. It’s about being, you know, on a dance floor with people of different races, different sexuality, different genders, but somehow we’re united by this beat. The possibility that people who are so different from one another can be united by the same rhythm is threatening to those who seek to keep us apart.”
Both filmmakers emphasized the intimate, community-focused experience of festival screenings. Roscher noted, “I really love just the collective experience in the theater that a crowd can have when they’re feeding off of each other. That’s the power of film and cinema. You can go into a room with a bunch of people you don’t know and interact in storytelling together.”
Elegance added, “Big Eddy gives me an opportunity to meet my audience and to get to know them and for them to get to know me. It’s just a chance to like form community around the work in the most direct way.”
Bird in Hand premieres Saturday night and Move Ya Body: The Birth of House is screening on Sunday at noon during the Big Eddy Film Festival. For tickets and the full lineup, visit bigeddyfilmfest.com.
Image: “Move Ya Body: The Birth of House” is an oral history of the origins of Chicago house music, as told by the people who lived it. (Credit: Move Ya Body: The Birth of House)