INTO THE WILD

The Rural Route Film Festival seeks to highlight international works that take place not in the movie-friendly environs of a bustling city, but rather in far-off locales (farms, mountains, rural villages) that can be just as captivating. Like the programs of previous editions, this year’s 10th-annual lineup merges contemporary cinema (such as rising filmmaker Josephine Decker’s Butter on the Latch, screening Sunday) with choice selections from the past (The Wicker Man tomorrow). But tonight’s opening showcase—a 50th-anniversary, 35mm screening of Sergei Paradjanov’s landmark Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964), set in the 19th-century Carpathian Mountains—is undoubtedly the highlight of the festival. Writing for the Voice in May 1994, J. Hoberman called Shadows “an acid head’s home movie—an explosion of lyrical pantheism unseen in Soviet cinema since the late silent period.” We agree.

Fri., Aug. 8, 7 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 9, 7 p.m., 2014