In a time of federal funding uncertainty that puts millions at risk of hunger, the Easthampton Film Festival is aiming to make an impact on a local level with a new weekend-long festival.
The Easthampton Film Festival will host its first-ever EFF Fall Community Weekend in two parts: a benefit concert featuring local funk group Soul Magnets at the Marigold Theater on Friday, Nov. 7 at 8 p.m.; and a night of selected short film screenings and talkbacks at E-Media (Eastworks Suite 102) on Saturday, Nov. 8 at 7 and 9 p.m. Proceeds on Friday will benefit Easthampton Community Center, which provides food, clothing and other support to people in need.
Chris Ferry, executive director of Easthampton Film Festival, wanted to create fall programming for the Easthampton Film Festival that wouldn’t be as involved or labor-intensive as the festival itself, which is in the spring. He liked the idea of doing a fundraiser both because Thanksgiving is in the fall and because a fundraiser would align with the festival’s mission of helping to build community locally.
“It’s a great cause, because it’s not like you have to sell somebody on, ‘Hey, we should support a local food bank!’ Even if you’re fortunate to not need their services, it’s hard to not be aware of the rising need,” Ferry said.
Friday’s event will feature Soul Magnets, billed as “a horn-heavy nine-piece ensemble, playing a mix of old-school, funk and neo-soul originals, deep covers and dancefloor favorites,” as well as a costume contest with prizes, a food drive and a raffle. T-shirts with art by Olivia Ahner — who won Easthampton Film Festival’s T-shirt design contest this summer — will also be available for purchase.
Ferry said he can’t predict what kind of turnout the show will have, but he’s a fan of Soul Magnets and hopes the show is packed: “The more people on the dance floor, the more fun it is!”
Saturday’s programming will include two separate screenings: “Best of Fest 2025,” a collection of the festival staff’s favorite short films from this year’s Easthampton Film Festival, and “Horror Highlights,” a collection of horror short films from each year since 2022, when Easthampton Film Festival began. Both screenings will be followed by a talkback with local filmmakers. Organizing the lineup for each screening was a lot like making a mixtape, Ferry said: “It all has to fit neatly together.”
The films include “Loser,” about a young woman who works at a frozen yogurt shop on a life-changing day; “The Killer Across the Street,” about a stay-at-home husband who becomes paranoid about his neighbor; “Tea with the Reaper,” about a ghost hunter who unintentionally unleashes chaos when bringing his daughter back from the afterlife; “The Swim,” about two strangers preparing to swim in the ocean (even though neither one has been swimming); and more.
The Fall Community Weekend will also serve as a training ground for Easthampton Film Festival itself, Ferry said. In the future, he and his team would love to add more programming, both during the festival proper and year-round. Currently, the festival hosts monthly meetups for the local filmmaking community. Expanding festival programming could bring more live music as a way to emphasize the festival aspect and feed into the already-active Pioneer Valley music scene, he said.
“We want to, in the coming years, develop other aspects of the film festival that move it. We don’t want to be Cultural Chaos, but what Cultural Chaos achieves is, it’s a smorgasbord of all this wonderful stuff in Easthampton,” he said.
In that vein, Ferry and his team want to make the film festival feel like less of a niche interest and, instead, more like an Easthampton festival.
Tickets to the Soul Magnets concert and raffle tickets are available at marigold.org/eff. For tickets to “Best of Fest 2025” and “Horror Highlights,” or for more information about Easthampton Film Festival and EFF Fall Community Weekend, visit easthamptonfilmfestival.com/fall25.
Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.