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Queens is going to the country. This weekend, the Museum of the Moving Image will screen 28 movies from 13 countries and host other activities — including live music and Q&As with directors — as part of the Rural Route Film Festival. This ninth annual celebration takes the road less traveled to inform moviegoers about people and cultures normally overlooked by the mainstream media. Some of the feature films that will show this year include: Tall as the Baobab Tree, which tells the story of a Senegalese girl who tries to stop her father from selling her 11-year-old sister into marriage; Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog’s classic 1982 film about a European businessman who becomes obsessed with building an opera house in the Amazon; Salt, a modern-day western about a Spanish film director who travels to Chile looking for inspiration to write a screenplay; The Mosuo Sisters, a documentary about two sisters who lose their jobs in Beijing and leave for a remote village in the Himalayas; and Baikonur, an off-beat romance filmed in the steppes of Kazakhstan. There will also be a decidedly urban twist to this year’s festival, which kicks off with a feast on August 1st at Strand Smokehouse in Astoria and closes with a screening party featuring electronic music at Brooklyn Grange Farm in Long Island City on August 4th. On August 2nd there will be a special tribute to Les Blank, a filmmaker who documented the fascinating lives of those at the fringes of American culture, who died in April.

Details: Ninth Annual Rural Route Film Festival, Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Ave., Astoria, August 1-4, click here for movie schedule.

Photo: The Mosuo Sisters


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