The Lake Placid Film Forum – now marking its fifteenth anniversary – returns to The Lake Placid Center for the Arts (LPCA) and the Palace Theatre with a lineup of new, recent and classic film screenings from Thursday, June 9, through Sunday, June 12. Tickets are $10 per screening and will be available at the LPCA Box Office.

The boxing classic “Rocky” will open the five-day event with a free outdoor screening in Mid’s Park in downtown Lake Placid Wednesday, June 8, at approximately 9 pm.

Screenings include: narrative features and documentaries; international foreign-language as well as North American English-language movies; a slew of Canadian pictures, including a special double-feature on Saturday afternoon of two highly regarded new films curated by an emeritus Ontario-based film professor and AFS Board Member Tom Hanrahan; the silent film classic  “Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid,” plus a short with live piano accompaniment by Ben Model, who frequently performs such programs at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art; and a special “Essentials” screening of one of the greatest movies ever made, Carol Reed’s “The Third Man,” starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles—a program that will be moderated by Jeremy Arnold, the author of the brand new book, The Essentials: 52 Must-See Movies and Why They Matter, which is a tie-in with the popular “Essentials” program that airs Saturday nights on cable TV’s Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Following the screening, Arnold will be joined by producer and former industry exec Larry Jackson, who worked with Welles on his unfinished film “The Other Side of the Wind” as well as “Filming Othello,” and AFS Artistic Director Kathleen Carroll, former film critic for the New York Daily News, for a discussion of “The Third Man” and what makes a film an “Essential.”

Among the documentary features are true-life stories about such subjects as:

• Comedian, Robert Klein, who influenced comics such as Jerry Seinfeld and Richard Lewis;

• The indigenous Onondaga people of Northern New York and their efforts to save and protect the environment of the land and planet that they regard as sacred ground;

• Photographer Robert Frank whose work includes a famous shot of the Village Green in nearby Jay, New York, which was published in The New York Times;
• Filmmaker Sidney Lumet, considered one of the greatest “actor’s directors” to work in New York City as well as Hollywood, whose rich output of powerfully gritty contemporary movies includes “Twelve Angry Men,” “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Network” and “Verdict”;

• The USA and East German womens’ swim teams that competed against each other in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, in a narrative that details the triumph of victory and the agony of defeat until it unravels into a tale of tragedy when the East German women are shown to have been enmeshed in illegal doping during the Games; and

• A fascinating take on the impact of the digital world on real life by the German narrative feature director Werner Herzog, known for such classic works of obsession as “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo.”

Expected guests this year—in person or, in one case, via Skype—include:

• Film critic Marshall Fine, director of the documentary “Robert Klein Can’t Stop His Leg” (scheduled for Sat., 6/11, 8:30 pm at the Palace);

• Gwendolen Cates, the director of “The Good Mind,” about the Onondaga, with Chief Jake Edwards, who is featured in the film (Fri., 6/10, 9:15 pm & Sun., 6/12, 4 pm at LPCA);

• Laura Israel, director of “Don’t Blink, The Robert Frank Doc” (Sun., 6:15 pm, LPCA), slated to be accompanied by panelist Nathan Farb, the renowned Adirondack photographer whose footage of Frank giving a lecture is included in the film;

• Documentary maven Nancy Buirski, director of “By Sidney Lumet,” this year’s Closing Film (Sun., 8:30 pm, LPCA) is scheduled to introduce her film via Skype;

• Fifteen-time Emmy Award-winner Brian Brown, director of “The Last Gold,” about two very different approaches to Olympic women’s swimming (Fri., 7 pm, at LPCA & Sun., 7:00 pm, at the Palace); and

• Pianist-organist Ben Model, who returns to the LPFF following his crowd-pleasing performance at last year’s event accompanying a Clara Bow feature and a Charlie Chase short and who, with the Chaplin classic “The Kid” plus another short, promises to top his previous Film Forum appearance (Thu., 6/9, 7:30 pm, LPCA).

Among the narrative features (or, in the case of “Where to Invade Next,” strictly speaking a documentary) that will be screened, performers and directors include: Cate Blanchett, Robert Budreau, Andrew Cividino, Stephen Elliot, Ethan Hawke, Todd Haynes, Harvey Keitel, Martin Landau, Guy Maddin, Rooney Mara, Michael Moore, Atom Nagoyan, Christopher Plummer, Paolo Sorrentino and John Turturro.

For more information on the Lake Placid Film Forum, click here. The Lake Placid Center for the Arts is located at 17 Algonquin Drive in Lake Placid.