The 1954 horror flicks Godzilla and Creature From the Black Lagoon drew controversy when they played at the Vermont International Film Festival in 2004. Some believed that the Burlington event should remain true to its roots, which for nearly two decades prior had meant screening films to promote peace, justice and environmental preservation. Former festival director Kenneth Peck recalled making a speech in response, explaining how Godzilla, the sci-fi classic about a giant radioactive monster in postwar Japan, “really was a film about the environment and nuclear bombs and things.”
Creature From the Black Lagoon appeared to have even less social significance. Then-board president Barry Snyder defended it, telling Seven Days at the time that “a connection can be made to Cold War paranoia.”
No such kerfuffles are expected this week, as the 40th-anniversary edition of the Vermont International Film Festival opens its 10-day run. When executive director Steve MacQueen booked campy cult filmmaker John Waters to give live commentary during a screening of his outrageous 1974 romp Female Trouble, no one asked MacQueen to connect the dots between the “Prince of Puke” and human rights. The headliner event sold out an hour after tickets went on sale to the general public.
Clearly, much has changed at Vermont’s oldest film festival. While traditional themes are represented in this year’s lineup — expect documentaries on war-torn Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, along with one about an effort to protect snow leopards in Nepal — the 80 festival films were not selected for their subject matter. Rather, members of the programming committee combed the globe in search of cinematic excellence to meet the fest’s current mission: “bring the world to Vermont through film.”
“It’s the major force for film culture, certainly in Chittenden County, and one of the leading forces in the state.”
Jay Craven
The Vermont International Film Foundation, a nonprofit started in 1985 to promote world peace, has grown from the host of a grassroots biennial film fest devoted exclusively to documentaries into a thriving year-round operation. Most recently, it has stepped up to help fill the void left by the November 2024 closure of Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas, Burlington’s last commercial movie theater.
“It’s the major force for film culture, certainly in Chittenden County, and one of the leading forces in the state,” said Peacham filmmaker Jay Craven, cofounder and artistic director of the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival.
In addition to its 10-day flagship festival, VTIFF collaborates with Vermont Public to produce the Made Here Film Festival, an April event featuring films from New England and Québec. Throughout the year, the film foundation plays movies in the 220-seat Film House at Main Street Landing and its own 34-seat Screening Room in the same building. The latter microcinema has hosted 132 screenings since opening in March 2024.
VTIFF’s Film House showings started out monthly but increased in frequency and broadened in scope after the Roxy closed. The 22 films shown so far this year include art-house and mainstream hits that distributors previously would not have made available to VTIFF if they played at the Roxy: Sean Baker’s Anora; Queer, starring Daniel Craig; Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, from French writer and director Laura Piani; and Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee’s latest release, starring Denzel Washington. Sold-out shows, formerly “a wonderful surprise,” according to VTIFF associate director Gail Clook, have become a more regular occurrence. On average, the Film House is nearly 75 percent full.
The signature fall festival, which runs October 17 to 26 this year, remains VTIFF’s largest event. The fact that it still exists is, in itself, remarkable.
The movie industry continues in a downward spiral sparked by Hollywood’s dual writers’ and actors’ strikes that ended two years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported this month. Though American movie theaters’ box office earnings hit $9 billion in 2024 — up 20 percent from the year before — they remained $2 billion shy of their pre-2020 numbers, market research database IBISWorld reports.
In Burlington, vandalism, open drug use and homelessness compounded those national pressures, forcing Merrill Jarvis III to close the Roxy one year after shuttering Palace 9 Cinemas in South Burlington. The Jarvis dynasty, which once operated 13 theaters, now owns one: Majestic 10 in Williston.
VTIFF has a different business model. It doesn’t have to fill seats seven days a week, which makes the enterprise less risky. But the nonprofit has faced its own challenges. The steady buffet of heady documentaries it once offered earned it a dour image, dampening ticket sales and forcing a painful, prolonged identity crisis that pushed it to the brink of closure in the early 2010s.
And yet, it has emerged larger and stronger. As the film foundation turns 40, it stands on steadier ground than many traditional cinemas.
“For years, I have felt that the Vermont International Film Festival is the most enriching cultural event in Burlington,” said Allan Kunigis, a film buff from Shelburne. “And with all the expanded offerings, it’s not even close anymore.”
A Coming-of-Age Story
VTIFF’s story unspools like a good movie: When a cast of characters full of heart and short on cash starts a film festival to stop nuclear war, antics — and struggles — ensue.
George and Sonia Cullinen founded the film organization in 1985 with a loftier goal than simply introducing Vermonters to cutting-edge cinema: world peace. Known for his white beard and beret, George had ridden the rails during the Great Depression, sailed with the U.S. Merchant Marine and fought in the Spanish Civil War. He and Sonia had operated a private, progressive elementary school in Queens for about two decades before retiring to Vermont. That’s when George became a filmmaker.
The Wilmington couple were inspired to start a global peace film festival after attending the 1983 Hiroshima International Film Festival in Japan, where George’s short documentary “Washington to Moscow” was awarded a UNESCO Prize.
The film told the story of a 1981 walk from Washington, Vt., to Moscow, Vt., that called for the U.S. and the Soviet Union to agree to mutual nuclear disarmament. “We went to Hiroshima to receive the award and were deeply moved by our experience in the city that fell victim to world’s first nuclear attack,” the couple recalled in the 1987 program for their own festival.
Working with friends and members of the Concerned Citizens of Deerfield Valley, the Cullinens formed a nonprofit, rounded up more than 60 sponsors and, in spring 1985, launched the first Vermont World Peace Film Festival at Marlboro College. It screened 25 films over three days, and letters of support from such varied luminaries as Carl Sagan, Ed Asner and Norman Lear were read aloud. In 1987, the festival moved to the University of Vermont, and it has presented films at venues in and around Burlington ever since.
Initially, filmmakers submitted work in three categories — war and peace, justice and human rights, and the environment — and a jury evaluated them using an elaborate scoring system. “It was totally complicated and unrealistic to keep that going, but that’s how the first festival came about,” said Snyder, a member of those early juries and, later, the board of directors, on which he served as president for three years in the early 2000s.
Early on, the event was renamed the EarthPeace International Film Festival. (That didn’t last long. “As one of the board members said, ‘It ain’t catchy,’” former director and board member Peck recalled.) In 1994, it became the Vermont International Film Festival. Though it retained its social mission, it dropped the peace dove logo.
“That caused a great deal of uproar,” Snyder said.
The controversies didn’t end there. Tensions simmered for years as organizers wrestled with the idea of expanding beyond the festival’s initial tight focus.
‘Doom and Gloom’
The Cullinens, and some like-minded organizers, remained adamant that this was a social justice film festival. Others argued that that mission, though noble, was not sustainable. The founders, who died in the early 2000s, weren’t actively involved after the first few years, but they “were not shy about feeling that they had ownership,” Snyder said. They were concerned with the greater cause, he added, but the board had bills to pay, and there was a limited audience for documentaries “on social issues that were often really depressing.”
“Fun is not a word generally associated with the Vermont International Film Festival,” began a 2004 Seven Days article. “Interesting? Yes. Informative? Always. But the annual Burlington event devoted to ‘images and issues of global concern’ is no laugh riot for audiences.”
Simply put, “It became known as the Doom and Gloom Festival,” said Orly Yadin, executive director from 2012 to 2023.
The reputation lingered for years, hindering VTIFF’s bottom line. The foundation couldn’t always afford an office or staff members. Between 2008 and 2011, it staged four festivals without an executive director, so unpaid board members orchestrated everything. “It was a struggle!” then-board president Deb Ellis said in an email. Ellis recalled riding in the back seat of a car en route to a weekend in Cape Cod, editing and proofreading a festival program.
“There was nobody else who could do it,” she said. “I just remember it being overwhelming.”
The festival’s future appeared dim. “It literally almost died,” said Ellis, a documentary filmmaker and University of Vermont film professor. “We really just didn’t have funding. We didn’t have a way to keep on going.”
She recalled board conversations in her living room “and various other places” about the need for an executive director. Board member Yadin, who made animated documentary films, volunteered to take the position — unpaid for a year, if she couldn’t raise more than enough to cover her salary. She started on January 1, 2012, and took a paycheck a year later.
“Orly was a great fundraiser,” Ellis said.
Yadin had the drive needed to keep VTIFF alive, Peck said: “There’s almost this fierceness to her. When she gets determined to do something, it’s going to happen.”
In meetings with donors and talks to local groups, Yadin laid out plans to chart a new course. Rather than restrict its focus to social issues, VTIFF would become about the art of cinema, she said. That didn’t mean that films couldn’t be about social issues, she clarified, but promoting those issues would no longer be the purpose of the organization. Yadin would present “independent films from around the world to show how other people felt or thought, or what they experienced,” she said.
Under her leadership, VTIFF expanded its programming. It played free movies in Burlington City Hall Park to raise its profile, started the Global Roots Film Festival in 2013 to show films from the origin countries of Vermont’s new Americans and partnered with Vermont Public to celebrate regional filmmakers with the Made Here Film Festival.
Yadin brought Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite to the festival in 2019, just before the South Korean film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, becoming the first non-English-language film to take the top prize.
She also brought in high-profile guests, including Oscar-winning filmmaker Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep, My Brother’s Wedding, To Sleep With Anger) and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. The group played live in 2013 after a screening of Brothers Hypnotic, a documentary about the eight sons of jazz trumpeter Phil Cohran who formed the band.
Three years later, when animated feature The Triplets of Belleville screened at the Flynn Main Stage, Oscar-nominated composer Benoît Charest brought his orchestra from Montréal to play the film score live.
Under Yadin, VTIFF started a membership program, a tool that gives nonprofit arts presenters valuable up-front revenue, and a daily festival happy hour to entice matinee audiences to stay for evening shows.
Shortly after Snyder and Eric Ford launched the Burlington Film Society in 2012 to cultivate film culture and show films monthly, Yadin suggested that it become part of VTIFF, a mutually beneficial move that would give the society administrative support and inject VTIFF with film-loving audience members. That’s when the foundation began offering monthly screenings in the Film House, giving itself a year-round presence.
On the Waterfront
Chain-link fencing blocks the entrance to the Roxy. “That was my theater,” film lover Abby Kenney lamented. Now, she and other Burlingtonians who want to see the latest Hollywood blockbuster have to drive seven miles to Williston or nine to Essex. For art-house movies, however, they can stay in town — thanks to VTIFF.
When MacQueen took over executive director duties from Yadin two years ago, “I walked into a stable organization that was primed to move forward,” he said.
The film foundation had made money in nine of the prior 10 years and had assets worth $299,000. One of the last things Yadin did was negotiate a lease for office and cinema space at Main Street Landing. The first thing MacQueen did was sign it.
VTIFF, which had bounced around town and through board members’ living rooms, was finally visible and accessible. Its waterfront office faces Lake Street.
With MacQueen, 62, VTIFF has a seasoned arts presenter and lifelong film buff. He was a U.S. Air Force brat who always felt at home in a movie theater whenever his family landed in a new town, he said. After working as a reporter and movie critic in Tallahassee, Fla., his career in the arts took him to Atlanta, North Carolina, back to Florida and then to the Flynn, where he was artistic director from 2012 to 2022. MacQueen selected and booked musicians, dance ensembles, theater companies and the occasional comedian.
“Film’s always been my favorite thing,” he said. His movie-idol name is a coincidence. His mother, seeking to spare him the name his father had proposed — Angus Eldred, in honor of his two grandfathers — suggested Steven. “I looked it up,” he said. “The Great Escape came out the month after I was born, and that’s when Steve McQueen became a star.”
Steve MacQueen continues to build VTIFF. The organization hired its third full-time staffer last year, and membership has jumped to 504, up from 275 a year ago.
“I just want to keep showing really great films from across the spectrum, from around the world.”
Steve MacQueen
MacQueen invites local guest curators to present movies in the Screening Room as a way of expanding viewpoints. He asked five comedians to pick movies they found funny and burlesque artist Katniss Everqueer to curate “Queer Coming-Out Stories,” in which five people each showed the film that first made them feel less alone. “Surprise Me! With Ryan Miller” was a two-night event in which the Guster singer screened a movie without sharing the title in advance.
The Screening Room provides great flexibility. Shortly after Robert Redford died, VTIFF presented two of the actor’s movies, Three Days of the Condor and Jeremiah Johnson, as a “Remembering Robert Redford” series.
The Screening Room was 8 months old and MacQueen had been on the job for 17 months when the Roxy shut its doors last year. “I hate to celebrate the closing of a first-run theater, but it’s helped us out in terms of being able to show the more popular art-house movies,” MacQueen said. The closure “caused us to really step up our game,” he added. “And I think we’ve done a really good job. I think when people come to see a movie at VTIFF, they understand they’re going to see a movie that’s presented by people who love movies.”
Soon, there will be competition. A new nonprofit called Partizanfilm is establishing a two-screen microcinema on College Street to show first-run independent and foreign films — and occasional repertory fare — seven days a week. It’s expected to open in November, but MacQueen isn’t worried.
“More opportunities to see movies is a good thing,” he said. “The ideal is that we work together really well and balance each other.” Burlington, as a college town, should have the audience to support both entities, he added.
While that remains to be seen, VTIFF is strongly positioned as a trusted curator of film, he said. “I just want to keep showing really great films from across the spectrum, from around the world, from different filmmakers, and connect with people who love movies.”
The 40th-anniversary festival is poised to deliver on all of that. It features 80 films from 40 countries over 10 days — ranging from “Little Kid Flicks,” a collection of animated and live-action shorts from around the world; to Battleship Potemkin, a 100-year-old Soviet silent masterpiece; to A Useful Guest, a Thai film featuring a brawl between a vacuum cleaner and a refrigerator. And, of course, it will present one of the fest’s biggest headliners ever: John Waters.
“He’s a great American filmmaker, and I knew he’d be perfect for Burlington,” said MacQueen, who has seen Waters speak four times and finds him “hysterically funny,” he said. “Quite blue,” he added. “But that’ll be fun.”
MacQueen booked him, and no one blinked an eye.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Now Showing | After 40 years, thousands of movies and a near-death experience, the Vermont International Film Foundation is helping fill a cinematic void in Burlington”
This article appears in Oct 15-21 2025.
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