PUTNEY — The acclaimed 2024 documentary Far Out: Life On & After the Commune, directed and edited by Charles Light, will screen at Next Stage Arts on Friday, June 12, at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6:15 p.m.
The screening will take place at Next Stage Arts, 15 Kimball Hill in Putney. Tickets are $10 general admission and are available at nextstagearts.org.
A Q&A with director Charles Light, commune resident Verandah Porche, and composer and performer Patty Carpenter will follow the screening.
Far Out: Life On & After the Commune traces the remarkable fifty-year journey of two New England communes founded in the turbulent summer of 1968 by radical journalists from Liberation News Service. What began as an escape from New York City and the factional conflicts of national politics evolved into an ambitious experiment in communal living, organic farming, grassroots organizing, and cultural reinvention in rural Vermont and western Massachusetts.
Through archival footage and intimate interviews, the film follows writers, artists, and activists who attempted to create a different way of life while confronting the realities and contradictions of collective living. Along the way, many became influential voices in the national anti-nuclear movement.
Among the stories featured is activist Sam Lovejoy’s dramatic toppling of a 500-foot weather tower in protest of a proposed nuclear plant in western Massachusetts — an act that became a defining moment in regional anti-nuclear activism.
The documentary also highlights collaborations between activists and musicians including Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, and John Hall during the legendary No Nukes concerts of the late 1970s.
Honest, reflective, and deeply human, Far Out explores enduring questions about activism, equality, environmentalism, and community. The film captures both the idealism and the complexity of a generation determined to imagine new ways of living together.
For more information and tickets, visit nextstagearts.org.
