Bollywood, or live scores to silent films, or Christopher Plummer accepting a lifetime achievement award — film in the Berkshires can go anywhere. Film-makers and independent films, documentaries and animation come year-round to local museums, colleges and cinemas. 

We have more going on behind the scenes. Film pioneer Doug Trumbull — known for the effects in films like Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind — has drawn a film community here for decades, and today he is innovating in 21st-dentury digital technology, designing magi pods like portable IMAX theaters.

And to blend the future with the past, within an evening’s drive in New York State you can still find a drive-in theater. Bring a farm picnic to the next Avengers movie and sit on the hood of your car, leaning back against the windshield, while children run in the grass.

Film in the Berkshires

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FreshGrass

Mass MoCA

Mass MoCA is now the largest contemporary art museum in the country, and one of the largest on the planet. Artists from across the U.S. and the world have come to show their work in a former mill North Adams along the Hoosic River.

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Photo by Rosana Prada

Images Cinema

Images is a non-profit community movie theater in Williamstown, and one of the few remaining single-screen, independent theaters still running in this country. It shows new films every week, with organic pop corn and real butter.

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Courtesy photo

Mahaiwe

The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center brings music to the Berkshires year-round, and dance, film, comedy and theater as well, in a restored 1905 concert hall and cinema.

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Parsons Dance / Photo by Richard Termine

Performance Space 21

PS21 has grown into a series of music and theater, dance and film. For many years the concert stage opened in the summer season, under a tent, but in 2018 it expanded into the cold months in a new all-weather theater with flexible sound, lighting and space.

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