UNDERDOG

A Vermont dairy farmer risks losing the only home he's ever known to chase his dreams of dog mushing in Alaska.

A veritable folk hero, Doug’s ease with cows, dogs and people is a joy to behold. When he trains his team of mutts on the family farm with a dream to compete at the world championships in Alaska, his teenage exuberance seems to erase the tired lines on his sixty-five year old face. Yet the demands of being a small-scale family farmer in a changing world are constant, and Doug has never once left his cows for more than a few days. Meticulously captured over the course of a decade, UNDERDOG paints an intimate vérité portrait of Doug Butler as he puts a curiously optimistic twist on the kinds of family farm tragedies that have so marked American rural life. In the era of the pandemic, the resonance of Doug’s journey extends to all who have faced down loneliness, isolation and the struggle to make sense of forces beyond control.

Screening with Short Film 

DEERWOODS DEATHTRAP

United States, 2021, 9 m, Director James P Gannon

50 years ago, Jack and Betty were hit by a train and survived. 50 years later, they return to the scene of the accident to recount their conflicting memories.