EJ Chocolates usually closes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This week, with the Woodstock Film Festival bringing visitors to town, its owners opened the Village Green shop both days.
For co-owner Emily Kellogg, 32, the festival arrives at an opportune moment.
“I think it’s a blend of the film festival, the trees are changing, the foliage brings people up here,” she said. “It’s the perfect scenario.”
The 27th Woodstock Film Festival opened Wednesday, Oct. 14, and runs through Sunday, Oct. 18. The annual event draws almost 10,000 filmmakers and moviegoers, said Meira Blaustein, its outgoing executive director. For local merchants, the benefits range from extra customers between screenings to the prospect of visitors returning long after the credits roll.
At Jean Turmo, a Woodstock shop that sells cosmetics, bath items, fragrances, and jewelry, owner Rebecca Turmo, 59, takes the longer view.
“I have honestly never noticed an actual economic bump the weekend of the film festival,” she said. “One of the reasons is people that are coming up here for the film festival are going to see films and they’re being held all day and all evening.”
Turmo said the festival raises Woodstock’s profile and inspires visitors to come back, which can bring customers to her shop.
“If you look for the long road, that leaves people coming into our community who perhaps have never been here before, who get an idea that there’s something here and may come back another time,” she said.
Festival organizers said some visitors have later moved to Ulster County, and some filmmakers have returned with production teams to shoot in the area.
The festival can also set the stage for steady business through the end of the year, starting with Woodstock’s large Halloween celebration and continuing through Small Business Saturday and holiday shopping, Turmo said.
“Any kind of publicity that Woodstock gets, especially when it has to do with the arts, is terrific,” she said.
In the short term, the festival brings another wave of visitors after the long weekend that ended Monday, Oct. 12, with Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
The festival also rents venues around town. This year’s screenings and panel discussions are scheduled at the Bearsville Theater, Utopia Studios, Woodstock Playhouse, and Tinker Street Cinema, among others.
Visitors’ spending extends beyond tickets. Alexandra Lukina, 39, director of the animated short film “Down the Hatch,” and her husband are spending $2,000 on seven nights of lodging this week. The Houston couple expected to spend another $1,000 on groceries at Hannaford, a family dinner at Silvia, and gifts for relatives back home, among other things. They also plan to take in the fall foliage.
The festival’s reputation drew them to Woodstock.
“For filmmakers, it’s very well known in Texas,” Lukina said.
Shoe stores get a lift of their own. Festivalgoers often show up needing, of all things, footwear, said Joey Dorpfeld, 28, manager of Pegasus Footwear in Woodstock.
“You’ll definitely notice, between the showtimes, you’ll have an influx of people in the store,” he said. “A lot of the time, people forget a pair of shoes.”
Customers during past festivals have told Dorpfeld they forgot their hiking boots or packed only flip-flops.
“That happens a lot,” he said.
Business doesn’t surge again until Thanksgiving weekend, Dorpfeld said.
“From there until Christmas we are pretty busy,” he said.
John W. Barry is a reporter for The Overlook. Reach him at john@theoverlooknews.com.
