Focus Features

New York City is a mecca for film lovers with some of the widest and richest variety of new and old movies available anywhere in the world. What’s more, it has been the setting for more classic movies than one could possibly name, meaning the city is almost like one big movie set.

But if you travel just an hour or so out of the city, you find a place where movies are now thriving. The Hudson Valley, an area immortalized in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is no longer a spooky place distinguished by more headless horsemen than movie theaters. And to celebrate the release of Taking Woodstock – a film which was both shot in and inspired by the area – FilmInFocus has made the Hudson Valley the subject of its regular Movie City feature.

As Peter Bowen explains in his article The Woodstock Film Festival Turns Ten, the area has become abuzz with film activity because of the efforts of the Woodstock Film Festival and its founders Meira Blaustein and Laurent Retjo. And what’s more, the area’s small towns and its natural jewel, the Catskills State Park, have been the setting for an ever-growing number of movies in the past few years, as Nick Dawson finds out.

Woodstock Film Festival Turns Ten
A film festival in the shadow of an iconic concert creates its own history and identity.

Hudson Valley Movies
To coincide with the release of Taking Woodstock, Nick Dawson tracks down other prominent movies that have been filmed in the Hudson Valley.

New York City is a mecca for film lovers with some of the widest and richest variety of new and old movies available anywhere in the world. What’s more, it has been the setting for more classic movies than one could possibly name, meaning the city is almost like one big movie set.

But if you travel just an hour or so out of the city, you find a place where movies are now thriving. The Hudson Valley, an area immortalized in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is no longer a spooky place distinguished by more headless horsemen than movie theaters. And to celebrate the release of Taking Woodstock – a film which was both shot in and inspired by the area – FilmInFocus has made the Hudson Valley the subject of its regular Movie City feature.

As Peter Bowen explains in his article The Woodstock Film Festival Turns Ten, the area has become abuzz with film activity because of the efforts of the Woodstock Film Festival and its founders Meira Blaustein and Laurent Retjo. And what’s more, the area’s small towns and its natural jewel, the Catskills State Park, have been the setting for an ever-growing number of movies in the past few years, as Nick Dawson finds out.

Woodstock Film Festival Turns Ten
A film festival in the shadow of an iconic concert creates its own history and identity.

Hudson Valley Movies
To coincide with the release of Taking Woodstock, Nick Dawson tracks down other prominent movies that have been filmed in the Hudson Valley.