Berkshire film festival transforms a town, a season

The sixth annual incarnation opens Thursday with a screening of “Page One: Inside the New York Times’’ at Great Barrington’s Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. Then festival fever takes over that town’s Triplex Cinema and Pittsfield’s Beacon Cinema, with 70 films showing through Sunday night. Additional screenings are also set for Bard College at Simon’s Rock, in Great Barrington, and Hancock Shaker Village.

Matthew Rubiner, who owns an upscale cheese shop and café in a converted bank sitting within eyeshot of the Triplex, has taken to stocking a festival schedule behind the counter during the BIFF weekend, to better anticipate the oncoming waves of humanity. Even for a business that depends on the summer uptick in sales, the BIFF has taken things to a different level.

“We’ve been through ups and downs, mostly downs lately with the economy. But every year, on the Saturday of the festival, we’ve shattered our all-time sales record. We’re not just talking the best day of that year, we’re talking the best dayever,’’ Rubiner reports. “After the first year, I went up to [festival founder and director] Kelley Vick ery and said, ‘I ought to just kiss you on the mouth.’ ’’

Unsolicited smooches notwithstanding, it’s obvious this festival transforms the community for a few days. Even as a scrappy upstart, the BIFF felt like anything but. From its first year, the festival oozed a posh sense of style — from its glossy program to the swank afterparties dotting the suddenly swinging downtown. Since then it has grown steadily, from 40 films in two venues to 70 spread across five. Fewer than a thousand tickets were sold in ’06, and more than 3,000 were snapped up last year. Fans have come to expect a high level of quality: the limited allotment of all-you-can-see movie passes reliably sells out about a month before the schedule is even announced.