BRATTLEBORO — Filmmaking appears to be alive and well in Vermont.
Four shorts and one feature film, all made in Vermont, will be showcased this year at an indoor/outdoor mixer at the New England Youth Theatre in Brattleboro.
On Aug. 5, from 5:15 to 10:30 p.m., The Northern Routes Film Collaborative and Brattleboro Film Festival are bringing back for its third year the Summer Cinema Slam, with a diverse lineup of Vermont-made films and filmmakers.
Question-and-answer sessions with the filmmakers will follow the screening of most films. The event also features live music, food trucks, and summer brews.
Event co-organizer Angela Snow was impressed by the diversity of films she was able to program.
“It was great to discover high quality film after film we would be happy to screen,” she says. “Not only was there a variety in the styles of films, but the filmmakers themselves ranged from high school to veteran filmmakers. From fantasy, to animation, to period piece, to dark comedy, to drama; watching them together will be quite the feast for the brain.”
The event opens at 5:15 p.m., giving early birds a chance to mingle and visit the food and beverage vendors before the short film program gets started at 6 p.m.
A coal mining story
First to play is Black Canaries, Jesse Kreitzer's elegiac and haunting film drawn from his family's coal mining history.
“There aren't many opportunities for filmmakers to share their work in Windham County, so I'm thrilled to bring Black Canaries to Brattleboro for its hometown premiere,” Kreitzer says. “Having recently moved back to Marlboro to produce my next film, I'm always looking for opportunities to connect with area creatives."
Kreitzer presented a preliminary version of Black Canaries at the Latchis Theatre a few years ago as part of a fund-raising tour for the film.
“That actually was a storyboard version which later was transformed into the live action short that will be showing at Cinema Slam,” Kreitzer says.
For the past year, Black Canaries has traveled the film festival circuit, touring coast to coast and even internationally, but this is the first showing of the finished, re-edited short, in Brattleboro.
“I was somewhat naive to think Black Canaries, originally at 18 minutes, would be easy to program, for shorts over 10 minutes are difficult to find venues to play,” Kreitzer says. “The new version is a little over 14 minutes but nothing important has been eliminated. Everything has been streamlined and tightened.”
Kreitzer is buying a former one-room schoolhouse in Marlboro to make his home. Here, he plans to finish his first feature film which has been in development for 10 years, Caregivers, about the elderly and those who look at after them in Vermont.
Thoughtful and sweet
Awake screens next, from Middlebury College graduate Sofy Maia, who also will attend the Summer Cinema Slam. It is Maia's first solo effort. A thoughtful and sweet film about outgrowing the monsters in the closet, the animation brings a playful and accessible vibe to a dreaded childhood fear.
“It's actually a little difficult to describe what it was like to make my short film in Vermont, because 3D animation is (in my opinion) by nature a somewhat insular/introverted art form, compared to live action film,” Maia says. “That independence is part of what attracted me to it. Whereas in live action films you need to find actors, boom operators, cinematographers, and so forth, in animation you can have an idea and sit down to start animating it the following minute.”
Well, not exactly.
A couple of years ago, Maia decided to start production on Awake as her senior thesis film at Middlebury College.
“What became very clear was that I wasn't going to be able to make the film the way I wanted to make it, unless I found some people to help me,” she explains. “This is where I think being in Vermont, and being at Middlebury, really started to define my experience making this animation. I was blown away by the immediate generosity and enthusiasm I found in people in my community who I'd never even met, for an almost-experimental short film that didn't even have a traditional script.
“I think if I had been anywhere else in the world, not only would it have been much more difficult for me to get in touch with people with this level of talent who were willing to work for nothing but the fun of it and some recognition, but it would've been virtually impossible to find collaborators who were also truly excited and invested in the success of this film.”
Maia thinks that creating Awake in Vermont was a perfect lesson in collaborative filmmaking.
“It doesn't have to be scary, or a hassle, or a hindrance to my vision for the film,” she says. “I can only hope I have such an easy time of it in the future as I start making films outside of the state.”
The final film in the first program is Ben Finer's mesmerizing In the Bight.
Mysteries of the forest
The film is a delightful and at times strange and dark journey into the imaginations of two children at play. In this half-hour short, eight-year-old twins explore the mysteries of the forest along with the wonders of their own imaginations. Finer grew up in Norwich, Vt. whose woods provided the location for the film, and which is indelibly captured with striking cinematography and sound design.
Summer Cinema Slam intermission gets underway at 8 p.m., with live music from Townshend duo Hungrytown. Coming off another world tour for their superb Further West album, Ken Anderson and Rebecca Hall bring what one critic called “durable folk, sounding for all the world like a collection of traditional tunes hewn either in a hollow or in the highlands, in a different age than this.” Vendors will be on hand to provide food and drink.
The second program begins at 9 p.m. with the short Dad's 50th Surprise Party, a dark comedy from filmmaker Matt Lennon. Winner at the Vermont International Film Festival, this 10-minute narrative short explores two brothers who team up to finally one-up their prankster dad for his 50th birthday.
“It's a comedy toying with drama,” says Lennon, who made the film at Middlebury College last summer. “I work at the Middlebury College film department, and each summer staff and alumni from New York and Boston get together to make a short film. This was my turn. I wrote the script and directed.”
A 2013 graduate of Middlebury College, Lennon is now moving to Texas to get an MFA in filmmaking.
“My main focus is teaching,” he admits, “And while I would like to be a world famous filmmaker - who wouldn't? - I'd have to move to LA to pursue my career. The truth is that I think there are other options, including helping others learn the art of filmmaking.”
Cultural connections
Lennon's short will be directly followed by Nora Jacobson's latest film, The Hanji Box, a drama about Hannah, an American mother emerging heartbroken from a divorce, and Rose, her adopted Korean daughter.
When the mysterious Hanji Box (Rose's precious link to Korea) is broken, Hannah travels to New York's Koreatown to mend it. There she meets a charismatic Korean artist who takes her on a journey of cultural discovery. The film was inspired by a memoir written by Jacobson's childhood friend, Meg Dean Daiss Hurley.
Nuanced performances by Hanover, N.H., actress Suzanne Dudley (Schon), Toronto-based Daniel Park, and New York actress Natalie Kim illuminate issues of longing and belonging, loss, mothering, identity, and U.S.-Korean history. Collaborative member and filmmaker Andy Reischman shares cinematography credit, and Tyler Gibbons composed the score. Both Reischman and Gibbons live in Marlboro.
“The Hanji Box is Nora Jacobson's first film after overseeing The Vermont Movie, and she had a number of local film talent working with her - Tyler Gibbons (Red Heart the Ticker) and Andy Reischman (Ames Hill Productions),” says Jennifer Latham, who co-founded Summer Cinema Slam with Brenda Carr and Angela Snow.
“Filmmaking is thriving in Vermont,” Jacobson says. “There are hundreds of filmmakers, or people who have a particular filmmaking skill. When I made The Hanji Box, the whole crew was local except for the camera assistant and a production assistant. This is very different from when I returned to Vermont in 1995.”
Currently Jacobson is on a film shoot with an all-local crew except a boom operator who is from Boston.
“I think acting may be a slightly different story,” she says. “While my lead in The Hanji Box is local, the other co-leads and other actors were from New York or Toronto. To be a successful and constantly working actor, I do think you need to be in New York or LA or Toronto.
“Part of this relates to [the Screen Actors Guild]. It's hard to get work if you can't show up for auditions. Some people do, but they all seem to have dual homes - in Vermont and in New York.”