Printable version
Media workshop
Jay Craven will screen and discuss one or more of the films produced as part of his Kingdom County Quartet of films based on stories by Vermont writer Howard Frank Mosher. The films include High Water (1989--w/ Greg Germann, Jane MacFie, Dennis Mientka), Where the Rivers Flow North (1994 -- w/ Rip Torn and Tantoo Cardinal), A Stranger in the Kingdom (1997--w/ David Lansbury, Ernie Hudson, Martin Sheen), and Disappearances (2006--w/ Kris Kristofferson and Martin Sheen).
Each of the films explore different time periods, characters, and themes related to northeastern Vermont’s history, culture, and sense of place. Each film is drawn from a combination of oral and recorded history, literature, and imagination. The program will be supported by written materials, behind-the-scenes documentaries, and discussions led by the films’ writer/director Jay Craven.
The post-screening discussion will be aimed at exploring how the films resemble westerns and how they are distinct from them, because of their uniquely Vermont and New England cultural strains. Craven will also ask audiences to identify and respond to thematic elements including those related to coming-of-age, Vermont’s Native American past, French Canadian cultural influences, Vermont’s logging and farming occupations, the persistence of memory, North Country outlawry, unusual and irrepressible women, family relations, and a specific historical incident related to Vermont’s racial past.
The process of filmmaking will also be illuminated, through Craven’s discussion of the adaptation process, grounded in the detail of Mosher’s characters and stories while simultaneously needing to find independent voice and cinematic articulation.
Writer/director/producer Jay Craven will present the screenings and lead discussion.
High Water is suitable for all ages. Where the Rivers Flow North and Disappearances are appropriate for ages 13 and older. A Stranger in the Kingdom is suitable for ages 16 and older. The films may be programmed separately or in any combination.
Fees would range from $350 to $1000 for a single screening, based on the range of activities/ workshops planned and number of films programmed, in total.
Like Howard Mosher’s novels, Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom suggests myth, legend, and a spectacular natural world that refuses to be tamed. Named by former Vermont Governor George Aiken, the Kingdom, even today, is characterized by an indomitable spirit that remains in place even as other parts of the state have yielded to more modern sensibilities. Mosher’s flawed characters possess this Northeast Kingdom spirit, simultaneously heroic, stubborn, reckless, rebellious, and resistant to change.
The Kingdom County films have been called “easterns” by critics and audience members. Indeed, they are linked to westerns, both for their specific narrative elements and metaphorical treatments of the fading frontier. But while westerns frequently depicted life on the edge of civilization, before there was much in the way of law, community, family, culture, history, and generational continuity, the Kingdom County films treat frontier themes that include these distinctive Vermont and New England elements at the center of story and character. This, combined with Mosher’s rendering of the Kingdom’s undocumented magic, mystery, and even ghosts, is what makes these films so particular to place while being simultaneously an inventive, ironic, and metaphorical imagination of it.
Jay Craven
Kingdom County Productions
949 Somers Road
Barnet, VT 05821
802-592-3190
jcraven@marlboro.edu
www.kingdomcounty.com