Working almost exclusively in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom region for the past quarter century, Jay Craven has achieved a degree of critical recognition that most indie directors only dream of reaching. WHERE THE RIVERS FLOW NORTH won the Producers’ Guild of America’s NOVA Award for Most Promising New Theatrical Motion Picture Producer of the Year in 1995 while A STRANGER IN THE KINGDOM won the Spirit of New England Award at the New England Film Festival in 1998.

	Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven, head of the film and video department at Marlboro College, is the recent receipient of NEA's only narrative film production grant in the U.S. for the year 2000. The $35,000 grant will support Craven's film company, Kingdom County Productions, for production of Dissappearances, a narrative feature film based on Howard Frank Mosher's award-winning novel.
	[Coutesy of Kingdom County Productions]

In December, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a $30,000 grant for Narrative Film Production. It was the largest grant given by the NEA to independent film. It will assist him in the production of a new feature, DISAPPEARANCES, which like the other two films, are adaptations of Howard Frank Mosher novels, completing what Craven calls his "Mosher Trilogy." All three films/novels are set and filmed in the Northeast Kingdom. In regards to Mosher’s novels, Craven says he is drawn to their characters (whom he describes as "larger than life, quirky, irrepressible and flawed"), ironic humor, magic realism, and their "sense of connection to cinematic tradition", citing the influences of John Ford and Robert Altman’s MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER.

Growing up in Pennsylvania and coming from what he describes as an "activist background," Craven studied film at Boston University in the late 1960s. He says, "Film was at a peak of excitement (back then) and was an art form that reached a lot of people and gave one the ability to make powerful statements." Shortly after making his first film at BU at the age of 17, Craven became part of a student delegation sent to Vietnam to shoot footage to be used for documentary films shown at anti-war demonstrations.

Jordan Bayne as Clair LaRiviere and Director Jay Craven in front of the space truck on the set of A STRANGER IN THE KINGDOM [Courtesy of Kingdom Country Productions]

Once settling in Vermont in 1974, he immediately organized a traveling film series that visited up to five small towns in the region a week, screening 16mm prints of foreign, classic, art and American independent films. He made short films, held filmmaking workshops, renovated an old post office into a 35mm arthouse and gallery and co-founded CIRCUS SMIRKUS, a professional circus for children, among many other activities. He says that Vermont is special in that it has a "strong sense of community" and gives him "the ability to interact with a broad section of the population (and) connect with people that are not just like I am."

He adds, "I like being able to work directly with the constituency (and) to take stories from a region whose people are not used to seeing movies about themselves and have those stories feel valid to what is going on in their own lives."

Craven currently teaches film at Marlboro University in Marlboro, Vermont and has put together a program called FLEDGING FILMS, which enables teenagers to write, direct and produce their own films. A series culled from it called "Ten Movies by Teens" will begin a tour of Northern New England this month. In advising budding filmmakers, Craven says, "Develop a solid story before you shoot, work closely with actors, collaborate and support each other’s productions and start making movies as soon as you can."

Next, in addition to DISAPPEARANCES, Craven will write and direct THE YEAR THAT TREMBLED, a "coming of age tale of four guys waiting out the draft lottery in the shadow of Kent State in 1970." He also plans to direct a low budget trilogy of films ("one comedy, one film noir and a western," he says) on digital video.

Maureen Foley’s first film HOME BEFORE DARK was a semi-autobiographical tale of a 12-year-old girl growing up in Massachusetts in 1963. It tied for Best Feature at the 1997 Hamptons International Film Festival and has been subsequently shown often on Lifetime Television. Not bad for a first time director who had never set foot in a film school.

A Northampton native and current Cambridge resident with an academic background in English, Foley worked at ATLANTIC MONTHLY in her twenties. In her thirties, however, she devoted more of her time to writing fiction, an unpublished novel, many short stories, and eventually (with her husband), film and television scripts. She notes that this transition from writing prose to scripts not only came out of her and her husband’s love of movies, but also in the way she gradually realized that most of the fiction she wrote felt "more like a sketch for a play." Until recently, she also taught screenwriting at Harvard University.

Maureen Foley directing Stephanie Castellarin on the set of HOME BEFORE DARK

The script for HOME BEFORE DARK came out of her novel and provided her with an ample opportunity to, as she puts it, "photograph my words." She did not originally intend to direct the film herself, but did so at the advice of one of the film’s actresses, Patricia Kalember.

HOME BEFORE DARK’S success has enabled Foley to start working on a second, more expansive film: an adaptation of a William Trevor novel to be shot entirely in Ireland. It will have a five million dollar budget and be produced by filmmaker John Boorman’s (THE GENERAL) company, Merlin Films. At this point, Foley has written the script but has yet to get adaptation rights to the novel and is also negotiating with a well-known, Oscar nominated actress to star.

Like HOME BEFORE DARK (which was partially based on Foley’s own experiences), this new project hits close to where she lives. Not only is her family from western Ireland, but Trevor is her favorite author. She says she likes how he depicts "common people who deal with their own concepts of morality (and) how an action carelessly performed (consequently) becomes the most important thing (in their lives)."

Foley is also writing a romantic comedy to be filmed in Cambridge. A story about a French chef who falls in love with a local chef, she says its themes of food and class are partially inspired by her experiences working briefly as a personal assistant to Julia Child. In the future, Foley also hopes to continue adapting into film the work of other Cambridge-based writers.

As for any person interested in filmmaking, Foley says, "Develop material of your own. (There are) lots of formulaic movies out there, so create something that sets you apart as a person to take seriously–tell a story only you can tell and write what only you can imagine."

Ernest Thompson is best known for the classic film ON GOLDEN POND, for which he won not only the Academy Award but also the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay. Although he has worked most frequently as a playwright over the past two decades, often putting together stage productions for the theater he owns in Kittery, Maine, this New Hampshire resident has also done a bit of filmmaking. 12 years ago, he directed his first feature from his own screenplay, 1969, which starred Robert Downey Jr. and Winona Ryder. Subsequently he has made WEST SIDE WALTZ (with Shirley MacLaine, Liza Minnelli, and Kathy Bates) for network television and has just finished OUT OF TIME, which will air on Showtime this coming Father’s Day.

	Director and writer Ernest Thompson lives and works from his old farmhouse in New Hampshire. He's equally at home on the scene in Boston, New York and LA
	[Photo by Michael Naimo]

ON GOLDEN POND also continues to be a source of inspiration and work for him. His own musical adaptation of that script, retitled ANOTHER SUMMER, is currently in production in Indiana. This fall, he will also direct a live television remake of the 1981 film version for CBS, with Julie Andrews in the Katharine Hepburn role. It is part of a series of live dramas the network is developing in the spirit of those that were a staple of prime time TV back in its golden age.

As for an artist who is primarily a writer, Thompson says, half in jest, half seriously that directing a film is a means of self-defense, cutting one person out of a lengthy chain of miscommunication. "The writer writes without directing," he says. "The writer can only hope that the director sees the material in the same way the writer sees it."

For someone who has directed for both stage and film, Thompson is aware of how to differently handle each art. He describes directing a play as having one stage of continual writing and rehearsing where the production is "either living and up on its feet or dying." However, he says that the film process has three distinct phases: writing, production and post-production. He likens this to having three chances, each one allowing him to step back and look at how the work works or evolves.

Dividing his time between New England, New York and Hollywood, Thompson laments the general lack of film production in New Hampshire. For instance, the New Hampshire-set OUT OF TIME was shot thousands of miles away in Vancouver! However, Thompson notes that the "range of possibilities" his home state’s rural and urban settings provide are enough to keep him there to continue creating new art, whether it be on the page and/or behind the camera.