August 2003

The caterers arrive but don’t know where to set up. Production assistants don’t know what their assignments are. The actors are unsure of their call times for the next day’s shooting. Are the necessary permits to film in order? Does the gaffer know where to plug in? There are a million things to know on the set of a film or television production, and it is the job of the production coordinator to know them.

One doesn’t ordinarily think of clogging as an extreme sport, but if Yancy Putney and Buck Swope, characters in the film "The Cloggers of Putneyville" had their way, it would be. In keeping with comedies like Christopher Guest's "Best in Show" and Rob Reiner's "Spinal Tap," the film "documents" the people and culture surrounding a fictional antecedent of extreme sports known as "Pocono Clogging." Following the lives of Pocono Cloggers Yancy Putney (Stewart Engesser) and Buck Swope (Joseph Hart read more...

Four years ago, Northeast Historic Film (NHF) screened some classic silent films, ranging from the familiar to the forgotten. And every summer since, the gods and goddesses of the early days of film have reemerged at NHF’s historic Alamo Theatre, accompanied by live music.

Words like "tilling, unearthing bones" and "humus" are not normally words associated with film production. But filmmaker Nicolle Littrell hopes that Film Farm, the production company she founded in Belfast, Maine, will become a nexus of support for other grassroots producers desiring to create Maine-based work. Meanwhile, Littrell turns the soil for local stories, sifts through the rich earth of forgotten lore and pulls up the bones that she hopes will speak to us.

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"Passionada," a multigenerational love story set in the Portuguese-American community of New Bedford, Massachusetts, debuts at a gala on August 4 at the city’s Flagship Cinema to kick off the film's nationwide theatrical release on August 15. The first major film shot in New Bedford since the 1922 silent classic "Down to the Sea in Ships" starring a young Clara Bow, it makes the most of a unique and vibrant culture. The film tells the story of Celia Amonte, a young widow whose fisherman husband died at sea, and read more...

Is your name Julia Roberts, James Cameron or John Mayer? If the answer is ‘No’ and you are a member of an entertainment industry union, how do you make a living between gigs? Waiting tables is one option. Bike messaging another. How do you pursue your life passion while making a living? Perhaps you might turn to the national non-profit Actors’ Work Program (AWP), which helps struggling industry professionals find jobs that not only interest them, but also help them pay the bills.

When actress Victoria Rowell speaks about the benefits of fine arts training to the lives of foster children, she speaks from experience. Rowell grew up in a foster home in Portland, Maine. She began studying ballet at age eight, receiving a Ford Foundation scholarship to the Cambridge School of Ballet in Massachusetts. She trained for eight years, before moving on to dance professionally with the American Ballet Theatre II Company, Ballet Hispanico of New York, Contemporary Ballet, Twyla Tharp Workshop and The Julliard School of read more...

"I wrote a script called ‘Point of Honor,’ which was essentially a men's group counseling session... character-driven, very dramatic stuff. And a producer said, 'You know, I read that ‘Point of Honor’ and I liked it and I want to hire you to write a script.' I said, 'This is great...what do you want me to write?' He said, '’Incubus'...it's a teen horror-sex-farce.' I said, 'I wrote about five guys grieving from deaths in their lives...where the hell did you get this?' He said, 'You had one location and five characters and you made a read more...

What do you get when you scavenge junkyards for props, shoot on location in and around your neighborhood, cash in favors with friends in the business, and shoot a seven-minute long film with no dialogue? "Brief Encounter," along with entrée into some of New England’s cooler film festivals.

Possibly no film genre has been driven down as many dull, predictable roads as the romantic comedy. Thankfully, I only review independent films, or I might find myself obliged to watch all the unimaginative love stories Hollywood seems to crank out at a stultifying pace. There will always be a market for vaguely satisfying but forgettable date movies, and Hollywood is all too willing to satisfy the need. The indie film "On_Line," directed by Jed Weintrob and written by Weintrob and Boston-area native Andrew Osborne, doesn't quite read more...