Western-Massachusetts-native-turned-fake-judge John Hodgman always says, “Specificity is the soul of narrative.” In other words, the more precise a story is, or the more unique the subject matter, the better. Through specificity of content and approach, artists can present audiences with unique characters, stories, and experiences.

The same logic applies to film festivals and the cinema they celebrate. In addition to the dozens of big film fests across the region, film junkies and industry folks alike have privileged access to niche New England film festivals in every state. Movie lovers can see everything from queer romance to cinema written, produced, starring, and directed by folks with hearing impairment. Some of these festivals are right around the corner, while others are still accepting submissions. All reveal subjects that are unique and satisfyingly specific.

AIP Film Festival
April 2 – April 8
Cinestudio
Hartford, CT

Hartford’s beautifully designed 1930s-era movie theater continues its yearly film fest for Francophiles, April in Paris, which goes beyond the French New Wave and into the realm of contemporary cinema. Prospective moviegoers have nine opportunities to see French films produced from 1982 to 2016, all of which examine the exceedingly relevant, “effects of crossing borders, from the political to the personal.”

Wicked Queer Film Festival
March 30 – April 9
Various venues
Boston, MA

Laverne Cox in Free CeCe! | Director Jac Gares, 2016

The 33rd incarnation of Boston’s film festival revealing and unpacking the queer experience through documentary, comedy, and drama will feature internationally renowned voices of the queer community and emerging artists alike. Queer film enthusiasts of all kinds have dozens of chances to see films across the city in a new neighborhood each night.

Maine Deaf Film Festival
April 28 – 29
University of Southern Maine
Portland, ME

The 15th annual Maine Deaf Film Festival is the longest-running and perhaps the only film festival of its type in the nation. Programmed and planned in collaboration with students and boasting content exclusively created by deaf folks across the region, MDFF skillfully solves some of the problems of underrepresentation of people with hearing impairments both in front of and behind the camera.

SENE Film Festival
April 25 – 29
Various venues
Rhode Island

With dozens of films ranging from experimental shorts to feature-length animated dramas, SENE provides attendees nearly endless opportunities to pick their vast or small corner of the world to explore. The Wednesday night screenings of experimental films and documentary features is both a can’t-miss evening and an excellent example of the range and specificity of topics explored throughout the festival.

New Hampshire Film Festival
October
Various venues
Portsmouth, NH

Still from All The President’s Heads | Director Adam Roffman, 2016

With the time for submissions still open, we can’t say for sure what niches the New Hampshire Film Festival will investigate. However, if last year’s programming is any indication, cinephiles will delve into some strange and specific topics. For example, All the President’s Heads, a film about a history devotee who saves two dozen, massive presidential busts from destruction after being displaced by the building of an Enterprise Rent-a-Car.

Independent Television Festival
October 11 – 17
Various Venues
Manchester, VT

Okay. . .this isn’t technically a “film festival.” However, was True Detective (the charcoal dark, riveting serialized HBO murder mystery disguised as a police procedural) a television show or more of a seven-and-a-half-hour movie split into manageable 54-minute chunks? As the line between prestige television and film blurs more each day, so will our categorizations for the sake of this list. Anyway, ITVFest still counts because it’s a moving image festival celebrating a niche part of a hulking industry, a section of the industry that often gets ignored in cinema as well; the independents.

Global Roots Film Festival
April 7 – 9
Contois Auditorium
Burlington, VT

Still from Ladies & Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen |
Directors Donald Brittain & Don Owen, 1965 | Presented by VT PBS and RETN

This niche film festival is brought to us by the Vermont International Film Foundation which also presents the yearly Vermont International Film Festival. The Global Roots Film Festival endeavors to bring Vermonters, “great films from the countries of many of the New American communities. . .to foster a greater understanding of our diverse cultures.” This year, Global Roots turns the lens towards contemporary films coming from Quebec.

Top image, still from Signature Move | Director Jennifer Reeder (2017)

The post 7 New England Niche Film Festivals You Can’t Miss appeared first on Take Magazine.

In a former lifetime in which the person inhabiting the Oval Office had an actual vision based on facts, the arts were recognized as an integral measure of our society. President John F. Kennedy, for instance, said this about the arts: “We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda. It is a form of truth.”

Truth, of course, has taken a hit since 45 took office. That whole “alternative facts” bit. But numbers, or so the saying goes, don’t lie. So with that in mind, we took a quick look at the potential math implications of 45’s federal budget.

First the overview:

• Number of programs and agencies due for elimination: 62
• Number of programs within the Environmental Protection Agency alone: 50

Other programs due for funding cuts—or outright elimination—focus on everything from literacy to low-income home energy improvements to investigating chemical accidents. The enormous breadth and scope of impact on those least able to manage without these programs is breathtaking.

But since we’re an arts and culture magazine, we’re going to focus our hyperventilation on the potential impact of these devastating cuts to art and culture in New England. The proposed budget calls for eliminating all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts ($152 million) and the National Endowment for the Humanities ($155 million).

What NEA funding means to New England:

For fiscal year 2017, New England states received $2.591 million in NEA grants overall, according to the NEA website. Here’s who got what:

• Connecticut: 15 organizations, $310,000
• Massachusetts: 62 organizations, $1,672,000
• Maine: 11 organizations, $242,000
• New Hampshire: 6 organizations, $120,000
• Rhode Island: 9 organizations, $152,500
• Vermont: 4 organizations, $95,000

But the math adds up even less when you look beyond straight grants. Ann Wicks, communications manager for the New England Foundation on the Arts (NEFA)—one of six regional arts organizations funded by the NEA and private donations—explains. Arts organizations can potentially receive NEA dollars in three ways:

• an outright allocation of a grant the organization applies for itself
• an allocation from NEFA through NEA dollars provided to NEFA
• from NEA dollars given to state arts organizations, such as the Massachusetts Cultural Council

Wicks says about 15 percent of NEFA’s annual budget comes from NEA dollars. Beyond grants, NEFA uses those dollars to support artists in other, less direct ways, Wicks says. The Creative Ground Directory, for instance, is a free resource that lists artists and other creators around New England so that it’s easier to find appropriate collaborators for projects. In FY2016, NEFA made a total of 462 grants equaling $3.4 million. New England states received $829,947 of those NEFA grants.

In other words, the loss of funding to New England arts and humanities organizations could be even larger. “NEA support is very important to New England and the creative sector,” she says.

It’s a point that is echoed nationally. The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), a national nonprofit that assists state arts agencies, offers this math about how NEA dollars improve the economy at large:

• The arts return $22.3 billion in tax revenue to federal, state, county, and municipal governments.
• Rural areas, low-income communities, and schools would feel the effects of this funding loss disproportionately from reductions. State arts agencies (using state and federal funds) award more than 25% of their grants to rural areas, 54% to low-income communities, and 45% to arts education projects.
• Every NEA dollar leverages more than $9 in matching funds, meaning that the impact of the NEA loss is just the beginning of the potential financial loss for arts organizations.

Cutting the NEA and NEH seem especially confusing given this math offered by NASAA: The NEA receives 0.004% of the total Federal budget, which is less than ½ of one hundredth of a percent.

That math also doesn’t add up when you consider the numbers presented by The Guardian. The British paper reports the following expenses incurred by taxpayers less than 50 days into 45’s residency:

• $56.6 million (or a cool $500,000 a day) to protect Trump Tower. That was through March 1. Assuming that Mrs. 45 stays until June for Mini-45 to finish school, that dollar amount could add another $46 million, bringing the total to $102 million.
• $3+million estimated cost for EACH weekend jaunt to golf work at his Mar-a-Lago Resort (a place where he doubled entry fees from $100,000 to $200,000 the day after he was elected).
• $97,380 for hotels for Secret Service to protect Eric Trump (that would be his son on those business interests 45 still hasn’t divested himself of) while he visited a condominium development in Uruguay. This is just one trip.

And finally this statistic: 45’s proposed military spending increase in his federal budget? $54 billion.

Something definitely doesn’t add up.

Does this irritate you as much as it does us? Here are a few links if you want to #TakeAction. See you on the streets.

Pen.org
artsactionfund.org
Change.org
The Official White House Petition to Save Arts Funding
Contact Your Representative
Arts Advocacy Day – Washington, DC
#SaveTheNEA

Top image courtesy Royal Talens

The post #TakeAction: Doing the NEA Defunding Math appeared first on Take Magazine.

Nine years ago, Desi Van Til and Sean Mewshaw, the husband-and-wife duo behind Rusticator Pictures, sold all their stuff, hopped in a car, and drove from Los Angles, California to Portland, Maine to make what they thought would be a small indie film. After over seven years of production, they wound up with a fully fledged, critically acclaimed film featuring big movie stars, an expanded storyline, and a new place to call their creative home.

“In the course of living in Maine and putting the film together, we fell in love with being here,” says Van Til, writer of Tumbledown. “When we left LA, all of our friends would say, ‘You’re coming right back right? You’re gonna go make this movie then come back right?’ We didn’t know. We just sold our stuff, packed up our car, and left.”

Sean Mewshaw on the set of Tumbledown |Photo courtesy Huffington Post

Tumbledown, written by  Van Til and directed by Mewshaw, is a romantic…comedy? Drama? It’s hard to tell when the trailer shows the main character, Hannah, played by Rebecca Hall, intensely grieving over the death of her iconic musician husband while the “brash New York writer” Andrew, played by Jason Sudeikis, blythely cracks jokes as an attempt to endear Hannah to him and win permission to write about her deceased husband. Either way, the film was released earlier this year to much critical acclaim, specifically about the picture’s thoughtful performances and precise sense of place, as pointed out by Shipra Harbola Gupta on Indiewire: “Lensed by Seamus Tierney, the film makes wonderful use of the stunning Maine scenery, and the influence of nature is felt in every frame.”

The story takes place in rural Maine, based on Farmington (where Van Til grew up). Originally, the couple wanted to shoot the whole film in Maine, but the financiers insisted upon shooting in a place with better financial incentives. The filmmakers often receive feedback about how well the film captures Maine’s “Maine-ness,” which is an ironic testament to their expert filmmaking, since most principal shooting was done in Concord, Massachusetts. (Note: The Indiewire reviewer cited above is feasibly correct with their compliment, since some scenes, particularly the opening sequence and some establishing shots, were done in Maine.)

Though the filmmakers were able to utilize the more deceptive aspects of their medium, they wouldn’t dream of offering audiences a disingenuous version of the place they love and call home. In fact, Van Til and Mewshaw feel that shooting outside of Maine made them acutely aware of the difference between the people and landscapes in front of them versus the people and landscapes at home. As Mewshaw explains, “There’s a very specific ethos to every tiny sliver of this region.”

Desi van Til and Sean Mewshaw at Princeton University | Photo courtesy the artists

Desi Van Til and Sean Mewshaw are artists living in Portland, Maine. Their new film Tumbledown is available for purchase or stream via these platforms. For more updates about the film, follow Tumbledown on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. 

Top photo still from Tumbledown (2015)

The post Hollywood Comes to Maine…Sort of appeared first on Take Magazine.

“Imagine you’re about to have a little one, the love that you have for that little one. Imagine somebody outside of your family you don’t even know making claims on your little one. They don’t like the way you live and they’re going to take your little one by force. Imagine what the loss is when this is not just your family, but your entire community.” gkisedtanamoogk

This is is the subject of First Light, a short documentary by Adam Mazo in collaboration with the Upstander Project. The film examines how the native Wabanaki people of Maine were subjected to discriminatory child welfare practices and how the state, through The Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission, worked towards acknowledging those practices as wrong, quantified the effects of the discriminatory practices, and created space for people to share their stories.

Director and producer Adam Mazo delved into this film after hearing about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Maine Public Radio. After much time and interfacing with community groups, Mazo was invited by Maine-Wabanaki Reach and the TRC to document what the commission was doing. Mazo and his team spoke with tribal leaders, academics, members of the commission, and filmed Wabanaki people, who chose to share their stories of trauma and displacement with the commission.

The film is quiet and informative, carried by testimonials from tribal leaders, academics, and survivors of these culturally oppressive programs. The interviews and testimonials are broken up with quotes from descriptive texts such as excerpts from senate hearings. One of these quotes in the film came from Col. Richard H Pratt, a founder of one of the early schools where native children were sent after the state of Maine forcibly removed them from their communities, “Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit.”

Still from First Light

The story of the Wabanaki people and their many solemn battles with the the State’s misguided welfare practices is long and nuanced. Adam Mazo fully understands the breadth, complexity, and importance of this history and plans to release a full-length documentary called Dawnland in early 2018. Dawnland will act as a sort of companion piece to First Light and provide, according to the filmmaker, “…more testimonials. That’ll be the heart of Dawnland, people telling their personal stories about being taken from their families, or what the really deep impact and trauma they experienced from losing their culture or having that culture taken away and trying to reconnect with that culture as a child or as an adult.”

Dawnland 2018 poster

First Light is a documentary film by Boston-based filmmaker Adam Mazo. Follow the progress of the Upstarter Project on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo and YouTube. Be on the look-out for First Light screenings near you and the release of Dawnland in 2018.

Top image still of Georgina Sappier Richardson from Dawnland | All images courtesy the filmmaker

The post Watch: First Light appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally ran on the Breakfast Lunch & Dinner blog on November 4, 2016. 

For almost as long as cinema has existed, writers have chosen to eschew traditional narrative structures for the sake of originality. Many believe a film truly reaches its zenith when it takes that inventiveness and incorporates it into something meaningful. Every film isn’t supposed to end on a positive note, or tell a ‘feel good story’ or follow the same plot trajectory. Just like success, pain and obsession can be meandering, unexplainable and unexpected – but also fulfilling. And in most instances, we rarely see how strange and personal that journey can be, regardless of the outcome. For Joshua Jenkins and the Sticky Pages collective, For Now, Until My Last Dying Day doubles down on that belief and creates a film that rewards critical thinking and promotes awareness and conversation.

The film begins with Paige, played by Monique Antoinette, sitting with her therapist, Dr. Marcellus, played by Alex Szwed. After asking Paige if she knew the date – in which she responds correctly – Marcllus explains a theory that there’s “something about having the presence in mind constant with the present time.” He continues, saying that humans often find themselves referencing the past or anticipating moments, and those who answered his question about the date correctly have a direct interdependence between their virtues and vices, or as he puts it: ‘the things that make them tick, and the things that make them ill”. Hence, if one is unable to distinguish between the other, they become one.

As the two go back and forth, the viewer learns that Paige’s obsession is fire, and she explains how her infatuation has become cumulative and neurotically unrestrained. In a flashback scene, she talks about how she buys a box of matches from the store and leaves them on her apartment table in hopes to curb her impulsiveness and test her self-discipline. But she fails as she eventually lights every match in the box one by one, rekindling her compulsion. Antoinette is perfect in her role, delivering a phlegmatic performance that leaves the viewer questioning if Paige is empathetic towards her own struggles or has simply succumbed to becoming a slave of her own self.

For Now, Until My Last Dying Day (Dir. Joshua Jenkins, 2016) movie poster

The turning point comes in the following scene when Paige is in her apartment. She’s smoking marijuana, and after turning on her record player and lighting a few candles, she begins to dance in the middle of the floor. It’s a mesmerizing moment, one yielded in intimacy and warmth but also an inhibited vulnerability as Paige hugs her arms as he looks as if she falls into a mysterious hypnosis. That theory is feels justified in the following scene when Paige walks into the bathroom and stares into the mirror over the sink. After a few seconds, there’s a brief flash of diplopia and when she walks out of the bathroom back into the living room, candles are lit everywhere. It’s quite the transitional moment from good to bad; virtue to vice, and it leads perfectly into the big reveal where we learn about the etymology of Paige’s fixation as a child, played by Ameilia Brown.

Most of the nuisances in For Now are subtle enough that viewers will have to watch multiple times to catch them all, but a few are obvious enough that you don’t have to beat you over the head with metaphors. For example, when Paige is dancing to the music in the living room, she’s wearing a red sweater and black jeans. But when she leaves the bathroom, she’s wearing a black three-quarters shirt and black jeans. It’s a minor observance and one that would typically go unnoticed, but For Now has very few settings and gives no indication of time so the audience has little to no idea how long each moment has taken place between each ah-ha!moment. The musical selection is also very clever if you’re a diehard fan, as it uses different songs titled ‘Summertime’ from various artists such as Black Hole Sun, Janis Joplin, Studio Group and Big Brother & The Holding Company. The correlation between these songs and the central theme are undefined, but they add a significance to each scene and given that For Now was shot in film, both qualities give the piece a bluesy, methodical feel.

Still from From Now, Until My Last Dying Day (2015)

On the same token, For Now is broad enough where viewers can formulate its own opinions and speculate on the overall messages. Is fire a metaphor for evil? Does Paige’s clothing actually have any importance? What does the mirror represent? We don’t know, and chances are we won’t ever know, but maybe that’s the point: coming up with your own explanation of why something is what it is is more beneficial to the viewer’s imagination than directly presenting one possible serialized narrative and outcome. From my vantage point, the acting isn’t as preeminent here as the underlying message: it’s not only the good that makes us who we are; it’s also our degeneracies and temptations. There’s two sides to every individual; it’s all about which one you can and can’t control that builds your true identity. Jenkins has created a quirky, simple film that uses otherwise ludicrous themes such as fire to burrow into deeper, more convoluted issues.

For now, I’d say that’s quite a success.

All images courtesy Breakfast Lunch & Dinner

The post Watch: For Now, Until My Last Dying Day appeared first on Take Magazine.

The Burlington Parks, Recreation & Waterfront Department, Big Heavy World, and Vermont Community Access Media (VCAM) are collaborating to create a video they hope will preserve the legacy of 242 Main and the ideas and people that have made it an essential part of Burlington’s history.

242 Main was founded in 1984 as a project of the city’s youth office. The venue was largely supported by the mayor of Burlington at the time, Bernie Sanders. After Sanders was elected in 1981, he tasked Jane O’Meara, his future wife, and local youth organizers with finding a way to improve relationships between the city’s youth and the municipal government.

The solution was to help create a youth music scene, supervised by youth organizers, with programming created by the teens themselves. After the success of a show put on by the organizers at a local auditorium, they decided to build a music venue in the vacated office of the Burlington Water Division. Sprung from these efforts, 242 Main evolved into a vibrant youth center and hub of the northeast punk music scene. Until its doors close in December of this year, the venue will be one of the oldest standing, all-ages, and substance-free music venues in the United States.

War on Women performing at 242 Main | Photo by James Lockridge

242 Main is revered by many in Burlington and beyond, credited with creating a much-needed space for empowering adolescents through innovation, political involvement, music, and the arts. The venue gave voice to the city’s youth and gave them a space for community involvement and creativity.

Bill Simmon, artistic director and videographer for the documentary, says that the film “seeks to celebrate the history and legacy of the longest running all-ages punk venue in the country. The stories from that venue in the last 30 or so years are as thick as the layers of punk rock stickers that cover the walls of the place.” The filmmaker and his collaborators will be shooting interviews with staff, musicians, former youth members, city government officials, and anyone who feels that 242 Main impacted them.

“As the building the venue is in is set to close—maybe forever—we want to look back and appreciate what an amazing jewel the space is in the ‘Queen City’s’ crown. It is a fundamentally safe space. It is drug and alcohol free, all ages, no hate speech, homophobia or racism is tolerated. It’s a place where youth who sometimes have a hard time fitting in have a place to call their own. A place where young musicians can play their first shows alongside more seasoned pros, and cut their teeth as artists and self-promoters,” said Simmons.

Deferred maintenance has caused Memorial Auditorium, the location of 242 Main, to close until it is decided to either repair or redevelop the building. This makes the upcoming documentary, focusing on the impact of 242 Main on local youth throughout the decades since its incarnation, coming at an crucial time for the continuation of the venue and its social presence.

Poster image courtesy of Big Heavy World/James Lockridge

The final show at 242 Main will be held on December 3rd, 2016 – Lineup TBD
Top photo by James Lockridge of Big Heavy World

The post Documenting 242 Main appeared first on Take Magazine.

For the horror-obsessed New Englander, there’s really only one film to come out in the last year that deserves a proper evening viewing during the final days of our spooky season – Robert Eggers’ “The Witch”.

“The Witch” is a mid-1600s period piece following a puritan family in New Hampshire who, for mysterious reasons, were exiled from their community. Throughout the beginning portion of the film, we see the family battling the unforgiving, unsettled deep New Hampshire terrain, forced to reckon with rural New Hampshire’s unforgiving soil and punishing weather. It is in this remote, dark and ominous wood where the family has a truly disturbing run-in with a…well, you get the idea.

The film’s original title was “The VVitch: A New England Folktale”, which perfectly captures what’s so disturbing about the film – its authenticity, familiarity, and believability. The truly horrific moments in “The Witch” have little to do with gore, jump scares or spooky theme music. “The Witch” terrorizes viewers with its pensiveness, its ambiance, and chilling depictions of an old world where a benevolent God of the New Testament isn’t the only governing force. The film slowly leads you through a story about loss, faith, man versus nature, and mysticism. We helplessly watch in horror as characters make damning decisions out of desperation and exhaustion, leading to an end that must be seen, not explained, in order to be fully understood.

All these elements of the film are intensified if you’re a New Englander. Everyone’s heard of the Salem Witch trials, but folks from New England have a special connection with that sordid time in our history. It’s a part of our cultural consciousness, and is uniquely embedded in the physical spaces we still move through today. It’s safe to say that most of us have some sort of spooky, inexplicable story related to the menacing woods on a New England neighbor’s property.

Still from “The Witch”, 2015

Though he personally does not identify as a practicing witch, New Hampshire native Robert Eggers is still a great person to tell this story since he understands how New Englanders are connected to this disturbing history. The director uses his relationship with the subject matter as a motivator, aestheticising it, albeit a bit stereotypical, through precise recreation and familiar storytelling, as he told The AV Club, “…My earliest nightmares were about witches, and witch nightmares led to an interest in witches since forever. New England’s past was always very much a part of my childhood consciousness. If you grew up in rural New England, it was unavoidable, with the dilapidated colonial farmhouses and so on. But I had my own idea of New England’s mythic past, and the woods behind my house seemed haunted by the past to me.”

Apart from the familiar story and the setting, the film feels real. It’s well known that Eggers spent nearly four years on-and-off researching every aspect of the film. Eggers ensured that everything from the hand-stitched clothing to the dialogue, lifted, in most cases, directly from journals and court transcripts, were authentic not solely for the sake of realism, but to ensure an immersive viewing experience. “I have to really bring them back to the 17th century when that existed.” said Eggers, “I have to get all the details right in order for you to actually believe. It’s not just accuracy for its [own] sake.”

You can watch Robert Eggers “The Witch” on several streaming platforms now, or head to your local library and snag the DVD for free.

All photos courtesy IMDB

The post Watch: Robert Eggers “The VVitch” appeared first on Take Magazine.

Our spotlight on New England Film’s Online Film Festival continues with “Pillow Talk“, a comedy filled with raunchy, awkward humor whose narrative and emotional center is built around female friendship and modern romance. It’s the lesser-told story about the truly awkward and sometimes traumatic nature of anonymous hook-ups, and how we help each other cope with the aftermath.

“Pillow Talk” (2015) movie poster | Photo courtesy New England Film website

Jenny feels indigent and a bit betrayed after a boy (“the vegan with dreamy eyes”) leaves her in the middle of the night without a goodbye. Jenny expects her friend Sophie to console her a bit; however, Sophie sees this act as a blessing, and begins to detail all the people that she wished left her in the middle of the night. Sophie offers ten hookup horror stories, each of which more bizarre or revealing than the next. For example, the “Waaay Too Soon Guy” who whispered to her, pre-coitus, “So, how many kids do you want?”

Co-Writer Rachel Riendeau as Sophie in “Pillow Talk” | Photo courtesy New England Film website

“Pillow Talk”, and its co-star and co-writer, Burlington native Rachel Riendeau-Hayes, have already received much attention and accolades from the regional film community. Check out the film today at the New England Film website before the Online Film Festival ends on October 16th.

Top photo Lucy Horton as Jenny in “Pillow Talk”

The post Let’s Talk About “Pillow Talk” appeared first on Take Magazine.

Massachusetts-based Eczema Records focuses on rare and unreleased soundtracks, and the label’s founder—Derry, New Hampshire native Jon Solari—is a self-described ‘goofy music nerd.’ So it should come as no surprise that the label’s debut release is a vinyl edition of the once lost soundtrack to the 1983 arcade-themed sex comedy, “Joysticks.” Needless to say, we had to know how this bizarre and beautiful thing came about.

The record label I now run began last June with that drunken promise made by a friend while watching Joysticks, a fun but often groan-worthy sex comedy from 1983 whose title song sports the lyrical genius, “TOTALLY AWESOME VIDEO GAMES!” We were amazed and disappointed that by 2015 no cult film or video game enthusiast had bothered to release this song, outside of a snippet used in an episode of Community directed by Rob Schrab.

Newly motivated, the next morning I combed through the film’s end credits and cold-emailed anyone whose contact info I could find. Director Greydon Clark wished me luck but didn’t have any leads. A ‘Kim Michel’ on LinkedIn wasn’t the Kim G. Michel who acted in the movie but seemed amused enough by my inquiry. Eventually, it was Sherry Klein (the Sherry Klein involved with audio – thanks again, internet!) who got me in touch with the film’s primary composer Ray Kenetsky—a Berklee alumnus now working as Frankie Avalon’s band leader.

Ray was skeptical but willing to negotiate terms if I thought people would want to buy such a niche product. Worst case scenario, I’d have 1000 copies of a soundtrack I’ve wanted since I was fourteen years old taking up space in my apartment.

I interviewed actress Morgan Lofting, known best as “the Baroness” in the 1980s GI Joe cartoon. Finally, I tracked down her co-star Kym Malin, a.k.a. Playboy’s Miss May 1982, via an eBay seller who sold freshly inked Playmate autographs. Soon I’d hear from screenwriter Al Gomez, whom Ms. Malin remains friends with.

These interviews were included with the LP on period-appropriate, noisily dot-matrix-printed paper, much to the dismay of my girlfriend and cats. New Hampshire artist Tim Hulsizer drew the center label illustration, re-imagining the film’s title as the demon-winged logo of Satan’s Hollow, an (unreleased, at the time) arcade game prominently featured in the film.

Whether or not we end up selling all thousand discs, it’s been terrifically humbling to see how much can get done when one gets up the nerve to try something new, to ask around, to see what happens.

The post What’s that Soundtrack? appeared first on Take Magazine.

Each year, NewEnglandFilm.com holds an online film festival, featuring short films screened at festivals across New England, available for streaming on their website. One of these films, “The Hustler of Providence” is an incredibly intense, short documentary by Jonathan Paul. Using chilling recreations and found footage, the film tells the story of HIV activist and former sex-worker Richard Holcomb whose life filled with trauma and danger surprisingly sets him up as a positive, productive role model in his community.

As an abused and deeply depressed kid, Holcomb quit his job and moved to Montreal after a brief visit. He wanted to make a documentary about the homeless youth of the city, “the squeegee kids” , but after living on the street for three days, he pawned his camera for drug money. “I was a scared, confused, fucked up kid who was addicted to drugs and justifying my addiction [by] being an artist.” said Richard, “In order to understand these people, I have to become them.”

Hustler of Providence movie poster | Photo courtesy New England Film website

The documentary offers a much shinier conclusion than expected, but don’t take my word for it. Head to the New England Film’s website now, and watch the film in its entirety for free.

Top image courtesy New England Film Website

The post Hustler of Providence appeared first on Take Magazine.