The Martha’s Vineyard Museum is hosting a screening and conversation with Island filmmaker Victoria Campbell on Friday, April 10.
Ms. Campbell’s film is called The Hunt for Good Americans, and is the result of a road trip the filmmaker took in 2009 with collaborator Abby Pope. The film blends documentary and fable as the duo travels from California to the East Coast looking for chance encounters which they often turn into performances — casting strangers to take part in their film, wearing thrift-store costumes and participating in improvised scenes.
Ms. Campbell works at the West Tisbury School, but for many years was based in New York City, teaching in public schools while making films, which often required full immersion, often for years at a time.
For her documentary Monsieur Le President, about the rise and fall of a voodoo priest named Gaston Jean Edy, she spent over three years in Haiti.
“It’s a story of a friendship that shifts and changes, and a betrayal that’s quite human,” Ms. Campbell said in a 2024 interview with the Gazette.
She also often explores her own personal journey in her movies, in particular in House of Bones, about the final summer at her family’s West Chop Home before it was sold.
The screening on Friday, April 10 begins at 5 p.m., after which Ms. Campbell will discuss the making of the film.
This article appears in April 10, 2026.