Amid the stacks of DVDs and under the piles of papers, press photos
and programs, the sixth annual Martha's Vineyard Independent Film
Festival is coming together.
Slowly.
"This is the crunch time, for sure," festival founder
and director Thomas Bena says one afternoon last week from the festival
headquarters in North Tisbury. "We still have a lot to do."
In the disturbing yet vital film Taxi to the Dark Side, Army Specialist Damien Corsetti, one of six interrogators who confessed to torturing and killing an innocent taxi driver at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan in 2002, stoically peers into the camera and tries to justify his actions.
“When you look at people as less than human, you find yourself doing unthinkable things,” Mr. Corsetti says of his role in the death of Dilawar, the young Afghani wrongly accused of being the trigger man in a rocket attack.
Richard Paradise was named 2009’s best regional film festival director at last month’s International Film Festival Summit in Las Vegas. In an Oscar-speech moment with the Gazette, he shared his glory with Island filmgoers: “The success of the festival, the regional coverage, the volunteership, and the exploration of other cultures ... the Vineyard audience contributes.”
It took the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival about three years to get into the casual character it has enjoyed for the past seven. In the first year, a black and white printout distributed the day before the Grange Hall screenings announced a one-day program consisting of a collection of shorts, a few features and some ethnic food. The next year, a move to the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven eliminated the food; eating wasn’t allowed at the site, so the festival moved again.
Did the Green Lantern, last week’s supposed Hollywood blockbuster, fail to light up your life? Don’t despair, there are others here on the Island who also hunger for something more fulfilling on screen. Indeed, the Vineyard in summer is a movie lover’s paradise with numerous festivals bringing narratives and documentaries from around the world just a stone’s throw from your front porch.
Slow Food Martha’s Vineyard and the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival present a January Film and Feast at the Chilmark Community Center on Saturday, Jan. 8.
The story of the building of the schooner Charlotte is a true Vineyard tale. Tonight at 7 p.m. the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival will open the weekend’s festivities with a documentary about the building of this wooden boat.
The film is called Charlotte. But the title feels too narrow for it is far more than a story about one big sailboat or one beloved boatyard. It is the story of a people and a community with a love of the sea.
When speaking with Thomas Bena, the founder and creative director of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival, there is no hesitation when he talks about his guiding principle. The films shown at the festival are always diverse in subject matter, a mixture of documentary and feature, and representative of many cultures. The common denominator is good storytelling.
Tucked away on a hill in West Tisbury rests an unlikely young girl. She’s over six feet tall, has ears as big as hub caps and is stuffed with thrift store rubble. Her name is Ellie the elephant, and she’s waiting to become the newest addition to the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival’s Cinema Circus.
