Free Screening of Jay Craven’s “Northern Borders,” Tuesday, May 12th at 6:30pm!
May 6, 2015
Vermont Commons School is proud to present a free public screening of Jay Craven’s film, Northern Borders, based on the novel by Howard Frank Mosher and starring Academy Award nominee Bruce Dern. The film will be shown this Tuesday, May 12th, at 6:30pm in the Commons Room, and there will be a post-screening Q&A with the director. Please read the press release below for more information:
Award-winning indie director Jay Craven’s newest film, Northern Borders will play at 6:30pm, Tuesday, May 12th at the Vermont Commons School in South Burlington. Craven will appear at the opening night screening to introduce the film and lead a post-screening discussion. Admission to the screening and discussion is free.
Northern Borders was shot in Vermont and is based on the award-winning Howard Frank Mosher novel that was recently declared by The London Guardian as one of the “Top Ten Books Featuring Grandparents.” It tells the story of ten year-old Austen Kittredge, who is sent to live on his grandparents’ Kingdom County Vermont farm, where he has wild adventures and uncovers long-festering family secrets. It’s 1956 and Austen experiences rural Kingdom County as a place full of eccentric people including his stubborn grandparents, whose thorny marriage is known as the Forty Years War. Initially feeling stuck in this fractured household, young Austen plans a quick exit but ends up stranded with no choice but to navigate and endure. A humorous and sometimes startling coming-of-age story, Northern Borders evokes Vermont’s wildness, its sublime beauty, a haunted past, and an aura of enchantment. A trailer for the film can be found at https://vimeo.com/78182297
Northern Borders stars Academy Award nominees Bruce Dern (Nebraska) and Geneviève Bujold (Anne of a Thousand Days, King of Hearts) and Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick (Moonrise Kingdom and Before Midnight). The picture also features 2010 Tony Award nominee Jessica Hecht (Sideways, Friends), John Shea, Jay O. Sanders, Mark Margolis, Tom Bodett, Rusty Dewees, and John Rothman. The musical score was composed and performed by Judy Hyman and Jeff Claus of the musical Horse Flies.
The Sherbrooke Record calls Northern Borders, “A gem.” The Hollywood Reporter calls it “Regional filmmaking at its most authentic.” The New York Daily News calls the picture, “A charmer with a sense of integrity” and says, “The stubborn old mule Bruce Dern played in Nebraska was a pussycat compared to the grudging old goat he portrays in Northern Borders. Dern made the movies back-to-back and is magnificent in both.”
Jay Craven’s six feature films include Disappearances (2007 with Kris Kristofferson) and Where the Rivers Flow North (1994 with Rip Torn and Tantoo Cardinal). His films have played 58 countries and 73 festivals, including Sundance—with special screenings at The Smithsonian, Lincoln Center, and others. Craven’s commitment to New England place-based filmmaking was recently profiled by Orion Magazine that wrote: “Jay Craven has come closer than any other filmmaker to realizing (American poet, essayist, and film theorist) Vachel Lindsay’s dream of a vital regional cinema that embodies the character and genius of a place in all its mystery, magnificence, and pain.”
Northern Borders was produced as the result of a unique partnership between Jay Craven’s non-profit Kingdom County Productions and Marlboro College, where Craven teaches film. The picture was made during a semester-long film intensive, Movies from Marlboro, where 20 young professionals worked with 34 students from 15 colleges including the University of Connecticut and Connecticut College. A 2014 Movies from Marlboro project, Peter and John, based on a novel by Guy de Maupassant, was shot last spring on Nantucket and again partnered professionals and students who earn academic credit.
For information about Northern Borders and the Marlboro College film intensive program contact Jay Craven (jcraven@marlboro.edu) or go to KingdomCounty.org.
Filmmaker Jay Craven is featured in a recent WBUR Radio Boston interview: http://radioboston.wbur.org/2013/08/02/jay-craven-film.
Craven’s place-based filmmaking is explored in the August 2013 edition of Orion Magazine: www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7595
