'Bending Sticks' in Louisiana

From Penelope Maunsell:

Last week I found myself deep in Cajun country with my great friend Linda Usdin taking Bending Sticks:  the Sculpture of Patrick Dougherty to three screening venues in central Louisiana.  It was the second half of our Southern Circuit tour – Kenny (co-director of the film) had completed the first half in Georgia the week before. Our first stop was at Banners of McNeese State University in Lake Charles.  It was a Saturday night and pouring down rain. Buckets of it.  We had a small, damp, but very interested audience full of good questions, and we had a lively discussion about impermanent art afterwards.

Sunday, our day off, we drove to Lafayette, where we found to our delight the Festival Acadiens et Creoles on the grounds of Louisiana State University. Two or three stages with musicians all day long, thirty booths selling different wonderful food, and a terrific craft fair. Thankfully the predicted rain held off.  We had a couple of Bloody Mary’s, shared crawfish étoufée, wonderful fried shrimp and a Boudin Ball (a kind of delicious sausage) beneath a live oak covered in Spanish moss. After our meal we wandered from stage to stage listening to music, and watching people dancing. I really enjoyed the impossibly young Babineaux Sisters who moved easily between fiddle, guitar, and accordion and sang in marvelous lilting Cajun French. In the evening we found a local family attraction, Randol’s Cajun restaurant and dance hall, complete with a Zydeco band. We had a couple of beers, the most delicious crawfish bisque and watched people of all ages and skills dancing the two step and twirling to the music. Linda and I even got up and had a go.

Our second screening was in Vermilionville - a living history museum and folklife park on the banks of bayou Vermilion with its original homes dating back to 1765. We walked around the village and explored the beautifully restored houses and workshops that once belonged to Acadian, Native American and Creole peoples and saw an alligator in the lake.  The screening was in their big dance hall and the BluRay of Bending Sticks looked and sounded its very best through their excellent projector and sound system. We had a good discussion after the screening with a small but enthusiastic audience and ate the delicious jambalaya provided by our hosts. The next morning we returned to Vermilionville for a brisk walk in an effort to work off some of the calories we‘d accumulated.

On the way to Alexandria, our last stop, we managed a visit to the beautiful Shadows-on the Teche Plantation in New Iberia and had an oyster Po’ Boy in St. Martinville on the Bayou Teche.

In Alexandria we stayed in the home of an extraordinary couple – Nicole and David Holcome, who are avid supporters of the arts and whose house is chock full of their amazing art collection. I mean every square inch covered in art – even the laundry room. Wonderful, funny and beautiful stuff. Lovely to stay in a home after a few nights in hotels. The screening was in the theatre at the Coughlin-Sanders Performance Arts Center where they had laid out hors d’oeuvres with a stick theme – and attempted small Patrick Dougherty creations. Patrick would have thoroughly enjoyed this. Quite funny.  Again a small but very interested and appreciative audience and a conversation that continued into the night about art and impermanence. We left the next morning each with a beautifully hand painted egg from Nicole and a book of plays from David. Now a week later I find myself reliving every moment of this memorable trip.

Coughlin-Sanders Performing Arts Center (Alexandria, LA) with Nicole & David Holcomb in the foreground. I'm in the back!

Yours truely answering audience questions.

'Bending Sticks' in Hapeville, Georgia

From Kenny Dalsheimer:

The final leg of my Georgia tour took me to the City of Hapeville. I learned from city leaders that Hapeville is its own, independent city, not a suburb of Atlanta; and there is an interesting history about how the city took shape sandwiched between the ever expanding Atlanta, a massive International airport and neighboring counties.

It was a beautiful evening with a reception featuring a a jazz vocal trio. Although my time was short, I did hear about some of the arts initiatives taking root in the city, each of which will enrich civic life and provide another route to economic development. Another Hapeville fact - Chick-fil-A’s first restaurant is located right in the center of town.

The screening venue, an 1894 church, has an interesting history of being moved twice within the city limits. It’s the oldest church structure standing in Hapeville and is a wonderful, intimate venue for a film screening.

Bending Sticks Tour: The Georgia Leg

From Kenny Dalsheimer:

Penelope and I split up our Southern Circuit Tour into two - I’m taking the Georgia leg, Penelope heads down to Louisiana for the second week.

First stop was the town of Suwanee, GA. Screening Bending Sticks in a town actively celebrating sculpture and public art felt just the right way to start the tour. Some of these historic structures have been redeveloped and repurposed, and I’d love to learn more about the history of settlement here and the lives of the buildings that line the tracks. The city moved it’s Downtown, City Hall and created a hugely popular green space to the other side of the tracks a mile or so from Old Town.   Old Town Suwanee grew up on the other side of the train tracks a mile or so away from the newly developed Downtown. Dick Goodman, who did a great job facilitating the Q&A and serves as Mayor Pro Tem and Councilmember, shared a bit about the cities commitment to public art and pointed me to the sculpture exhibition circling the green and the glistening, reflective sculpture hanging inside City Hall.

I hiked with my wife Marybeth around Arabia Mountain on a break enroute to Madison.

The drive to Madison took me outside the sprawling Atlanta metro area across the Georgian Piedmont country. Many Madison homes, shops and structures escaped the burning and destruction during Sherman’s March to the Sea. We screened at the historic Madison-Morgan Cultural Center. This beautiful red brick bldg. has had life as a school, a library and now a cultural and arts center. As was true in Swanee, I appreciated the commitment of city leaders to repurpose this bldg. over the years to support learning and the arts. I also loved the art benches and sculptures on the front lawn.I first took in the cultural history exhibit on the first floor and then wandered through the various exhibits. Oliver Hardy entered first grade here in 1998 when the building was home tow the Madison Grammar School. I wonder if he got in trouble for playing the class clown at this young age. I couldn’t help but make a connection between the beautiful theater here and a film about sculptures made from baby wood. This unique theater is a celebration of wood, “The “woodwork, heart of pine floors, wainscoting, the beaded board of the apse-shaped ceiling, the shutters, seats and scones are all original.”

October Filmmakers & Other Stuff

Blog Readers -- Well, it's only October, and alas, I'm already terribly behind with the Southern Circuit blog. Apologies galore. A good excuse is I've been busy with all things film! I had the great fortune of being in New York for Independent Film Week in September and kicked off October with the Sundance Institute's Film Forward Program in Maine. So much great stuff happening in the indie film universe! (And I will be sharing additional posts from our September filmmakers. Like I said, I'm behind.)

Back home, Southern Circuit filmmakers are hitting the road! Honored to introduce the following filmmakers to you:

Rob Kuhns, George A. Romero & Esther Cassidy

Rob Kuhns (Director) & Esther Cassidy (Producer) bring us the timely (tis the season for Halloween & Day of the Dead after all), Birth of the Living Dead.

In 1968 a young college drop-out named George A. Romero directed a low budget horror film that shocked the world and became an icon of the counterculture - Night of the Living Dead. It spawned a billion dollar zombie industry that continues to this day. Birth of the Living Dead, a new documentary, shows how Romero gathered an unlikely team of Pittsburghers -- policemen, iron workers, teachers, ad-men, housewives and a roller-rink owner -- to shoot, with a revolutionary guerrilla, run-and-gun style, his seminal film.  During that process Romero and his team created an entirely new and horribly chilling monster – one that was undead and feasted upon human flesh. This documentary also immerses audiences into the singular time in which “Night” was shot.  Archival footage of the horrors of Vietnam and racial violence at home combined with iconic music from the 60s invites viewers to experience how Romero’s tumultuous film reflected this period in American history. Birth of the Living Dead shows us how this young filmmaker created a world-renowned horror film that was also a profound insight into how our society really works.

Director Max Barbakow & birth mom, Wendy.

Producer Bennett Barbakow shares his director/writer brother Bennett's film, Mommy, I'm a Bastard! with Circuit audiences this month. A sweet & honest film!

A mix-tape of home movies, broadcast news, and heart-spoken letters, Mommy, I’m a Bastard!, is one filmmaker’s portrait of the three diverse families linked by his adoption. But what begins as a joyous tribute to kinship soon evolves into something different with the emergence of a lingering feud between his biological families. Adopted shortly after his birth, Max Barbakow’s adoption always accented the family dialogue. Twenty-one years later, Max urges his families to elaborate more explicitly on a story he can’t remember not knowing, rolling camera to reconcile varying truths, close open wounds, and above all try to understand the complexity, humor, and absurdity of life along the way. 

Co-directors Penelope Manusell & Kenny Dalsheimer

Co-directors Penelope Manusell & Kenny Dalsheimer tour their terrific film, Bending Sticks, The Sculpture of Patrick Dougherty, this month. 

Bending Sticks celebrates the twenty-five year career of internationally renowned environmental artist Patrick Dougherty, who has created hundreds of monumental, site-specific sculptures out of nothing more than saplings. The film follows the artist and his collaborators during a year of stick work and reveals Dougherty’s process, personal story and inspirations.The heart of the film is the creation of five Dougherty commissions in different locations – inside the new wing of the NC Museum of Art, on Main Street in Rock Hill, SC, at a private home in Chapel Hill, NC, at the Bascom Art Center in the mountains of NC, and in the gardens of Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC. At each location, viewers see how Dougherty and many others transform piles of sticks into energetic lines and exuberant forms. Dougherty’s projects invite collaboration and engage communities in the making and viewing of his very public art.