Rivertown Film proudly presents Rockland in Motion 2021, an annual virtual gallery of short films that are hand made by our county’s filmmakers. This year their work includes music, drama, comedy, poetry, and documentary, and like last year, quite a few incorporate dance, which, like film, is an art of movement. Some of these filmmakers are professionals who earn a living by making films or working on the films of others. Some are artists who primarily work in other artforms, sometimes multiple artforms. Some have just begun to experiment with their creative careers. Our goal in presenting their work in Rockland in Motion is to show off the variety of filmmakers and stories that add to the culture of our community.
The films in Program 2, including introductions from many of the filmmakers, can be viewed from Friday, September 24 through Sunday, October 3. Read the text below the viewing window to link directly to each film within the program.
View it HERE,
Please consider using the link in the text below the viewing window or below on this page to make a donation to Rivertown Film to help pay for this program.
Join us on Zoom for a discussion with the Rockland in Motion 2021: Program 2 filmmakers on Wednesday, September 29. Our moderator will be longtime educator, organizer, and writer J. Faith Almiron, aka. Kapwa. Please register in advance for this Zoom conversation, here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEsc-2trzsjGt0PICeRb15wCDh3ws11pr5I . After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Rockland in Motion 2021: Program 2
Mike Mitch – Dear Manager (3:54, music), by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
3 Conversations in April (12:00, documentary), by Susan Hamovitch
Skye’s Dance (14:50, fiction), by Samuel Harps
Self Made Man (1:24, animation), by Juliana Roth
The Pratt in the Hat (15:00, documentary), by Susan Hilary Shapiro
Burn Down Babylon (7:33, music), by Machan Taylor, Roger Grange, Vera Aronow
Meow Meow: A Deadbeat Laments (2:47, music), by Kathryn Valentina
Jump to the films and filmmakers in Program 1.
Thank you for donating to Rockland in Motion.
THE SEPTEMBER 29 DISCUSSION MODERATOR
J. Faith Almiron aka. Kapwa is a longtime educator, organizer, and writer based in Nyack, New York. Her critical essays have appeared in LA Review of Books, Hyperallergic, LitHub, and galleries and museums, including the Guggenheim, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. Her forthcoming manuscript Untitled (Basquiat) offers a groundbreaking portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat. She has taught critical race and ethnic studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Kapwa is also a founding member of the emergent Filipinx Solidarity Collective of Rockland. Follow her pen as machete @jfaithalmiron.
THE FILMS AND FILMMAKERS
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
MIKE MITCH – DEAR MANAGER
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH is the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black. Originally from Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from numerous publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Literary Hub, the Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads. He was selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees, is the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the Aspen Words Literary Prize.
Susan Hamovitch
3 CONVERSATIONS IN APRIL
Ms. Hamovitch’s career as a filmmaker was always channeled towards documentary, beginning more than thirty years ago. After serving in various production roles, she received an MFA in Television and Radio from the City University of New York. Upon graduation, Ms. Hamovitch almost immediately began work on Without Apology, her first feature length documentary. The film is a family saga, telling the story of her brother, Alan, whose autism and cognitive disabilities sent him at a young age to Letchworth Village a large institution located in Thiells, NY, and it won several festival awards, including Best Feature Documentary at the Brooklyn Arts Film Festival and Best Audience Award at the Hearts and Minds Film Festival. Her second feature film, Stood for the Storm, explores the world of Susan Boutwell LaGrange, a working class woman living in the boot of Louisiana, south of New Orleans, who has come through Hurricane Katrina by the skin of her teeth. www.stoodforthestorm.com/.
To date, 3 Conversations in April is being seen widely, having premiered shortly after its completion at the Margate-Bookie Film Festival, in Kent, England this past January. Since its premiere, the film won the semi-finalist award at the Indie-Shorts Film Festival, and is currently a Finalist in the Online Festival of Isolation (based out of Moscow). 3Conversations was an Official Selection of the Z-Shorts Film Festival, the Rosarito Film Festival (Baja, California) and the Hong Kong State Film Festival where the film has unofficially won Best Documentary. This list is not final, of course. The film was released officially just a few months ago!
Ms. Hamovitch lives in Brooklyn, her base for regular visits to her brother, who lives in a group home in Airmont, NY.
Sam Harps
SKYE’S DANCE
Samuel interned at New York’s New Dramatist, studying with noted playwrights August Wilson and Charles Oyamo Gordon. He was later accepted as a member of the prestigious Negro Ensemble Company. His first major production Don’t Explain was staged at the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe on the Lower East Side. The explosive drama on the death of trumpeter Lee Morgan went on to receive seven AUDELCO Awards, including best play and playwright. Samuel was also awarded The Arts Council of Rockland County Executive Award for Literary Artist. New York productions include; The Paul Roberson Theater, The National Black Theater, The Billie Holiday Theater, Theater for the New City, Theater Four, Duality Playhouse, and HERE Theater. Regional productions include; Rutgers University, (Newark) The Christina Cultural Arts Center (Wilmington, DEL) The Painted Bride and Bushfire Theaters, (both in Philadelphia) EXIT Theater, (San Francisco) and Vision Theater, Los Angeles. Samuel is the founder/artist director of Shades Repertory Theater. http://www.shadesrep.com/
Juliana Roth
SELF MADE MAN
Self Made Man is a comical stop motion animation investigating what it means to go it alone.
Juliana Roth is the creator of the narrative web series, The University, which won Best Web/Pilot at the Los Angeles Film Awards and toured nonprofits and college campuses to raise awareness on survivor justice and consent. The project was selected for a screening with It’s On Us, a nonprofit founded under the Obama-Biden administration to organize students across the country on reforming campus policies. She was a participant in the 2021 Stowe Story Labs and is a member of the Filmshop workshop. Her creative writing appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Breakwater Review, Irish Pages, among others. Currently, she teaches writing at NYU and is developing new independent projects. You can learn more or reach out to collaborate at www.julianaroth.com.
Susan Hilary
The PRATT in the HAT
DIRECTOR: Susan Hillary (aka Susan Hillary Shapiro) has been making independent feature films and documentaries since the 1980s. Some of her films have been filmed at and premiered at the Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals. The documentary “Studio 54” on which she was the archival cinematographer is streaming on netflix. The PRATT in the HAT is her first film after an almost 20 year hiatus from filmmaking. Link to Studio 54 film: https://www.netflix.com/title/81004511
PRODUCER: Suzanne Mitchell celebrates more than two decades of producing and directing documentary films, historical network series, and docudramas. As an accomplished producer and director of social, political, and environmental issue related films she has produced alongside highly acclaimed documentarians and is the recipient of two Emmys, two Gracie Awards, an Omni Intermedia Award, and a Cine Golden Eagle. Link to Suzanne Mitchell portfolio: http://fullmotionpictures.com/portfolio.html
Michan Taylor, Roger Grange, Vera Aronow
BURN DOWN BABYLON
Singer, songwriter, performer, and educator, MACHAN TAYLOR is an accomplished veteran of the music business. She has extensively toured as a background vocalist with Sting, Pink Floyd, Pat Benetar, George Benson, Foreigner, Gov’t Mule, Bobby Caldwell, Steve Tyrell, and The Glenn Miller Orchestra. She has sung on national TV and radio commercials and film soundtracks including the song “The Moon’s a Window to Heaven,” for the film Star Trek V in which she is also the singing voice of Lieutenant Uhura. She has written and published over 100 compositions that are featured on network and cable shows and in major films. Most recently, she had a song placed in the Oscar-nominated movie, Boyhood. As a vocal teacher she instructs amateur and professional singers to better understand the biomechanics of their vocal instruments, enabling them to develop command and expression as vocal artists.
ROGER GRANGE is an experienced cinematographer with over 30 years of experience behind the camera, on feature films, documentaries, shorts, multicamera events, commercials, promos and music videos. His narrative credits include Director of Photography (with Dejan Georgevich) for The Heart Stays (2019), a Native American coming-of-age story and Director of Photography for My Mother’s Early Lovers, a Vermont-based feature (1995 & restored in 2015). His extensive documentary feature credits include, A Cantor’s Head (2019), The Spy Behind Home Plate (2019), Moynihan (2018), Backpack Full of Cash (2017), Saving the Great Swamp (2017), The Anthropologist (2015 Doc NYC), Deliman (2014-with David Sperling), Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie (2012) and MEGAMALL (2009), which he also co-directed, co-produced and narrated. He is an FAA Certified Commercial Drone Pilot and an active member of both the Society of Camera Operators (SOC) and the International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600.
VERA ARONOW is an independent filmmaker with a track record of award-winning work. She was producer and editor of BACKPACK FULL OF CASH, a feature documentary narrated by Matt Damon that explores the real cost of privatizing America’s public schools. She co-directed and edited MEGAMALL: Money, Power and Politics in the Age of Sprawl, which profiles the origins of the massive Palisades Center mall in Rockland County. Both features are available for educational use and for streaming through Vimeo on Demand. Early in her career she was Associate Producer for Bill Moyers’ award-winning PBS series, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, which remains one of the most popular series ever broadcast on public television. In 1996 she founded Turnstone Productions with her husband, cinematographer Roger Grange. Turnstone creates short films and feature documentaries while also doing freelance work for other producers.
Kathryn Valentina
Meow Meow: A Deadbeat Laments
