2002
Presenters and Special Guests

Saturday

12 Noon: A Celebration of Shorts

Hugues Dalton and Patrick Shea (see bio below) have been working together since 1991. Their collaboration began at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, one of the oldest and largest non-profit media arts centers in the world.

Born and raised in France, Hugues Dalton's passion for the moving image has continued unabated since childhood. In 1987, he moved to the US to attend the University of Pittsburgh as a Film Studies major at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, interning at the same time on several Hollywood films shoots in the area. Dalton's third short film Dinner for Three received the 1993 Pittsburgh Filmmakers' Emerging Artist Grant as well as the Pittsburgh Filmmakers' Kodak Grant. These two grants helped Dalton complete his last short, Mundane Monday. Both Dinner for Three and Mundane Monday were later sold to the European television distributor Canal+. Dalton currently makes his living as an Editor for WQED, the PBS affiliate in Pittsburgh.

Michael Eschenbach is a graduate of New England College theatre department. He is currently enrolled in Goddard College's MFA-IA program and is working on his Master's Degree of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Art. He is a long time resident of the Concord community, he works for NH Hospital and (CCTV) Concord Community Television.

Patrick Shea has a variety of experiences in the world of independent film and video making. After attending Carnegie Mellon University for studies in acting and playwriting, Shea turned to Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He then worked for Pittsburgh Filmmakers for over 13 years, during which time he did everything from sell candy at their theater to administering a regional grant program for the NEA. Shea is currently Production Manager at WTAP-TV, an NBC affiliate in Parkersburg, WV.

Anthony Tenczar has made several award-winning documentaries. His independent filmwork and quest for the misunderstood story have led him to tattoo parlors, prisons, institutions for the mentally retarded and post-Chernobyl Soviet Union. He has worked professionally in television production for two decades. Last year, Tenczar and his family moved to New Hampshire so he could start a digital video production sequence in the new Communication Arts program at the University of New Hampshire, Manchester. He has also taught at Ithaca College and the University of Texas at Austin. Tenczar is in pre-production and production on several projects including a film about marigolds, tradition and politics in a small New Hampshire town.

3 p.m. Dead River Rough Cut

Stu Silverstein is a co-founder of Railroad Square Cinema (Maine's premier art house), and he is on the steering committee of the Maine International Film Festival. He owns the Grand Central Café in Waterville, Maine where he bakes a lot of bread in the wood-fired brick oven. After publishing two idiosyncratic books about bread, he is now working on his third. Also, Silverstein is writing a feature-length film script and is about to begin shooting a movie about fishing with Richard Searls.

5 p.m. Paid to Eat Ice Cream

Bob McQuillen, pianist and accordion player, has held a central position in the contra dance world for more than 50 years. In New England, Bob is known as the quintessential back-up man for traditional dance music. His solid beat and classic harmonies have made him the most imitated contra dance musician in the world. In 2002, he was awarded the National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. This is the highest award for traditional and folk arts in America. In 1973, McQuillen wrote his first tune, Scotty O'Neil, named for a student who died tragically. Since then, he has written more than 1,100 dance tunes, many of them national and international classics throughout the expanding contra dance universe. Still, it appears that his greatest joy comes from what he sometimes modestly calls "boom chucking," providing the propulsive rhythms for a contra dance band that set feet and bodies moving on the dance floor.

7 p.m. Post-film contra dance

The Blackwater String Band: Concord's very talented Carolyn Parrott, Brad Dorsey and David Levine (actually they're all from Hopkinton) come together for a reunion performance especially for our film festival. Caller Carolyn Parrott, director of Concord Community Music School's Songweavers, has known Bob McQuillen since she started contra-dancing at age 11 in Peterborough. She has been calling dances for 30 years and currently teaches fiddle and 5-string banjo. Brad Dorsey is a fiddler and luthier (one who repairs violins and violas). David Levine plays flute, fiddle and concertina, and owns David Levine Oriental Rugs with his wife Roz in downtown Concord.

9:45 p.m. Hollywood Movie Stories

Larry Meistrich, founder of Shooting Gallery and creator of the Shooting Gallery Film Series, has produced such critically acclaimed projects as Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade, Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me, Nick Gomez's Laws of Gravity, Bob Gosse's Niagara Niagara, and Hal Hartley's Henry Fool. A dedicated advocate of independent filmmaking, Meistrich has recently launched a new business, Film Movement, a distribution company offering filmmakers a new mechanism to distribute films, and as a result, broadening access for under-served film consumers nationwide.

Sunday

1 p.m. Hollywood Screenwriters

Tad Mosel's first teleplay was performed on "Chevrolet Tele-Theater" in 1949. Two years later, while working as an airline clerk, he wrote three plays for "Omnibus." He became a writer for producer Fred Coe in 1953, when he sold his first original teleplay, The Haven to "Philco TV Playhouse." He went on to a prolific writing career in television and theatre. In 1961, he received a Pulitzer Prize for his Broadway play, All the Way Home. His screenplays include Dear Heart (1964) starring Glenn Ford and Geraldine Page, and Up the Down Staircase (1969) starring Sandy Dennis. Tad Mosel currently lives in Concord, NH.

Kate Phillips, under her professional name of Kay Linaker, graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and appeared in a couple of short-lived Broadway plays including Henry Rosendahl's Yesterday's Orchids (1934) with fellow Hollywood hopefuls Carleton Young and Richard Reeves. Her stage performances led to a contract with Warner Bros. and later Fox. With Paramount in the 1940s, Linaker usually played cold-hearted society women. She left the screen to marry writer-turned-television executive Howard Phillips. As Kate Phillips, she co-wrote, with Theodore Simonson, the screenplay to the sci-fi classic The Blob (1958). She teaches film at Keene State College in Keene, NH.

7 p.m. Nosferatu with the Alloy Orchestra

The Alloy Orchestra: Roger Miller on synthesizer, Ken Winokur on junk percussion and clarinet and Terry Donohue on junk percussion, saw, accordion and banjo make up this internationally-hailed group. The Alloy Orchestra has made its niche over the past decade writing original scores for silent films which they perform live during screenings. Wowing audiences wherever they go with their energetic and percussive music, this three-man band from outside of Boston has brought silent-film watching back to life on the big screen. After playing at the Telluride Film Festival in Denver, the Denver Post wrote, "they crashed cymbals, beat on all sorts of metallic devices, added a piano and accordion and left the crowd limp at the end." An absolute must-see in Roger Ebert's book.