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Young artists offer own festival

By Linda Carman - October, 15 2003

WILLIAMSTOWN — Thirteen-year-old Io Kleiser sits on the sidewalk beside the horse’s head she has just drawn in blue and mauve chalk. She gazes pensively at her creation while Zoe Remillard, a Mount Greylock Regional High School junior, films the younger girl.

“There are three parts to the story,” said Remillard. “Io plays the artist as a young girl, and the story follows her into middle age and older, when she is in a room with an easel.”

Remillard is one of eight local students completing a filmmaking workshop organized by Minerva Stage and Images Cinema. Their five-minute productions will be presented at a free student film festival at Images this Saturday, Oct. 18, at 2 p.m.

David Librizzi, who with Kathy O’Mara has run Minerva Stage – a theater program for young people – for the past seven years, said the workshop was launched at the request of area young people. Minerva Stage fields three summer workshops, three weeks apiece on Shakespeare, animation and film. In launching the six-week film workshop, they conferred with Images Executive Director Sandra Thomas, who is enthusiastic about the results.

“We’re really excited that it was able to happen this year,” said Thomas. “Having eight students was a great start. We’re planning on doing it again.”

She added, “Images and other people all donated their time to make it happen. It was really interesting being able to pair students with mentors. There are a lot of people in the community involved with film and eager and willing to help. It was nice to make those connections for kids and for mentors.”

Remillard, a six-year veteran of Minerva Stage, was filming on Overlook Terrace in North Adams, a secluded enclave of houses that gave the feeling of a 1940s or 1950s neighborhood.

“Io is a young girl who isn’t interested in games, she’s more interested in her art,” Remillard said. “She’s the main actress.”

Remillard outlined her basic ideas on a storyboard but experimented with camera angles on location, she said. She had made one movie before this one. Her first effort was a “spontaneous” record of making a cake. Both creative efforts were a source of pride, she said.

“The course was really interesting,” said Remillard. “When I learned Minerva Stage was doing a workshop, I went for it.”

Students have met weekly since the first week of September. Six are Mount Greylock students: besides Remillard, they are Henry Smith, Dave Thier, Sam White, Paul Bergmann and Jesse MacDonald. Adam Park of Adams is a Berkshire Community College student, and Billy Piantoni of North Adams attends the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams.

“The group really worked with each other,” said David Librizzi, who gave instruction in writing treatments, storyboarding, shooting, lighting and editing. “Some would be actors in other students’ films, others would hold the boom for mikes, or help with camera operations.”

Librizzi, who majored in theater and modern film at Emerson College, said, “This really is a community project. We met at the Williamstown Youth Center, where [director] Jonathan Igoe offered space to us.”

O’Mara, a 1988 graduate of Mount Greylock who also graduated from Rosemont College in Pennsylvania and holds a master’s in education from Trinity College in Washington, D.C., has been active in theater since childhood.

“We felt the need for students to have a venue for independent films,” she said. “Zoe, a Minerva student for six years, was kind of the inspiration for the workshop. With the Williamstown Film Festival such a success, it occurred to us to produce a student version of the film festival.”

“It was wonderful. They had a team of 10 adults who worked with them on the project, and they had one another,” she said. “It was amazing to watch students have an idea, translate it to paper and translate it to film. We’re about promoting kids’ voices, and we hope our students can form a screening committee for an expanded, countywide festival next year.”

Adult mentors were Molly Windover, Josh Durand, Ruth Giordano and Eric Gladstone.