Mosher’s novel creates an abundantly detailed visual world of time and place, full of beauty, mystique, and unyielding characters. It showcases the universal experience of growing up, particularly in a family that protects its secrets, resists change, and struggles as its younger members move on and become attached to new ways of living. Stuck between contentious grandparents, young protagonist Austen Kittredge does his best to mediate a turbulent relationship that shows no sign of yielding. To better understand, he digs into elusive questions of his family’s past and, by doing so, learns the power of discovered secrets.
The production of Northern Borders will provide hundreds of unusual and intensive learning experiences for the students working to shape this 1950’s narrative landscape, complete with a town festival and magical realist touches like Abiah Kittredge’s odd den, called “Egypt.” The film will capture cultural and environmental qualities that are unique to this region – and it will provide an enduring cultural asset, as it details 1950’s Vermont, when media and technology were rudimentary and work was intimately connected to community and a magnificent natural world.
As with Jay Craven’s previous collaborations with writer Howard Mosher, the release of Northern Borders will provide evidence, throughout the region and beyond, of Vermont’s cultural vitality, as a place determined to embrace and tell its own stories through the unique medium of cinema. Given the formidable challenges of independent film financing and recoupment, even when KCP’s pictures have reached large audiences, this production will also create an innovative production model that emphasizes education, low-cost production, and community partnership as vital steps toward KCP’s 20-year goal – to provide models for a sustainable regional cinema.
Posts
