In the summer of 2004, budding filmmaker Tara Wray pulled up in front of a house in tiny Hunter, Kan. (pop. 77) with her camera rolling. She was there to see her mother, Evie, who had threatened to kill her five years before when they were living in nearby Manhattan. For Wray, the experience was surreal.

“I was pretty nervous,” she recalled. “The camera was great. It was nice to have that buffer between my mother and [me]. … It was protecting me, and having the other filmmakers there – I couldn’t have done it without them. The film is why I went back to see her. I wouldn’t have gone back otherwise, at least not at that point in my life.”

At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 31, Wray’s debut film “Manhattan, Kansas” will be presented at Sweet Briar College as part of the 2006-07 Southern Circuit Film Series.

Filmmaker Tara Wray will bring her documentary “Manhattan, Kansas” to Sweet Briar on Oct. 31.
The documentary is the third of six independent films to be shown over the next several months at venues that will alternate between Sweet Briar and Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. Screenings will be held at Sweet Briar in Tyson Auditorium (Benedict 100) and at R-MWC in Leggett Hall Room 537. Admission is free.

Following its premiere at the 2006 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, the Austin Chronicle praised the film as “painfully intimate” and “everything a personal documentary can and should be.”

The deeply personal film also was awarded runner-up in the festival’s “Emerging Visions” category, as judged by the audience.

“The [audience’s] reaction has been pretty intense and positive,” Wray said. “When we premiered in Texas … people came up to me afterwards. People were crying. I wanted people to have a strong reaction to the film. When we had our showing … in New York it was the same thing – people were laughing and people were crying. People were interested in my mother and impressed with her. It’s been overwhelmingly positive.”

The filmmaker’s mother, Evie Wray, threatened to kill her when she was 19 years old. The documentary tells the story of their reunion.
Today, Wray said her relationship with her mother is “decent – better than it was before making the movie,” although not what she’d like it to be. Overall, making the film has been very rewarding.

“It’s the thing I’m most proud of having done,” she said. “It was a pretty random way to get back in touch with my mom, but I think it’s the only way I could get back in touch with her. For that reason alone, making the film was incredibly important. It not only touches on my creative life, but my personal life. It’s all encompassing. I have no regrets about it.”

Following the screening, Wray will be on hand to discuss her project and answer questions. Also, dinner with the filmmaker is offered prior to the show in Burnett Dining Room B at Prothro. Dinner starts at 5:30 p.m., and the cost is $6.75 for the public and $5.50 for SBC faculty and staff.

Southern Circuit is a program of the Southern Arts Federation, a not-for-profit regional arts organization making a positive difference in the arts throughout the South since 1975. Southern Arts Federation is supported by funding and programming partnerships with the National Endowment for the Arts, private foundations, corporations, individuals, and the state arts agencies of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Upcoming films in the series also include:

Animation Selections
Filmmaker: Karl Staven
7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2007, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College
Synopsis: Karl Staven’s name is synonymous with creative and innovative animation. He takes inspiration from all over the world for his animation – even the smallest objects in a dollhouse.

Staven will screen selections from his large body of work, including the animated short films “Abandoned Dolls” and “Gabriel Goes for a Walk.” “Abandoned Dolls” is a six-minute puppet/object animation piece displaying two types of dolls vying for dominance in a post-apocalyptic city. “Despite open gestures and forgiving phone calls, it proves difficult to bridge the divide,” writes Staven.

Liberia: A Fragile Peace
Filmmaker: Steve Ross
7 p.m. Tuesday, March 6, 2007, Sweet Briar College
Synopsis: This documentary explores the civil war between the wealthy minority of former American slaves and the indigenous, rural tribes across the country. Filmmaker Steve Ross calls it a “happy accident” that he met the graduate student who wanted to make a documentary about the Liberia situation and needed help with the filmmaking.

During his first trip to Liberia, after the exit of a tyrannical Charles Taylor and the entrance of the United Nations in 2003, Ross said their experience was like classic news-journalism. He and his student colleague had only one contact in the whole country, stayed in a convent because the only hotel in Monrovia was charging $350 a night, and “filled a bag with footage.”

They went back again a few years later. “I wasn’t there during the carnage,” assures Ross. “I was never fearful for my life. The people saw my camera and wanted to talk. They needed to tell the world their story.”

Interkosmos
Filmmaker: Jim Finn
7 p.m. Tuesday, April 17, 2007, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College
Synopsis: Jim Finn’s mockumentary follows an East German secret space mission to colonize the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. This cosmonaut romance told through photographs, test and training footage, and a series of infectious specially recorded German pop songs weaves together the styles of a 70s documentary, Hollywood musical and dry-humor comedy.

“The story is a little ridiculous,” Finn admits. “I mean, the inmates are really running the asylum in this film. … I wanted a communist love story; I wanted guinea pigs and a space capsule; and I wanted the radical artistic energy of the 1920s and the 60s. This is what came of it.”

Finn’s project grew into a hilarious, communist, musical extravaganza. “In the U.S., our image of communists was always so dour,” says Finn. “If they were having a good time, it was in that psychotic alcoholic way. I wanted to show something different – some of the love.”

A film that may have been utterly taboo during the space-race era is now, according to “The Guardian,” “a serious rib-tickler that will undoubtedly become a cult classic.”
For more information about the Southern Circuit Film Series, contact Eleanor Salotto at esalotto@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6159, or Jennifer Gauthier at jgauthier@rmwc.edu or (434) 947-8501.

– By Suzanne Ramsey, SBC staff writer