Campus News
3 Business Club for Humanity
Other World
Op & Ed
5
Arts & Features
7
Bringing Ideas to Light
Sports
8
Lamenting on LePage
Metal UpYour A**,The Finale
THE BEAC N SOUTHERN MAINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE | For the students, by the students
April 28, 2015 Volume 12 Issue 14 mbeacon@smccme.edu
TheSMCCBeacon.wordpress.com
fb.com/thebeacon.smcc
youtube.com/user/SMCCBeacon
twitter.com/SMCCBeacon
Mountains & Movies An Interview with Filmmaker and SMCC Professor Huey Coleman By Garrick Hoffman Liberal Arts Major ith summer looming, plenty of us will be hitting the trails and sauntering about the serenity that is nature. More specifically, many of us will no doubt land on the revered Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest point of elevation and the terminus of the Appalachian Trail. Thirteen years have passed since Huey Coleman, a Communications and New Media professor and independent filmmaker here at SMCC, released his highly acclaimed film, Wilderness and Spirit: A Mountain Called Katahdin. The film illustrates how Katahdin is more than just a topographic number and landmark; it’s also a spiritual sanctuary. Professor Coleman sat down to discuss Wilderness, how it came into fruition, and his affinity for Katahdin. Your film, Wilderness and Spirit what is it about? Originally it was going to be sort of a portrait of Katahdin. But what I found very quickly as I started making it - and I knew this sort of through the Penobscot people as well - it was a sacred place to be people. It represented a spiritual place and there were a lot of different ways of interpreting that, from Henry David Thoreau and the Penobscots and on up to all the contemporary people. At the same time, it was a
wilderness, so I wanted to raise that issue of nature and spirituality as well as a portrait of Katahdin and what it means to the people who go to it. What is your history with Katahdin? What drew you into it and what’s your background with it? The first time we went to Katahdin it was my wife and I, and I was in my thirties. The kids were just born. I grew up in New Hampshire and didn’t come to Maine until I went to Colby College. So I sort of knew of Katahdin but I hadn’t really been there until the 1980s. We just went up once and enjoyed it, and it turned out we went there for 25 years in a row. Our kids sort of grew up every summer knowing they’d be there for one or two weeks in Baxter State Park. At first we’d go for a few days, then we said we wanted to go for a week, then we ended up a good five to eight years where we’d go two full weeks staying right in the park, which was a real wilderness experience because there was no radio, no TV, no nothing. There weren’t cell phones and even if there were they didn’t work. We just felt that was one of the big important decisions as a family. We went with my wife’s sister and their family so it was a big group effort and they were just very memorable times. So I was sitting on the porch one day because we would try to get these cabins
W
SOUTHERN MAINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
•
THE BEACON
•
for part of the time at Kidney Pond and I said, “Gee, I’m a filmmaker and I’ve been coming here and I really like this place. I should make a film about it.”
Huey Coleman on Pamola Peak. Photo from FilmsByHuey.com
them how to make animated movies based on their stories. Of course they’re fantastic stories and lend to animation well. They did a really good job; they were award-winning, and it went very well. One day when I was at the school, Barry Dana, who you see in the film and was the culture teacher, asked me if I would document the Katahdin 100. That’s when I knew I could make the film because I was going to be able to film something that’s never been filmed before, done by the Penobscots. And also they wanted me to document that, so then I knew Barry would be interviewed, and John Bear Mitchell is also seen in the film, so then I knew I could make the film that I wanted to make. Then after that, it was just meeting all the people and coordinating with Baxter State Park and raising funds, which isn’t easy and takes a lot of time. But it all happened and I finished the film. It took about five years and it was in ‘97 that I really started filming, so it was from ‘97 to 2002. It wasn’t your first film, right? No, right off in college I had started making films. I made experimental films; they were short, and when you’re starting off it’s hard to make big feature films. So they were short films, they were in a tradition that was sort of art-world tra-
I don’t know if I’ve seen any other documentaries on Katahdin. There really wasn’t any. There were people that had been in films but no documentaries on it. And if you’re thinking about starting to make a film you have to think about the size and the scale and the money. [Laughs] And I also knew right off that I couldn’t make it without the help or the participation of the Penobscots, so in 1996 I was doing an artisan residency with an Indian Island school, which is in the Indian nation on Indian Island. As it turned out, I was doing a residency, which I’ve done many, many of where I go to a school, work with youth and get them to make movies. So I was at the Indian Island school with Penobscot children and I was teaching
SOUTHERN MAINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
•
THE BEACON
(Continued on Page 2) •
SOUTHERN MAINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE