Some Movie Magic Created at Hill and Foxcroft

Some Movie Magic Created at Hill and Foxcroft

By Leonard Shapiro

The Middleburg area briefly was transformed into Hollywood on the Goose Creek recently.

Award-winning filmmaker and educator Amy Gerber-Stroh shot several scenes at the Hill School and Foxcroft for “Hope of Escape,” a movie based on her enslaved ancestors in North Carolina. Her partner, Suzanne Stroh, is the executive producer, and for many years she and Amy lived in and around Middleburg, where their 20-year-old daughter, Pippa, graduated from Hill.

Filmmaker Amy Gerber-Stroh (center) and her sister, sound Designer Amy Gerber-Salins with crew members in Warrenton

They’re now based in Roanoke, where Amy directs the film department at Hollins University. Suzanne is a writer, author and a family business specialist with her own company, Legion Group Arts. A Detroit native, she’s a fifth generation member of the family that started the Stroh Brewing Company in 1850.

Amy grew up in Reston and majored in film at Penn State. She earned a Masters in film at the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, an LA-area school that lists Walt Disney among its founders.

Her career began as an unpaid intern with Roger Corman, initially a B-film master of movies like “Swamp Women” and “Teenage Cavemen” who morphed into a prolific, highly-acclaimed producer/director and nurtured countless A-list talent, including Jack Nicholson, William Shatner, and Francis Ford Coppola, among many others.

“Roger was famous for taking on new people,” Amy said. “That was a great learning experience for me.”

There were many others. She produced Super Bowl commercials, made films for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and once was employed by Gale Anne Hurd, a producer involved in films like “Terminator” and “Aliens” with her then husband, director James Cameron.

Amy was involved on a number of smaller films with Hurd, including credits as a casting director. “That was my day job,” she said, “and I used that money to start making some of my own independent films.”

She and Suzanne met in Hollywood, were married in Pasadena in 1997 and decided to move back to the Middleburg area, where Pippa grew up.

Amy joined the Hollins faculty in 2007, returning to Middleburg on weekends so Pippa could remain at Hill, until they decided to relocate to Roanoke in 2015.

“We still consider Middleburg home,” Amy said. “We still have a box at the post office. We still go to the same Middleburg doctor. We still spend time there.”

Shooting scenes in this area made perfect sense, including locations at Hill, Foxcroft and Old Town Warrenton. Amy spent several years researching her family’s history and wrote the script for a film to be released later this year or early 2023.

“Hope of Escape” focuses on her ancestors from Wilmington, North Carolina eventually making their way north to the Boston area.

“My great-great grandmother Cornelia Read was smuggled onto a train’s baggage department with the help of a free Black man in the north who passed as a White man,” she said. “He purchased her in order to save her.

“My great-great grandfather, William B. Gould, escaped during a yellow fever outbreak. He was rowing down the Cape Fear River and was picked up by a Union Navy warship. He served in the Union Navy and kept a diary.”

The film will be pitched to cable outlets and streaming services like Netflix, though there will be screenings for live audiences, as well. That surely will include the Middleburg area, so definitely stay tuned.