Film
Up Close With Jaws
Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard is making its debut trip to the wider world on Tuesday, June 21 at the West Tisbury Public Library. The project, a massive undertaking featuring an exhaustive and engaging collection of pictures and stories from the making of the movie Jaws, was created by Matt Taylor and Jim Beller. It is magnificent.
The Summer Institute at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center has traditionally programmed its summer movie series with selections from the Boston Jewish Film Festival. This year, however, they have taken matters into their own hands by programming the festival themselves, becoming, in a sense, an international film festival unto themselves.
This summer’s slate of films includes both documentaries and features from around the world.
Much has been said and written about the filming of Jaws and its impact in the spring and summer of 1974 on a still relatively obscure fishing and agricultural tourist redoubt seven miles off the southeast coast of Massachusetts. After Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard there is simply nothing left to be said.
What’s a heath hen? There was a time on the Vineyard when that question could easily be answered. Sad to say, that era ended around 1932 when the last heath hen was seen on the Island.
This coming Thursday, June 2 at 5:30 p.m. a film memorializing these extinct birds will be shown at the Federated Church in Edgartown. The movie is called Lost Birds and it is a documentary directed by Todd McGrain, a professor of art at Cornell University.
The French word for ‘trophy wife’ is potiche. And Belle de Jour herself, Catherine Deneuve, is the potiche in the French film Potiche screening on Saturday, April 30, at 7:30 p.m. at Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven.
There’s something perfect and pleasing about lingering over a cup of coffee and a freshly printed newspaper early in the morning.
In a new short film, Morning Copy, Greg and Dan Martino try to capture the essence of those few hours before the rest of the world wakes up.
“This Island is hungry for another Jaws,” Greg said over coffee this week at Espresso Love in Edgartown. He and his brother Dan are hungry to be the ones who make that happen.
“There should have been a hundred more movies like it,” Greg said.