January 2008

With the cusp of a new year being an ideal time to honor the past and celebrate the present, The MacDowell Colony is offering a free presentation of three films on January 4th that explore different aspects of MacDowell’s history and its impact on the local community.

Upholding what has become an annual tradition, the Colony will present Lady in the Wings, a 1954 Hallmark Hall of Fame film about the evolution and history of MacDowell. Produced in the early days of live television, Lady in the Wings spans a lot of history in one hour, beginning with the serendipitous meeting of Marian Nevins, a piano student, and Edward MacDowell, a starving composer living in Europe who must take on a pupil to earn money. The film goes on to detail Edwards’s music career, explain how the then-radical idea of an artist colony developed in the minds of the couple, and cover why Peterborough was chosen as the site for the Colony. It also demonstrates why the idea of Marian being a “lady in the wings” to her husband’s and other artists’ creativity might not be entirely accurate. In the film (as it was in real life), it is Marian’s tireless efforts and irrepressible spirit that attracts artists, raises money, and spreads the work of the Colony across the country through wars, depressions, and one great hurricane in 1938.

It is interesting to note that Colony Fellow Helene Hanff, author of the book 84 Charing Cross Road (which was turned into a film with Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins), wrote the screenplay for Lady in the Wings. Marian MacDowell herself makes a rare cameo appearance. At the age of 96, she still remembers to share the limelight and thank all those who made her and her husband’s dream possible. It’s a magical moment that transports the viewer back in time with the woman who many would say is still the soul of the place just up the hill from downtown Peterborough.

Also being presented as part of this evening is a short animated film recently completed—through the Colony’s specially commissioned Peterborough Projects outreach series—by the seventh-grade students at Mountain Shadows School in Dublin, in collaboration with filmmaker Karen Aqua and composer Ken Field. Titled “In the Shadows of Monadnock,” the film “presents a brief history of Mount Monadnock in four parts, with a fifth section showing a variety of plant and animal life in a continuous flipbook chain” according to Aqua and Field, who led the students through each step of the filmmaking process during their five-week residency at MacDowell, which ended in early December. “We coached the students first to design and storyboard the film in four sections. They then created backgrounds, shot still images for each frame of animation, and wrote and recorded sound effects.” The film, which will run approximately five minutes, is currently being edited by Aqua and Field, who will return to Peterborough on January 4th to attend the screening. “It’s always great when kids get excited about art and music making,” they relay, “and these kids definitely got excited.”

The third offering of the evening is a 10-minute behind-the-scenes documentary by MacDowell filmmaker David Petersen about “Landlines,” the large-scale public art project commissioned in celebration of the Colony’s centennial that was unveiled during Medal Day weekend last August. Providing a glimpse of the creative synergism and hard work that went into the production of this vast, two-part performance/installation piece, the film pays homage to the hundreds of local volunteers who were largely responsible for bringing this project to life.

The MacDowell Colony invites you to come see for yourself—through the presentation of these three films—the good things that come from the intersection of art and community.