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Filmmaker and current MacDowell Colony fellow David Petersen will offer a filmmaking workshop at the Peterborough Historical Society on Friday, May 17, 2002 at 7:30 p.m. in Bass Hall. During the workshop, Petersen will field people’s questions, discuss funding resources, explain current film equipment, and facilitate aspiring filmmakers’ ideas by sharing how an artist transforms an idea to film.

Petersen, who explains that most of his films are tied together by the idea of home, has aired one of his documentaries on PBS and been nominated for an Academy Award for another. His PBS film, If You Lived Here, You Would Be Home Now, is about the town of Bridgeville, Delaware, a small community he used to travel through on his way to the beach. Becoming intrigued by its citizens, Petersen focused on Jack Lewis, a WPA artist who arrived in the town during the New Deal to bring art to the inhabitants. “I believe people who aren’t formally educated have an equal ability to talk about art,” Petersen says by way of explaining what intrigued him about Jack Lewis. Lewis was so successful in his mission that he had “farmers, barbers, and people off the street talking about art.”

Many of Petersen’s films deal with class, the ties that bind strangers, and the importance of place. His Oscar-nominated film, Fine Food, Fine Pastries, Open 6-9, is about a diner and the people who patronize it. “No subject is too small,” he says. “In fact, as subjects become smaller, they become a lot larger because of all the nuances.” In addition to documenting the activities inside a diner or a small town, Petersen has observed life in a storefront church and the struggles of a mentally handicapped man seeking shelter. He is working on both these films during his two-month stay at MacDowell.

Each year, the MacDowell Colony awards residencies to 240 artists working in film and video, photography, the visual arts, writing, architecture, and musical composition. MacDowell is the oldest arts colony in the United States and counts such people as Leonard Bernstein, Alice Walker, and Meredith Monk among its past fellows.