Film festival highlights locals
The Ashland Independent Film Festival features movie makers from all over the planet. It also often highlights the productions of local film makers.
This year there are at least a half a dozen movies that were directed by members of the Ashland community, ranging from Ryan Rambach — who made a movie about one of his classmates' garage door mural that became a statewide news story — to Claudine Jordan, who is a professional film maker from Europe, who this year made a movie about Sharon Mehdi's book about grandmothers standing in a park as an attempt to save the world.
"It's an honor to be in the Ashland Independent Film Festival," said Laney D'Aquino, who co-directed "From the Ground Up," a fictional movie about a coffee shop that fights to preserve the mom and pop shop way of life against a corporate invasion.
She said Ashland was the inspiration for her film.
"It's about how a small town works together," she said. "They fight to save what is precious to the community."
The movie was filmed entirely in Ashland and all the actors are Ashlanders, too.
"We did it with no budget," D'Aquino said. "We had just enough money to have food for everyone."
D'Aquino moved to Ashland 13 years ago to work in the costume department at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. When she began to work on some local movies, such as "Conversations With God" and others, she realized film was her calling.
One of her goals in film-making is to make Ashland a mecca of independently made movies.
"We need more Ashland out there," she said. "Wholesome, positive pictures. I'm amazed at the people who decide to live here. They are so supportive of artists."
Claudine Jordan, who moved to Ashland from Chicago two years ago, directed "We're Saving the World," a movie about Sharon Mehdi's book "The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering."
This is Jordan's first movie made in the United States, but she has made five in France and India.
Ashland is a "wonderful environment to make films in," she said. "People are very accessible, which is very important to a documentary film maker."
Carl Prufer, an Ashlander who directed a movie about sculling called "An Easy Row" said being in the AIFF has brought him some degree of notoriety.
"I was standing in line waiting to get my tickets and someone recognized me," he said. "It's my 15 minutes of fame. I'm pretty jazzed."
Prufer has made many movies for businesses but this is his first entry into a film festival. He said he plans to find a seat in the back of the make-shift theater set up in the Historic Ashland Armory to see how his movie is received.
"It's pretty exciting," he said. "I don't know if people will get it or not. We'll see."
The footage for his movie was almost entirely shot on Emigrant Lake. There is one scene that was shot on Klamath Lake, he said.
"It was difficult to shoot," he said. "We were at the mercy of the weather. There was a 20-minute window in the morning when we could get the right shadow and the right look on the water."
Staff writer Robert Plain can be reached at 482-3456 x. 226 or bplain@dailytidings.com.
