M.V. Film Festival brings bumper crop of new films

The annual festival hosts more films than ever before.

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Ben Kalina and his daughter during the 2014 Martha's Vineyard Film Festival in Chilmark. — Photo by Eli Dagostino

Entering its 15th year, the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival brings a welcome touch of spring to the Island with 23 new films, showing Thursday, March 19, through Sunday, March 22. “It’s the most we’ve ever programmed,” says TMVFF managing director Brian Ditchfield. This year the festival has also upgraded its technology to provide digital film projection, which means higher-quality sound and image reproduction.

Opening night features Red Dot on the Ocean: The Matt Rutherford Story, a documentary about the 27,000-mile solo sailboat voyage by Mr. Rutherford through the Northwest Passage to Cape Horn and back home to Annapolis, Md. It’s an engrossing story of courage and determination that should interest many Islanders. Director Amy Flannery relies on footage shot by Mr. Rutherford during his trip, on roiling close-ups of ocean waves, and on home video from the sailor’s past.

Red Dot may not offer the cinematic frissons of Robert Redford’s All Is Lost, but it remains truer to the grueling, often monotonous reality of long-distance solo sailing. The viewer learns what motivated such achievements for Mr. Rutherford, and what solitary life on a 27-foot sailboat for 300-plus days consists of. After he weaves his way past icebergs en route through the Northwest Passage, Mr. Rutherford says, “I feel like I sailed through another planet,” and calls Poseidon his only boss. Mr. Rutherford, who taught himself how to navigate, set two Guinness World Records — one for the first solo nonstop circumnavigation of the Americas, and one for the smallest boat to navigate the Northwest Passage.

As the director delves into his past, Mr. Rutherford doesn’t seem like an obvious candidate for the kind of heroism ultimately displayed in Red Dot. He spent his early years in the small Truth Fellowship cult, and once his family left the cult, he turned into a juvenile delinquent, suffering from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, entering a drug rehab program at 13, and committing numerous petty crimes that sent him to prison. After a jail-cell epiphany that his life was going nowhere, he discovered his passion at age 21, and sailed from the U.S. to Europe, Africa, and back.

At the end of his epic, record-setting voyage, this sailor arrived back home in Annapolis with $30 in his pocket. His journey was not merely one of self-actualization. He raised $120,000 for Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating, an organization devoted to teaching the handicapped how to sail. He has gone on to form the nonprofit Ocean Research Project, which helps scientists understand the problems facing the world’s oceans. Mr. Rutherford will lead a discussion of Red Dot after its screening.

One of the assets of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival is that it offers audiences face-to-face contact with filmmakers and the subjects of their work. Summer resident Matthew Heineman, who won this year’s Sundance awards for best director and best documentary, will be present for two post-screening discussions of his powerful new film on Mexican drug cartels, Cartel Land. Vineyard Haven’s documentarists Georgia and Len Morris will lead a discussion of their latest film on human rights and children, The Same Heart, after its screening. Island farmers will participate in the discussion following The Future of Farming: Five Short Films, and at a Farmer’s Breakfast to follow in the Hay Café. Not only She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry filmmaker Dawn Porter, but film subjects and co-founders of Our Bodies Ourselves, Miriam Hawley and Vilunya Diskin will be present for the screening of that film, on the founding of the modern women’s movement. Film subjects Andrea Pino and Annie Clark will discuss The Hunting Ground, about rape on college campuses, moderated by Dawn Porter. Documentarist David Quint and producer KT Eaton will be present to discuss their new film, Father Unknown, and director Diana Whitten will be present for Vessel, her film about abortion-rights activist Dr. Rebecca Gomperts. Six Island filmmakers will discuss their films in Vineyard Shorts.

This year Skype will allow several other filmmakers and subjects to talk with audiences about their work. Included are Maziar Bahari, the subject of Jon Stewart’s new film, Rosewater, about the detention of the Iranian journalist, and the principals of Most Likely to Succeed, about the epidemic of jobless college graduates.

Another addition to the festival this year is an Art Walk and Silent Auction, with work by Vineyard artists Claire Lindsey, Sarah Nelson, Colin Ruel, and Ken Vincent. This event is a fundraiser for the festival. A series of free workshops for children will give them the opportunity to make a narrative film during the festival. Rob Lionetti of Morning Glory Farm will provide food over the four-day affair, and the Festival will provide its own popcorn stand with Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt.

For a full listing of the many films scheduled at the Chilmark Community Center, the Chilmark public library, and Chilmark School, see tmvff.org. For the first time, viewers may have to choose between different films showing at the three venues, because of the large number of films.