Here’s how they look much of the rest of the year around here. And there are a lot of them who surprisingly disappear this time of the year.
Tag: Eastport
As for a film society’s choices
The Eastport Arts Center was a major factor in my decision to relocate here. Quoddy Voices is one of its constituent groups.
Another was the Northern Lights film society, which only recently resurfaced but greatly diminished after the Covid hiatus.
I’ve found its offerings invigorating and sometimes disturbing. The deep discussions that follow the showings are especially valued, even for the recent Carnival of Souls and Night of the Living Dead horror vein.
What was perplexing was that the society was essentially two people, one a veteran of its 47-year history, give or take a few seasons.
They were asking those of us who kept coming each week for our input regarding possible selections from the two vendors available to us. Learning of the licensing hurdles for presenting movies even at a nonprofit arts venue was daunting. I’ll spare you the details.
I will, though, share my response to the possibilities and the situation we’re facing.
~*~
As I wrote:
Seems to me our thinking about the film society comes down to building a larger audience. That, in turn, adds considerations of “branding” – the image the public has – as well as the types of films we air and even our geographic range of appeal.
What do we show this week that will bring people back for our next film? That is, what’s our continuity or identity? What has them awaiting the next round? Are we an “art” films circle, an awards-driven following, a sensual experience sharing group? Do our screenings enhance or compete with other arts ventures in the region?
If we’re limiting ourselves to two showings a month, let me suggest making those the second and third Sunday evenings of the month. I’m feeling there might be a “bounce” in favor of that second showing, perhaps even with some common thread for the month. Let me also push for 6 pm so more viewers from throughout Washington County can readily attend. (Note, too, the problems of getting anyone out on a Sunday night, plus the competition with the winter Sunday afternoon series at the arts center and Stage East matinees.)
My thinking is that we might get some synergy and energy that way, especially in getting the word out. The Tides comes out on the second Friday (we might have occasions when the showing falls a week before that).
Orchestras and live theater companies have long relied on season subscribers but have been finding, even a few decades before Covid, that the model was eroding. Festival programming – a cluster – has been one alternative that’s created excitement and ticket sales. I’m seeing that as something that might work with the second/third Sundays model, perhaps even giving us the option of adding a fourth Sunday for a suitable extension.
That said, we are also shaped by the collections of our two distributors.
At the first, I’m steering clear of the traditional art films for now – the Italian, French, German, Japanese, etc.
Instead, I’d look at the USA (not Hollywood, for the most part, which is the global conglomerate movie center) and three Canadian films, many of them documentaries, and at the Latin films – Mexico, Cuba, Spain, Portugal, Brazil. Viridiana stands out on that front. Washington County has a large and largely overlooked Hispanic population.
Cluster options here: Orson Welles, Robert Downey Sr., Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, silents The Freshmen, The Kid Brother, The Most Dangerous Game, and King of Kings (if we can keep a straight face), Norman Mailer, John Huston (Under the Volcano and Wise Blood).
Among the docudramas etc.: A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking), Burroughs: the Movie, Don’t Look Back (Dylan), For All Mankind (astronauts), Gimme Shelter, God’s Country (Louis Malle), Jimi Plays Monterey or Monterey Pop, Louie Bluie, Multiple Maniacs (John Waters), Eating Raoul (Warhol).
Titles that catch my attention: The Baron of Arizona, The Beales of Grey Gardens, Border Radio, Buena Vista Social Club, Cameraperson, Carnival of Souls, Chop Shop, Clean Shaven, Desert Hearts, Detour (possibly anchoring an international film noir survey), Dillinger Is Dead (OK, it’s Italian but still), possibly with I Shot Jesse James, Drylongso, The Honeymoon Killers, Push Cart Man, Paris Texas (yeah, it’s French), A Poem Is a Naked Person, Poto and Cabengo, Routine Pleasures, Smooth Talker, Slacker, Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song, Symbiopsychotaxism, Twin Peaks, Thank You and Good Night, and The Watermelon Woman.
Looking way ahead, sometime it might be fun to do a festival based on Japanese Godzilla fixation.
And then, at the other: For the most part, these offerings strike me as highly commercial creations most people stream at home. Still, American audiences look for star-power rather than directors, so this might provide some extra punch for attendance. That said, some offerings to consider: Barbie, Oppenheimer, Gran Turismo, Joy Ride, Insidious, Tar, Asteroid City, Dear Evan Hansen, The Little Mermaid (with ArtsWalk), The Outfit, Samaritan, The Black Phone, and Cruella (if it’s not too Disney).
~*~
Well, we’ve had a second meeting and set a course for the next year, one that seems to be generating a buzz. We’re focusing on one boffo film a month, with both a matinee and evening showing, and tying the offerings into other events happening in town, when possible.
The first one is indeed Barbie on the Thanksgiving weekend.
‘There were no yachts!’
That’s what many of the autumn cruise ship passengers have noted on their arrival at the Breakwater here in Eastport. As they were told, that’s because ours is a real working fishermen’s harbor. Even in the height of summer, there are few pleasure boats.
The visitors have been largely charmed by the unspoiled nature of this place, especially in contrast to Bar Harbor, Camden, Portland, or Boston, and to the welcome they’ve received.
It did keep a festive spirit alive before winter kicks in.
Community life around here has definitely hunkered down now, at least until the scalloping season kicks in.
Souvenirs on the wall
Stunning bridge over the Narrows
At the top of Penobscot Bay, this is the principal welcome to Downeast and Acadia. Or for those of us going the other direction, to the rest of America.
You can even go to the top, the equivalent of 40 floors, for a spectacular panorama.
Election reflections
These shoulder elections, where nobody’s running for national office, are still important.
In small places like Eastport, getting someone to run even unopposed for local office can be a challenge. We had all the bases covered, although the surprise was when a write-in candidate won one of the two city council seats.
I can’t imagine that happening in a bigger setting, but who knows. A write-in for president? My!
Statewide, a radical proposal to take over the two widely hated electrical utilities failed. Big money is hard to comprehend, even if we’ll be paying it one way or the other. The frequent storm outages won’t be going away, nor will the continuing higher-than-national bills customers here receive. Somehow, I don’t think the issue will be going away, despite the lopsided tallies.
Just how much do those emergency home generators cost altogether, anyway, as insurance against the current setup? It’s not that many households before we’re talking billions.
Otherwise, the initiatives moved in a progressive direction, including the right-to-repair measure.
I am relieve to see opportunities for right and left to come together at a local level, however gingerly.
We’ve come to appreciate the cruise ship visits
While Eastport has the deepest natural port in the continental U.S., that’s not often led to a lot of big-ship landings.
Cargo shipments, especially, have suffered over the past decade.
Last month, though, the city saw a record number of cruise ship visits, sometimes running one every other day over two weeks.
We’re getting what’s often termed mid-sized cruises, up to a thousand passengers, in contrast to the floating cities that might deliver five times that. Frankly, mid-size fits us fine.
One factor has been Bar Harbor’s reaction to being overwhelmed, down at the edge of Acadia National Park. And Portland, further down the coast, is a big city in contrast.
As a result, Eastport is being discovered as a place that offers a taste of a quintessential Maine fishing village without the hype.
As one younger woman said while walking past our home, “Today was AMAZING!” Imagine that, in a small town seemingly so far away from anything.
So far, these arrivals during the fall foliage season have extended our tourist season. The place typically shuts down by mid-September but these arrivals have extended that into early November. They’ve even given some, but not all, of our galleries and stores their best business days of the year. That’s a huge impact on a fragile, marginal downtown.
The landings also benefit the Breakwater and its workers, and let’s not sleight the purchases of junk food snacks at the IGA and Family Dollar by ships’ crews – sometimes up to another 600 people. They do load up.
We do enjoy seeing happy couples walking around our neighborhood with cameras in hand. Our conversations with them have been upbeat. Others have enjoyed bus tours to the Roosevelt compound on Campobello Island and the West Quoddy Light in Lubec or autumn foliage.
Economically, it’s an alternative to the Airbnb purchases that have been pulling housing away from working families, the very culture that’s a big part of the draw to our city. We do need more jobs that provide benefits, too, though that’s another big issue, one basically at the national level. I’ll save that for another time.
For now, let’s acknowledge what I’m seeing as a positive step, one that might even extend our spring shoulder season.
Edge of daylight
Losing a reclusive neighbor we never really met
Moving to a new community three years ago meant meeting new neighbors, and Eastport, as we’ve found, can be a friendly place, even for us who are “from away.”
But one of our abutting neighbors was very-hard-of-hearing, as my wife discovered in attempting to talk to her, and ignored my attempts of waving in greeting. In many ways, she resembled my late asocial mother-in-law, not only physically but also in a heavy cigarette habit. Don’t know if she rolled her own, though. Still, she seemed to relish her independence and had a support system that included a few handymen I could approach with problems to address. Which they did.
We did worry about her occasional drives to the grocery or doctor or wherever. She could barely see over the steering wheel while puffing away, for one thing. And her backing out of the driveway did appear questionable. Still, she eventually returned home, apparently unscathed. I did see her one day in the IGA parking lot receiving a lot of help packing her trunk with her purchases.
I did wonder about her living in a big house all by herself, though that’s not uncommon in a town that’s largely elderly.
So flash forward to a day before what was left of Hurricane Lee was to hit town and I looked out the kitchen-sink window to see a police officer nosing about, checking her car, knocking on her door (and receiving no answer). No surprise there, her lawn-mowing and snow-removing crews got much the same.
Still, he was persistent, making repeated calls from his cruiser after trying all doors and walking around the house.
The next thing I knew, an hour or two later, was a white glove through her apple trees and the black SUV before the blanketed gurney came into focus.
Even before the obituary, an online search gleaned details that she had been born in Eastport to the manager of the local Newberry’s store and, when it closed, moved by stages to Upstate New York, and then, after college, to San Francisco before the Summer of Love and a career in banking.
And then, in retirement, she returned to her roots – from the City on the Bay, as we say, to the City in the Bay.
Her maternal side ran back to a family of Loyalists who fled to St. Andrews, a neighboring community in New Brunswick, before relocating to Eastport early on, while her paternal line was Pennsylvania Dutch by way of Virginia.
The family’s eventual obituary adds details.
~*~
In the aftermath, masked family and friends have been working steadily over two weeks to collect bags of trash and purge the house, including a colony or two of rats. (The rodents, it turns out, are well established in our end of town today – one more challenge to address.)
This also raises the question of just how much I leave to others after my own passing, and how much I need to clear out before then.
In the meantime, other questions loom, including the meaning of life for each of us.
We do wonder who will be living there next – hopefully not one more Airbnb but a real family with kids.
Onward! As I like to say.
Not that I wouldn’t love hearing the rest of her life story.
Early morning rider
Jnana's Red Barn 