[Update: On Saturday, Cucalorus announced it would add a third chance to see Carolina Dreams shorts, on Sunday, Nov. 24, at 10:15 a.m. at Jengo’s Playhouse.]
WILMINGTON — While Wilmington’s darling indie film festival, Cucalorus, has selections far-reaching in subjects and locations, one screening has its focus set on southeastern North Carolina.
“Carolina Dream Shorts” is made up of seven films showcasing talent from the Tar Heel State, with one New York outlier.
The films include: “The Hermit of Cape Fear” directed by Robert Cummins, “Loaded Intervention” directed by Ron Fallica, “Gone to the Movies” directed by Peter Kowalski, “Figure 8” directed by Ryan Benson, “Meal Ticket” by Wes Andre Goodrich, “Fidelity” by Bo Webb and “Lumbeeland” directed by Montana Cypress.
While the first screenings debuted Thursday night, audiences can catch these shorts again at 10 a.m. on Saturday, where they’ll recognize locales such as Fort Fisher, Wrightsville Beach and Robeson County.
Port City Daily talked to two filmmakers included in this screening ahead of the festival. Filmmaker Robert Cummins is no stranger to Wilmington, having attended film school at UNCW, but he only heard about the Fort Fisher hermit until a few years ago.
“The Hermit of Cape Fear” will be Cummins’ third Cuculorus submission and it is not about Robert Harrill, who moved into the state park’s abandoned World War II bunker in 1955.
“The only thing that is similar to the real Robert Harrill hermit is that they dwell at the Basin Trail,” Cummins told Port City Daily on Wednesday.
Cummins used the legend as a jumping-off point when writing his script, but turned the dial up on the mystical for his short film, which premiered at Cucalorus Thursday night.
“The Hermit of Cape Fear” follows Mark (Jeffrey Holler), a single father of a teenage daughter (Sara Haley), both grieving from the loss of their wife and mother (Kara Dawn). Mark encounters the hermit (Charles Auten) while walking along Fort Fisher’s Basin Trail and is sent on a time-bending journey á la mud pit.
Cummins said he developed the idea for the short film a decade ago – before Marvel thrust the multiverse into the mainstream lexicon — but wanted to be able to explain the science behind the fiction of the concept, along the lines of “Interstellar” or “Inception.” Because that’s difficult to do in a short firm — “The Hermit of Cape Fear” is HOW LONG — Cummins put it on the backburner.
He was inspired to pick it back up by the scenery of Fort Fisher and subsequently learning of the bunker’s long-time steward.
“Instead of being in classrooms and making my character this professor or something, get rid of all that and get us outside and some of the scenery,” Cummins said. “I sort of patched up all the issues, the science fiction bit, with more of a mystical thing.”
Locals will recognize the surroundings of Fort Fisher, but maybe not the hermit’s mud-pit-turned-time-portal, which was shot at night in UNCW’s nature preserve. The film also utilized a house in the Forest Hills neighborhood and an alley in downtown Wilmington.
These shots of the city were captured through an anamorphic lens, which capture a wider horizontal angle of view than spherical lenses, creating a more cinematic experience. They’ve been used on a number of iconic films like “Apocalypse Now” and “Alien.” Though they fell out of style around the turn of the century, they’ve experienced a recent resurgence due to their unique look, but this also translates to higher costs.
“These lenses are basically like pieces of history,” Cummins said. “These aren’t the exact lenses that were used on some of these sort of iconic movies, but they’re made the same way, with the same elements.”
With the help of local camera operator Lester Dunton and a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, Cummins was able to get his hands on the lens’ for the first time.
Cummins expressed a lot of gratitude for the cast and crew he brought together for the short, which he said was almost 100% local to Wilmington. Cummins said Auten who plays the hermit, is a friend and the film was actually his second time playing the character.
“Last year at Cucalorus, he was just making it very clear that he wanted to play him, and he has long hair and a beard, and I was like, I mean, he’s got this,” Cummins said.
Cummins is a Cucalorus mainstay, not only submitting works but also having volunteered as a shorts programmer.
“It’s become something really special, not that it wasn’t before, but it’s just that the world knows about it now,” Cummins said.
It’s true — Cucalorus brings in filmmakers from across the U.S. and outside of it, and even draws them in from the film industry mecca. Montana Cypress is one. An L.A.-based director, actor and playwright, Cypress is attending this year’s festival for the first time to show “Lumbeeland.”
The short homes in on a Lumbee community struggling with addiction, poverty and keeping their families intact. Bill Oxendine plays Dollar, a young father of Danielle, played by Bethany Harris, who is facing the threat of Child Protective Services. Dollar lives with his mother, Connie (Antoinette Locklear Hurtt), as they both struggle to gain a foothold in the good graces of their drug-dealing patriarch, Dock (Harvey Godwin Jr.)
Cypress was recruited by Malinda Maynor, the writer and producer of the 30-minute short, after he wrote and directed a short horror film about a Native tribe getting ready for a dark entity in the Everglades. “Lumbeeland” is his first directorial project that he didn’t write, something Cypress told PCD he had to adapt his whole skill set for.
“My biggest thing from all this was observing, observing, observing,” he said.
Cypress added he felt the most crucial aspect to the film would be casting, which he learned would be made up of 90% people who were untrained or out-of-practice — another challenge.
“So then, we cannot rely too much on big masters and big dolly shots or anything where they have to work with the camera, because that takes a seasoned actor to kind of play with your camera,” Cypress said.
He added he had to converse with Maynor about some of the dialogue, making it more natural coming out the new actors’ mouths.
Harris, who plays Danielle, had never acted before. Her character’s casting came down to her and another, more seasoned child actor, but Cypress thought she brought something “raw” and “organic” to the film.
“I took a gamble and it paid off,” Cypress said.
And with that, “Lumbeeland” has won Best Live Action Short at the Red Nation International Festival.
Though Cucalorus isn’t the short’s premiere, Cypress said he liked that the festival would allow “Lumbeeland” to be screened close to home.
The Lumbees, a state-recognized Native tribe, are primarily concentrated in Robeson, Hoke, Cumberland, and Scotland counties in North Carolina. It numbers around 55,000 enrolled members.
But not only is the film about the Lumbees, it is made 100% by Native people, an incorporation that was important for both Maynor and Cypress.
“There’s like a respect, there’s an honor, there’s a shared empathy…these things that have affected their community firsthand, therefore, those subjects that are not taken lightly and can be exploited to us most,” Cypress said. “We want to approach it in a way that’s not so much as exploitation, but a deep dive to the living situations that they’re confined to.”
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