VTIFF & Kingdom County Present: Wetware
Host Venue: Main Street Landing
Directed by Jay Craven
USA | Fiction | 100 mins
Note: There is also an earlier screening at 4:30 if you prefer – Clicking on BUY TICKETS button will take you to either.
We look forward to greeting you at either of the screenings where you will meet Jay Craven and Wetware‘s principal actors and stars during the reception and in the post-screening Q&As.
Many of the filming locations were in Burlington. You will have fun identifying Leunig’s, ECHO, Burlington City Arts and more.
These screenings are a fundraiser. All proceeds will support Vermont student participation in Jay’s next production – a John Dewey-inspired film with intensive filming during the 2019 winter-spring semester, working through Sarah Lawrence College. Students will again work with professionals to produce a feature film based on Jack London’s autobiographical novel, “Martin Eden.” More information about the program is available at www.sarahlawrence.edu/cinema/ or by contacting Craven at jcraven@sarahlawrence.edu.
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Galapagos genetic programmer Hal Briggs is sharp and creative but impetuous. He’s a socially awkward romantic in a transactional world. He keeps a virtual human clock at home and improvises as he goes on what qualities to include or delete in his gene splicing for Jack and, especially, Kay, to whom he develops a dangerous attachment. Then word gets out that Jack and Kay have escaped, before Briggs has completed his work. Where have they gone and what do they know? Briggs scrambles to track his fugitive prototypes and, as he reexamines Jack and Kay’s codes, he makes a provocative discovery that will change everything.
In addition to Morgan Wolk and the Vermont actors, “Wetware’s” cast includes Jerry O’Connell (“Stand By Me,” “Jerry McGuire”), Cameron Scoggins (“The Deuce,” “Nashville”), Nicole Shalhoub (“The Good Wife”), Bret Lada (“Law and Order”), “Madame Secretary”), Aurélia Thiérrée (“Aurelia’s Oratorio),” “Bells and Spells”), Garret Lee Hicks (“The Americans”), and Emmy- winner Gordon Clapp. Music was composed by Craven’s 25-year collaborators Judy Hyman and Jeff Claus, of the Ithaca-based Horse Flies.
Wetware was produced through arts non-profit, Kingdom County Productions, and its Movies from Marlboro program where 24 professionals mentored and collaborated with 32 students from a dozen colleges during a film intensive semester. The picture will tour to venues across New England and beyond.
Craven will produce his next John Dewey-inspired film intensive during the 2019 winter-spring semester, working through Sarah Lawrence College. Students will again work with professionals to produce a feature film based on Jack London’s autobiographical novel, “Martin Eden.” All proceeds from the September 22nd screenings will support Vermont student participation in the upcoming film intensive semester. More information about the program is available at www.sarahlawrence.edu/cinema/ or by contacting Craven at jcraven@sarahlawrence.edu.
“Wetware marks a departure for me,” said Craven, whose earlier films are set in periods from 1872 to 1970. “But the world of this story is quite vivid, I believe the themes are timely, and the characters are rich and dimensional. Some of the film’s ideas grew from a 2003 documentary I made with my son, Sascha – After the Fog about U.S. combat veterans. My young college student collaborators also contributed hugely, as we worked together to imagine and create this “near future.”
Director Jay Craven has made ten narrative films, including five pictures based on stories by Howard Frank Mosher. His films have played festivals and special screenings including Sundance, SXSW, American Film Institute, Lincoln Center, The Smithsonian, the Cinematheque Francaise, Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela, and the Constitutional Court of Johannesburg.
Wetware funders and sponsors include The Amy Tarrant Foundation, The Vermont Community Foundation, The Norman Lear Family Foundation, the India Blake Foundation, Dealer.com, The Essex, Main Street Landing, Leunig’s Bistro and Café, Marlboro College, Jean Boardman and The Whetstone Inn, Brattleboro Savings and Loan, Burlington City Arts, Dennis and Judith O’Brien, The State of Massachusetts, The Bay and Paul Foundation, Ron Miller, Nat and Martha Winthrop, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Vermont, the John M. Bissell Foundation, Cabot Creamery, Vermont Public Radio, and more than 450 individual donors.
“Special thanks go to these supporters,” said Craven, “and to Orly Yadin and her Vermont International Film Festival and Main Street Landing for hosting this special screening to benefit aspiring student filmmakers.”