Made Here Film Festival 2023 – Filmmakers that attended

MASON AKSAMIT – Drepper | The Happiest Man on Earth

Since he was 12 years old, Mason worked in theater and then, at 18, went into filmmaking, with influence from Edgar Wright, Quentin Tarantino, Stanley Kubrick, and Wes Anderson. Mason continues to study acting (especially Shakespeare) and strives to create films that stand the test of time. He produced Drepper via Social Media to show that you don’t need a budget to create the movie you want.

FRANIE-ELEONOR BERNIER, co-director – Danavan
Franie-Éléonore has directed many short films in Quebec and internationally, including the mockumentary La bagatelle, and short documentaries for the Fabrique Culturelle and various advertising campaigns. She wants to create cinematographic experiences filled with humour to touch people’s hearts and minds.

SCOTT CHERHONIAK – Taking Up Space
Co-director Scott is a video Producer, cinematographer and marketing director based in Burlington. He has a versatile work history – having worked as a film projectionist, a distributor and as a writer.

ANTHONY MARQUES – Taking Up Space
Anthony is an African American filmmaker who found is passion for filmmaking in VT. He was adopted at the age of 3 from Baton Rouge, Louisiana and always felt like he was missing pieces of himself as he got older. After traveling the world playing basketball,he bought himself a camera which shifted his interest towards storytelling. He is now a full-time documentary filmmaker and specializes in cinematography.

THOMAS CORRIVEAU – Marie. Eduardo. Sophie
Thomas made his first films in the 1980s and pursued a career as a visual artist, working in the fields of drawing, painting, printmaking and animation. His works are part of various private and public collections and he has exhibited regularly in Canada and abroad. Since ten years, he has been fully involved as an independent animation filmmaker.

JAY CRAVEN – Jack London’s Martin Eden
Jay has made ten narrative feature films and his films have played in festivals and locations such as Sundance, SXSW, AFI Fest, Vienna, Vancouver, Avignon, Lincoln Center, Harvard Film Archive, Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela and the Constitutional Court of Johannesburg.

BRIAN GLENNEY & TODDY EAMES, co-producers – Axel
Toddy specializes in the areas of screenwriting, creative producing, and film production; Brian is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Norwich University.

KATE HALLEY FAHR – Quinn Redshift
Raised in the 1980s on a steady diet of Lucas and Spielberg, science fiction is in her blood.
Having long worked in video games, graphic novels, and independent films, this is her first film as writer/director.

ANDREAS JOHN – Fire & Ash
“Andreas is a self-taught fine art photographer, filmmaker and artist exploring the creation of conscious media that invites our collective awareness back to a place of love, connection and inter-being.”

JOHN R KILLACKY – Flux
John’s videos have been screened in festivals, galleries, museums, hospitals, and universities world-wide and are in the collections of numerous libraries and universities.  His work has been televised locally in Minneapolis, Houston, and Vermont and nationally on Free Speech TV and PBS, and Cultura24 in Holland.

MIGUEL LAMBERT, co-director – Usual Spleen
“Feeling chained by an environment no longer giving any freedom, and where no one any longer respects the rules of the 7th art, Anthony Coveney, François Lalonde, Miguel Lambert and Charles-Antoine Olivier see themselves induced by a creative impulse forcing them to found the cinema collective V1VF. Together, they have only one goal in mind: to restore cinema to its essence and purity. Now hunted to death for leaving the traditional film industry, the quartet fights relentlessly for their own survival, but above all, that of a noble cinema that raises awareness.”

SIMON LAROCHELLE – Trick or Trees
Simon first studied political science at UQAM where he developed a strong sensibility for critical philosophy and social movements, after which he pursued a major in Film Production at Concordia University.

MAXIM-CLAUDE L’ECUYER – 305 Bellechasse
Maxim-Claude has written and directed seven short films that have all been shown in more than 100 festivals internationally, some of which have won awards. 305 Bellechasse is his first feature documentary.

GORDON LEPAGE – Dragon Poets of Boston
Gordon is a writer and animator of stop motion films. His previous film, A Change of Song, played at Made Here FF 2022. Gordon lives on a farm in western Maine where his studio is a one person operation (including armature and puppet fabrication, as well as animation using traditional stop motion techniques).

MATTHEW LUHRMAN – Sentinels
Matthew is a writer, director, producer based in Maine. He loves all cinema, but especially weird genre movies, experimental films and magical realism. He hopes to make films that somehow mirror our dreams.

LAETITIA MALLETTE – Kiss Me
Laetitia studies at the MHSoC. In 2020 she participated at the Regard Festival as an emergent programmer. At 20 years old, Laetitia concluded her first short film entitled Kiss Me in 2021. She is currently directing a documentary, The madness of the seasons.

NOAH MAUCHLY – Talent Show
Noah is an NH-based animator and short filmmaker. He’s a 2020 graduate of Kingston University’s BA Illustration/Animation program and currently works for Junction Arts and Media as a production assistant and producer. His first short film Mouse was completed in 2021 and has been screened in a number of festivals across North America and Europe. He hopes you’re having a good day.

LIZ MCGREGOR – Chicas al Agua
Liz is a producer of independent films. She lives in Newcastle, Maine and in Futaleufú, Chile with her family.

NEIL IRA NEEDLEMAN – Coincidences
I was born in Brooklyn, New York near the middle of the last century, and began tinkering with moving images shortly after that. Throughout the decades, I have continued to capture and manipulate images, following my own whims, hoping to create a personal vision that is worth sharing.

AMY NESWALD – Solitaire
Amy is a fiction writer and filmmaker. She teaches creative writing at the University of Maine at Farmington and is thrilled to be premiering her film Solitaire at the Made Here Film Festival.

WILLOW O’FERAL & BRAD HECK – Artifacts of the Present
Willow is a documentary director, producer and cinematographer. She just recently made the 40 UNDER 40 DOC NYC list of filmmakers to watch in 2022. Brad is a filmmaker, cinematographer, and educator. He recently received the Thriving Communities Grant for his VR project Immersive Vermont: A Virtual Tour of the Impact of Climate Change. He teaches film at Marlboro College.

JOHN NELSON RASMUSSEN – Puerto Rico
John is Associate Professor for Visual and Performing Arts: Film & Photographic Arts in the Division of Communication & Creative Media. He is a filmmaker working in narrative, documentary, and experimental forms

JORDAN ROWELL – Producer, No Other Lake
Jordan, with co-director Duane Peterson III, are both Essex High School grads. A College course on environmentalism, got Jordan interested in Lake Champlain in a new way. Rowell is in front of the camera directing the shoot, and Peterson is behind it as the main cinematographer

LUKE ROBINS / IVONNE SERNA – Sabor y Amor
Luke, a visionary filmmaker hailing from New York City and residing in Vermont, weaves intimate narratives with complex political systems, drawing from his background in both Film and Political Science, and his passion for restorative justice and radio.
Ivonne, a Mexican-born independent filmmaker, is dedicated to crafting environmental stories that explore the intricate connections between politics, economy, and social factors. With her research experience and dedication to Latin American communities, Ivonne strives to make complex stories accessible while emphasizing co-participatory processes.

BEN SILBERFARB – Whitman Brook
Ben’s background in environmental conservation has fed a special interest in filmmaking about the natural world.
Ben received the Hawk Award for Best Screenplay at the Vermont International Film Festival in 2016. In 2022 Ben won New Hampshire Filmmaker of the Year at the 20th anniversary of the New Hampshire Film Festival. Whitman Brook is his first feature length documentary.

DILLON TANNER – Roland & Mary, A Winter of Towing in the Northeast Kingdom
Dillon was complimented once by his high school broadcast teacher for a video project. The prospect of externalized validation was planted in Dillon’s brain. Many years have passed, and Dillon continues to survive off of the occasional compliments he receives for his work with digital media.

CAMILLE TRUDEL- Co-director, Miette
Graduate of INIS Cinema screenwriting program, Camille established herself as a screenwriter after a brief stint at Telefilm Canada and Sodec. Among other workshops she gives, she works as a script consultant and content adviser at Item 7. She is currently working on the postproduction of her first short as a director while also pursuing the development of three feature films.

PHILIPPE VANASSE-PAQUET & DIMITRI LAVALLEE – No Entry
Dimitri: I directed a few short films, and I would like to use this art to continue to express my intense feelings and bring it to life for my spectators. Philippe: Intuitive, highly curious, creatively starved… That would describe at best the 19 years old young director, acting on film sets for 11 years now.

ETHAN WL – Queen City Blues
Ethan is a musician, composer, and filmmaker from Gloucester, MA, whose interests include noise, history, the ephemeral, trance, geography, etc. Across multiple mediums he constructs projects big and small, including solo albums, albums with his band The Big Nest, original compositions, film scores and sounds, and short films.