Screening at Rhode Island School of Design

2005-12-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

Bo Smith invited me to his Time, Light and Sound class on Dec. 5th. I drove down to Providence early and arrived by 3. Was charmed by Providence, had forgotten what a beautiful city it is, lots of interesting nooks and curves to the streets, beautiful (colonial?) architecture mixed with modern. Plenty of time to set up my 5.1 surround sound. But unexpectedly a guest lecturer was giving a talk on Scandanvian city planning in the same auditorium, and we had to wait until 6pm to get in! I was tense, of course, but Don, the audio-visual director assured me it would be fine and he could set up the speakers. The film faculty at RISD took me out for a quick bite, which I wolfed down to get back by 6:30 to set up the amplifier for the surround sound. Students arrived and I first showed a really early film, The Conversation--a 6min. "experimental" film that I hadn't seen in years. It didn't even embarass me too much. And I actually liked parts of it. Then Nothing Like Dreaming. Students were rather critical, I thought. But that is good! I remember being really critical at that age and enjoyed asking provocative, critical questions to filmmakers.
After the class, I went out with new friend, the wonderful filmmaker (and professor at RISD) Laura Colella, whose film, "Stay Until Tomorrow" we recently showed at our White River Indie Film Series. We discussed the challenges of distribution and hopefully will hatch a plan for "Outsider Films" to be seen...More on this later.
Spent the night with old friends Doug and Linda. Doug is a really interesting artist (he'll soon have a web site, which we'll link to), and Linda teaches Brown medical students to deliver babies!
Drove home the next day, no snowfall, but sun and blue sky.

Antoinette Jacobson plays fire organ in Hardwick, VT

2005-11-28T14:58:00.000-08:00

The Hardwick Gazette, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2005

Homegrown And Full Of Complexities

Antoinette Jacobson, sculptor and production designer for her sister Nora Jacobson's film, "Nothing Like Dreaming," demonstrated a fire organ,"pyrophone," last week before a screening of the film at the Hardwick Town House. She built the musical instrument with the
help of French inventor Michel Moglia (photo by June Cook).

REVIEW
by June Pichel Cook

HARDWICK-- Low moans of humpback whales,
leaping tongues of fire like coyotes yelping, eerie spirits wailing, otherworldly sounds penetrated through the cold rain, chilling and fascinating the gathering of people around Antoinette Jacobson's fire organ. Fire transforms, purges, fascinates. When fire is applied to an assortment of stainless steel pipes, welded together in a chaotic assemblage, it becomes the source of a musical instrument "the pyrophone."

The fire organ, pyrophone was first described in 1875 by French physicist George Kastner. Moviegoers at the Town House on Saturday, who came to see Vermont filmmaker Nora Jacobson's "Nothing Like Dreaming," were treated to both a film with a wallop and most unusual, musical sculpture. The sounds of a huge fire organ, especially built for the film by Frenchman Michel Moglia and Antoinette Jacobson, a sculptress and the film's production designer, permeate throughout the musical score. She is the director's sister, who, also, built the smaller fire organ played in front of the Town House before the film was shown. Moglia is a classical musician who plays the flute.

"Nothing Like Dreaming" is homegrown Vermont, shot on locations in Montpelier and the State House, as well as New Hampshire, and featuring Vermont actors and actresses. Morgan Bicknell, a Northeast Kingdom native, plays the role of 18-year old Emma Erickson, coming of age and skirting womanhood. Waterbury dairy farmer George Woodward is the reclusive, schizophrenic artist, Sonny Gale, obsessed with fire, creator of a fire organ of pilfered pipes, oxygen tanks, and acetylene torches from construction sites.

Emma's mother, is Burlington folksinger Rachel Bissex, who died of cancer recently. Director Jacobson said the script was rewritten for Bissex after meeting her and was changed from the original character role of a depressed actress to a folksinger.

Emma, portrays the teenager/woman worried about jiggling thighs and looking too fat one moment, and in the next, she is fighting to sue the police for their actions, as she sees it, in causing the death of her best friend, (Siri Baruc). Emma, the first-born takes on the role of family pacifier. She is the emotional caretaker of her depressed, folksinger mother, the consoler for her young brother, the shining daughter/companion (who has been accepted to Yale) for her father, who is a legislator in Montpelier.

After the death of her best friend, for whom she feels responsible, she meets Sonny Gale, and the boundaries of teenager and womanhood blur, brushing against the bizarre freedoms of the artist who doesn't fit the mold of everyday society. Jacobson's themes portray familial worlds where adults are almost one-dimensional, obsessed and mired in their own loneliness, disappointments, failures, and suspicions. Her teenage friends are searching for their own futures, still playing with all the possibilities and dreams they might reach. The young gather together, they party, they are harassed, they may be guilty of their indiscretions, but they are open, fired with the energies of youth. Emma bounces back and forth between these two worlds.

The film is also about loss and confronting it.. Sonny, who hears voices inside his head, recognizes Emma has lost something of herself in the death of her friend. He tells her when you lose part of yourself, you have to find it again. She asks what happens if you don't; he says, "Then you go crazy."

Fire transforms and purges. From the ashes may rise the legendary Phoenix, a rebirth of spirit and hope. When the fire organ's sounds are unleashed with Gale's passionate fury, the inevitable standoff explodes between adults, parents, police, firemen, social workers and the young teenagers who have taken refuge in his cavernous warehouse.

Jacobson's hand is subtle, but penetrating, with the many themes woven throughout the film. She plays her script and wields her camera with humor, pathos, tragedy, and tenderness. In the midst of the crisis, Emma asks her friend to watch Sonny, who appears on the verge of unraveling. The young teenager looks at the unsettled artist and asks: "Do you want to play cards?"

Jacobson uses poignant tenderness in a scene of mother and daughter bathing together. She creates a quietly insightful scene with the departure of Emma from her father psychologically and physically.

"Nothing Like Dreaming" is an independent film produced by Off the Grid Productions. Hollywood move over, a new film venue is close at hand.

Nothing Like Dreaming: Notes from the tour

Screening at Rhode Island School of Design

Antoinette Jacobson plays fire organ in Hardwick, VT