Jamestown Launches Silver Screen Film Series

Monday, January 24, 2011

GoLocalProv Arts Team

While the beaches are quiet, the screens are lighting up in Jamestown with a whole year's worth of film-related events - and the focus is truly local. “Jamestown and the Silver Screen,” starts with the movies, but goes beyond.

Film Screenings

The opening program of the series will be February 4. As part of Black History Month, the film Traces of the Trade will be shown at 7pm, at the Jamestown Philomenian Library. The film tells the story of the DeWolf family, the most important slave-trading family in Rhode Island history, as ten DeWolf descendants trace the history of their ancestors. Jamestowner Elizabeth Delude-Dix was executive producer of this film and will lead a discussion after the screening. The Friends of the Jamestown Library and the Jamestown Historical Society are co-sponsoring the film and the discussion.

Film Making

From March to May, the Jamestown Teen Center will sponsor workshops to help teens make videos. The videos produced, each of which must relate in some way to Jamestown, will be shown in May. Teens will be invited to a special screening of Dan in Real Life (released in 2007, featuring Jamestown locations) and Jamestowners involved in the film will be there to answer questions. For those who enter videos, JHS has arranged a private house tour of Riven Rock, the house where the movie was filmed.

Art Exhibit & More

A Jamestown Historical Society exhibit at the Lawn Avenue School will feature posters and photographs of movies made in – or with major scenes in – Jamestown. On March 31, Steven Feinberg, executive director of the Rhode Island Film and Television Office, will be at the library to talk about how his office attracts directors and producers to make their films and television programs in Rhode Island. He’ll also talk about location selection. The program, sponsored by the JHS, begins at 7pm.

The summer exhibit in the Jamestown Museum will expand the focus of the series to include the history of Jamestown stage shows and the Palace Theater, now the Bomes Theater Mall on Narragansett Avenue. The JHS is beginning to collect memories of the theater; so if you remember going to movies, stage shows or other events there, please call Sue Maden at 423-2167 or e-mail [email protected].

Also in the works: a showing of the film Rose- Marie, which stars Nelson Eddy, whose family lived on High Street; a 1940’s dance with snippets from Crash Dive, a movie released in 1943 whose stars, Tyrone Power and Dana Andrews, hung out on Jamestown; and a screening of Wind, which used many extras and some scenes from Jamestown.