Local support launches and funds a film

How Jay Craven made and promoted his film, "Disappearances," by focusing on local resources.

The same idea is where bands should start. Find support from your friends and neighbors before dreaming of the rest of the world.

'This will happen come hell or high water.' - The Boston Globe, 1/28/07: "Part of Craven's credo is to build on local talent and local investors. His films' fates are also inextricably stitched to local audiences. In the age of Netflix and Blockbuster, and cineplexes booked solid with, as Craven puts it, 'cars, pirates, supermen, and snakes on a plane,' Craven's solution to reaching Vermonters was to bypass typical venues and present directly to the farmers, loggers, and factory workers who wouldn't normally be exposed to an independent film.

His '100 Town Tour' last summer screened 'Disappearances' in town halls, church basements, high school gymnasiums, and opera houses. Students at Marlboro College, where Craven teaches film, dragged a portable AV system up and down the state, from Derby Line to Brattleboro. The tour grossed $170,000 and reached 18,500 people. Best of all, Craven's Kingdom County Productions reaped most of the financial rewards.

'The idea [is] to act on a populist impulse and be inclusive but go beyond what [the audience] is used to,' Craven says. 'Filmmaking for me is about community and family.'

The former arts center director-turned filmmaker is adept at leveraging connections and getting people fired up about his projects. On the phone, he freely switches among roles as filmmaker, fund-raiser, and cheerleader.

'What's the possibility of 'Disappearances' in West Newton?' Craven, 56, says to a Boston-based theater booking agent. Wearing a headset, his gray mane tucked under a baseball cap, Craven mans the helm of his hilltop production office -- a modest house hundreds of miles from the centers of mainstream filmmaking. He reminds the booker of his past successes. '['Where the Rivers Flow North'] played for eight weeks. We're about to do a mailing to 3,000 people [in Boston].'"