Film Love and Atlanta Contemporary Art Center present:

Anna Grimshaw's Mr Coperthwaite: a life in the Maine woods
Part Two: A Summer Task
World premiere

Friday, June 7, 2013
8:00 pm at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
$8 general | $5 student/senior | Free with ACAC membership

Film Love presents part two of Anna Grimshaw's year-long documentary project, about a singular figure in American culture.

In 1960, Bill Coperthwaite bought 300 acres of wilderness in Machiasport, Maine. For the last fifty years, he has lived and worked in the forest. Influenced by the poetry of Emily Dickinson and by the back-to-the-land movement of Scott and Helen Nearing, Coperthwaite is committed to what he calls "a handmade life."

Over the course of a year, anthropologist and filmmaker Anna Grimshaw visited Coperthwaite each season, creating an intimate document of a remarkable person. Like Coperthwaite's life, Grimshaw's film is personal, handmade, and truly alternative. Instead of interviews, we simply observe the process of Coperthwaite's activity as it unfolds in time. Instead of a standard feature-length documentary, Mr Coperthwaite is in four parts of different lengths – one for each of the seasons.

To reflect these alternate methods of living and cinema, Film Love presents each part of Mr Coperthwaite during the season which it depicts. Part two, A Summer Task, premieres June 7 at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. This screening is the world premiere, and Anna Grimshaw will discuss her work with the audience live via video.

While part one gave a broad overview of Coperthwaite's world, A Summer Task takes place almost entirely in the woods and concentrates on a single project there. Coperthwaite and a friend cut down trees and clear a path, working closely together though not always without tension. The resulting film is both an absorbing character portrait and a study in self-sufficiency and collaboration. The film's pace carefully matches that of its subject's task. As Grimshaw says, "I try to get as close as possible to the subject, to be responsive and capture the unfolding of his life. I don't have a script, I don't ask questions, I just wait to see what happens. I tell students, you are using the camera as a form of inquiry, to find something out."


Mr Coperthwaite: a Life in the Maine Woods, Part Two: A Summer Task (Anna Grimshaw, 2012) 47 min, digital video  World Premiere


The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
535 Means Street NW
Atlanta, GA, 30318
404.688.1970
http://www.thecontemporary.org/