By Emma Stanton, Staff Writer
This July, Junction Arts & Media (JAM) in White River Junction is beginning production on “Valley Transit” — the first-ever feature film to be shot entirely in the Upper Valley.
Brought to life by writer and director Samantha Davidson Green and produced by Wei Dai, the project will serve as a training ground for aspiring student filmmakers, with local students working alongside a professional crew and earning their first feature credit on a film intended for festival and theatrical release.
Davidson Green and Dai spoke with the Standard recently about the project and what the pair hope the students and residents of the Upper Valley take away from “Valley Transit.”
“This project came about as a next step or next leap in our summer offerings for young filmmakers,” Davidson Green began. “For many years, JAM offered summer camps for middle school and high school students, as well as college internships. This year, we felt we were ready to come together as a staff, a board, and as a greater community of people who are now connected with JAM — who have an interest or even a passion for filmmaking — to make one unified project together.”
Davidson Green united with Dai, a California film producer who moved to the Upper Valley last year. Together, the pair assembled a group of local actors, musicians, and young aspiring filmmakers who were, according to Davidson Green, “excited and maybe even crazy enough to undertake this project of completing a feature film over the course of a single summer.”
Once the crew was assembled, Davidson Green wrote a script that could reasonably be shot in a month’s time in locations all across the Upper Valley.
“I wanted to maximize the number of iconic Upper Valley locations and give a range of acting opportunities to people of all ages,” she told the Standard.
In the depths of the winter season, Davidson Green thought of a story about two strangers whose chance encounter on a local bus sparks an unlikely friendship.
“When writing this script, I thought about my own adolescence in this area,” Davidson Green added. “I’m in the sandwich generation; I have teenage kids; I have aging parents. The story brings those two generations together, while I thought about how a sense of place connects us through time and through generations. Rituals like tubing on the river, going to the Parks and Rec swimming pool in the summer, stopping by the Salt Hill Pub for a beer — there is a rich emotional pull associated with these places in the Upper Valley for people across generations.
“It was fun, as I looked out my window at the snow this past January, to just return to places in my mind’s eye that are emblematic of summer. That’s where it started, and then I began reaching out to these beloved places and the entire vision started to truly take shape.”
As rich as the local pull is toward this film, even flatlanders like Dai find a sense of home in the script. “There is a deep well of creativity here,” he began, “which I was pleasantly surprised to find, given how rural we are.
Members of the cast of “Valley Transit” rehearse on location at Lyman Point Park in White River Junction. From left are: Simon Trussell (“Jaye,” Lebanon High School), Noah Schutzius (“Woody,” Ithaca College, Claremont, N.H.), Kaisa Sentman (“Kai,” UNH, Lebanon, N.H.), and Liam Kelly-Thompson (“Linden,” Bowdoin College, Norwich). Samantha Davidson Green Photo
“I didn’t know how I would sit with the script,” Dai continued. “But once I read it, I found that in the hyper-localness of this story, there is something so universal to it. Whether you are traveling in from afar to view this piece, or just moved to a small town, or never left the Upper Valley — I know each viewer will see a piece of themselves in this story.”
While local places and actors are the heartbeat of this film, its purpose rests firmly in education — in creating an environment for young filmmakers to learn how to make a movie and to see if this career is right for them.
“Teaching has been a part of my life since my first job coming out of college,” Davidson Green told the Standard. “Storytelling and community arts have always had the unique ability to create community and give learning opportunities that lend themselves to the real world.
“When conceiving this project, we took a look at our summer programs and thought, ‘How can we knit our high school program together with college internships? How can we meet the needs of young people who are on the cusp of potentially making career commitments to filmmaking, so that they are ready and eager for a professional-level experience?’ They may not have that experience yet, but our goal is always to create a structure of mentorship and community support that can help guide young artists further in their journey.
“The film that we’re making will be prepared for theatrical and streaming distribution,” she continued. “So, they’re going to see their ideas, their labor, and their contributions manifest in a project that will have an afterlife. We have a second assistant director intern who is a student at Bowdoin College and a graduate of Hanover High. His eyes lit up the other day after our production meeting, as he exclaimed, ‘I get it! Filmmaking is just a classroom group project on an epic scale.’ And it is in so many ways, but with real-world consequences and intensely high stakes. All the pieces need to click together, and if anything goes wrong — the weather doesn’t cooperate, an actor gets sick, an accident happens – it takes an extraordinary amount of group problem-solving and resilience to get the job done. That is what we hope to teach the students on our set. There is always a path forward; they just have to work together to find it. I feel that is an invaluable lesson and a necessary part of every student’s development, whether they choose to pursue a career in the film industry or not,” said Davidson Green.
When asked what the pair hope local audience members take from this special film experience, Dai said, “Hopefully the film is going to expose local residents once more to the magic of filmmaking, and the power in taking an ordinary location — a place they have stopped into dozens of times — but in the right lighting, with the right cast and crew, that seemingly ordinary spot now houses an incredible piece of our story. I hope it creates more touchpoints between Upper Valley residents and their favorite places.”
Davidson Green added, “My first hope always is that every audience will experience their heart opening. That’s really my goal as a storyteller… At the end of the day, this story is about connection — between generations, friends, people of differing political beliefs.
“The title, ‘Valley Transit,’ obviously calls to mind the meeting of our protagonists on a transit bus, but really this film is about transience in all its various forms. From the person who came here for a chapter of their lives to the person who has been here for a lifetime — we are all in transit,” she continued. “The changes that our characters are experiencing, some who are young and leaving this area for the first time, going out into the world, uncertain of who they are and what their connection with home will be, and how that ripples through their friendships and their families — or the characters who are nearing the end of their life and find themselves faced with the ultimate transit, and spend their time reflecting on life and unfinished business and unresolved relationships — there is a common ground here that I hope everyone can access. I hope this story will give everyone who sees it a sense of belonging, and maybe a gratitude and acceptance of the beautifully imperfect lives we lead, not just here in the Upper Valley, but everywhere, through each chapter of our lives.”
“Valley Transit” will be funded entirely through grants and community fundraising; proceeds will support future media education in the Upper Valley. This production will star local actors: Alicia Sanyal, Richard Noble, Noah Schutzius, Reeve Green, Robyn Noble, Paul Ashton, Adelaide Giambruno, and Allison Fay Brown. “Valley Transit” will begin production this summer. For more information on how to get involved, visit https://uvjam.org/valley-transit-the-jam-movie.