Still from One Hundred Years of Hindu Schooner by Angela McNerney
All images courtesy of Provincetown International Film Festival
by Rebecca M. Alvin
We all know times have changed in Provincetown, just as they have everywhere in the world. And there have been many chapters in the town’s history, all of which add up to what it is today. But while we now have a town that is bustling in the summertime, filled with shows, celebrity appearances, and a wide range of restaurants and shops for tourists and locals alike, there is growing concern about the spirit of the town—specifically, it’s bohemian spirit—disappearing. This year’s Provincetown International Film Festival brings us cinema from around the world, but it also offers an array of films directly connected to Provincetown and the Outer Cape region, three of which speak of that bohemian spirit, whether or not they are actually set in Provincetown. And two are by Provincetown-based filmmakers. If nostalgic for that bohemian past, check out these local offerings at this year’s festival.
Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World by Sasha Waters
Provincetown has long been a haven for writers. From Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams to Norman Mailer, Michael Cunningham, and John Waters, writers have written plays, books, movies, and poetry here in the unique environment that marries long periods of silence with a vibrant summer social scene. Mary Oliver found her home here in 1964 on what was to be just a summer. She stayed almost her entire life her, moving to Florida in the last year of her life.
Sasha Waters’ film explores Oliver’s love for Provincetown, her longtime relationship with photographer Molly Malone Cook, and the ways in which they carved out a life for themselves with almost no money coming in, long before Oliver won a Pulitzer Prize and became America’s most well-known contemporary poet. According to local housepainter and writer C. Steven Swanson in the film, at the time Oliver moved here, Provincetown was “a healthy environment for the creative soul.” It was here that her poetry developed, nurtured by her relationship with Malone, the ocean, the dunes, and Beech Forest, where she walked religiously.
As the documentary reveals, cutting from John Waters calling her a beatnik to Oprah Winfrey saying her poems “speak the language of my soul,” Oliver was able to translate what she saw in the natural environment into meaningful words that resonated with a wide swath of humanity. In the film she is labeled a radical and a mystic by those who admired her and her work, but it is her own words spoken by numerous actors and poets, from Helena Bonham Carter to Stephen Colbert, Nick Flynn to Steve Buscemi, that provides the basis of this portrait. She was not without criticism, which is also included in the film, but hearing her words—both the poems and in interview excerpts—is the way into this beautiful soul, and also a way into the soul of Provincetown. The film screens at 4 p.m., Thursday, June 11, and at 11 a.m., Sunday, June 14. Director Sasha Waters will attend the Thursday screening.
Anne Packard: An Artist’s Resolve by Arthur Egeli
There are some people who just appear to be forces of nature, able to do things and say things others can’t or won’t. In the art world of Provincetown, Anne Packard is one of those people. The matriarch of a legendary family deeply embedded in Provincetown, and the granddaughter of artist Max Bohm, Packard came here in the summers from early childhood, ultimately moving here in 1977. After finding herself divorced and cut off from her family, she went from selling paintings on scrap wood in front of her house for $20 to feed her five children to owning her own gallery and selling her work to collectors for tens of thousands of dollars—even $100,000, she says in the film—over the course of her long career, which is still going strong.
The film is made by another Provincetown artist, Arthur Egeli, who approaches his subject with reverence, smartly allowing her to do the talking, in a sense directing where the story will go. Egeli, who has made a number of fiction films, and is also a painter, has a strong sense of the visual element, and together with director of photography Henry D. Power, he situates Packard in the world of Provincetown beautifully. Her fierce honesty and innate restlessness come through, even as she maneuvers throughout the film in a wheelchair, having lost her leg to a vascular condition.
Like Waters’ film about Mary Oliver, this one contains some great images of the town back in the day, as well as interviews with her children, and with many in town who know her. What some may see as a difficult personality, Egeli reveals as a woman whose strong sense of herself has carried her through life’s complications, of which there were many, (including the loss of one of her children), as she endeavored to create a career here as an artist. It is that bohemian spirit again—the same one that Mary Oliver exhibited, the one that allowed both artists to make lives for themselves without support from their families—material or otherwise. It’s no coincidence they did it in this same town, one that has always rewarded that spirit, that gumption, that fierce, irrational will to create and to express oneself in near total freedom. The film screens at 10:30 a.m., Saturday, June 13, and at 4 p.m., Sunday, June 14. Director Arthur Egeli as well as Anne Packard are scheduled to attend both screenings.
Summer Tour by Mischa Richter
Though this film is not about Provincetown or the Cape, it is made by Provincetown filmmaker Mischa Richter and it embodies that spirit as it follows a group of Deadheads traveling across the country following Dead & Company (the last incarnation of the Grateful Dead led by that group’s original members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann, with John Mayer and others) as they went on their final tour in 2023.
Richter, whose 2020 film about Provincetown I Am a Town stunned all who saw it, has a knack for lush, evocative imagery that is perfectly suited to its particular subject matter. Here, the film looks like it was filmed in the 1960s with its naturalistic lighting and grain. But it is the subjects themselves that feel completely out of a different time. One can’t help but notice that of all these young people, traveling across the country in the 21st century, not one of them looks at a cell phone at any point in the film. In fact, it seems as though no one in the film even owns a cell phone; the absence of technology is never mentioned, but it is an essential fact that allows their interactions to be so natural, so free, and so human.
The film is a portrait, a documentation of this community and their outlook on life, which is about as bohemian as you can get. For around 87 minutes, you spend time with them, immersed in their alternative universe, and even if you are not a fan of the music, even if you could never see yourself living the way they do, you are swept up in it and come away understanding what it’s all about because Richter, who grew up in Provincetown, demonstrates his care and deep understanding of his subjects through every cinematic decision he makes. The film screens at 4 p.m., Friday, June 12. Director Mischa Richter and producer Chloë Sevigny are scheduled to attend both screenings.
For tickets, venues, and other information for all films mentioned, visit the Provincetown International Film Festival box office in town at 229 Commercial St., or online at provincetownfilm.org.
Other Films of Local Interest
The Hand that Holds the Line by Geoff Bassett
A documentary about the fishing and aquaculture industries on Cape Cod. Screens at 11 a.m., Thursday, June 11. Producer Kim Roderiques is scheduled to attend.
Desperate Living by John Waters
No discussion of Provincetown filmmakers would be complete without including John Waters, who has written many of his films here and taken inspiration from the town throughout his career. This special screening of his 1977 cult classic in its new Criterion Collection 4K restoration happens Thursday, June 11, 1:30 p.m.
Shorts Program 7: Cape Cod Stories
These films made by Cape Cod filmmakers screen together at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, June 11 and 8:30 p.m. Friday, June 12.
One Hundred Years of Hindu Schooner (19 min.) by Angela McNerney
The 100-year-old Hindu schooner, which still sails out of Provincetown every summer, is profiled with interviews by those most passionate about the classic wooden boat designed by William Hand.
Creature of the Deep (10 min.) by Angus Reardon
Fiction film about what happens when a college student is taken to live with her mysterious uncle.
On the Tide (11 min.) by Mimi Malicoat Bois
A documentary portrait of the Wellfleet shellfishing industry featuring male and female shellfishermen discussing their lives and love of sustainable oystering.
Milk of Life (14 min.) by Joseph So
Experimental animated film about a 19th-century incident of industrial greed in which contaminated milk led to the deaths of thousands of infants in New York.
Bobby Wetherbee, 60 Years Performing in Provincetown (5 min.) by Scott A. Coffey
A documentary about Provincetown’s legendary piano man.
