North Putnam

North Putnam depicts a year in the life of a rural Indiana school district and the community it serves. Crafted with empathy, a hyper-real reporting lens and skillfully lush cinematography, the film aims to reach across divides and to spark action-oriented conversations about the interdependence between public schools and community development.

Joel Fendelman (Director)

Joel is an award-winning filmmaker who strives to embrace socially conscious stories that deal with religion, social class and minorities and communicate the underlying connection between us all. His last film, Man on Fire, screened nationally on PBS and won an International Documentary Association Award. Other award-winning and nationally recognized films include Game Night, Remittance, and David.

Beth Benedix (Producer)

Beth is Professor Emerita of World Literature, Religious Studies, and Community Engagement at DePauw University, and Founder and Director of The Castle, a nonprofit that partners with public schools in Putnam County, IN. A prolific writer, her third book, Ghost Writer (A Story About Telling a Holocaust Story), was named a finalist for the 2019 Next Generation Indie Awards and her most recent, The Post-Pandemic Liberal Arts College: A Manifesto for Reinvention (co-authored with Steve Volk), has contributed to a national conversation about higher education.

Director’s Statement

I grew up in Miami, Florida and spent most of my adult life living in New York City. I had never been to Indiana and quite frankly had a dismissive point of view of the communities that lived there. However, as a filmmaker our job is to constantly challenge our biases through film, as a way to bridge the gap between all of humanity. At least that is what I strive to do. So, when I was presented with the opportunity to make a film in this small rural agricultural community and its public school corporation, I jumped on it. In approaching this film, I decided to commit to a style of pure observational documentary filmmaking. I wanted to make a film that showed but didn’t tell. I thought this was important so that audiences from all walks of life would feel invited to the table by not trying to tell them how to think but to give them the tools to think. Films like Hale County, This Morning, This Evening by Ramell Ross or Frederick Wiseman’s films such as Monrovia were inspirational to this approach.

I was given extraordinary access to the school and its community. Most people, including myself have never sat in a combine before (machine for harvesting corn) or remember what it was like to sit in a middle school classroom. Many people have never seen the inside of a county J*il or have gotten to be a fly on the wall in an intimate family setting. But for me with this is what I love about filmmaking, the camera offers a vehicle, a permission slip to be in these sometimes quite private places and just observe. This requires extraordinary respect and humility from the filmmaker for the trust that has been given. After capturing the many hours of footage, my process is to sift through, finding the moments that speak volumes, the frames that flutter my insides and challenge me to be a better person. I then share that learning and newly found compassion with the world with the theory that by sharing my own healing through the film, that it will bring that empathy to the very audiences that view it.

I learned so much about the dynamism, rich culture and passion for humanity while spending time within the communities of North Putnam and my hope is that this film can also act as a bridge between our national partisan politics by showing that there really is little difference between us. I hope that someone who grew up in a big city can see a part of themselves in North Putnam and feel closer to a place that maybe they dismissed like I did but now see the underlying connection.

Website: https://www.newday.com/films/north-putnam

Trailer:

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