Starring: Hans Stefan Ducharme, Sarah Farnham, Joy Vanmeter, and Shawn McVicar
Cinematography by: A.J. Muffet
Written by: Evan Richards[1]
Directed by: Evan Richards & Nathan Horn
17 min/Bangor, ME

Sleepwalker

Sleepwalker is, above all else, an exercise in style. It follows a sleepwalker (Joshua Whinnery) who, while crashed on his couch, gets up and wanders around downtown Bangor in the middle of the night. It's something we've all seen before, but it gives Richards and Muffet a chance to show off a beautiful side of a city that rarely gets noticed as such. Working with what must be almost entirely natural light, they compile a city fit for a dream sequence. And as someone who's been to Bangor on several occasions, let me just say that's no small feat.

Starring: Joshua Whinnery
Cinematography by: A.J. Muffet
Directed by: Evan Richards
2 min/Bangor, ME

Richard Robertson's Rockport Pottery

There's something about footage of a someone making pottery that instantly grabs my attention. Whenever I'm channel surfing and there's something about pottery on PBS, I have to stop and watch. I'm just so fascinated by how this spinning lump of clay so quickly becomes something else, how with the smallest amount of pressure, the potter is able to form this nearly flawless thing. I can't fathom how delicate and precise that process must be, yet it always looks so damned easy.

But even beyond that, this is a compelling documentary short. Through a voice-over, Richard Robertson explains how he got started in pottery and how that led to him studying for two years in Japan with Zen pottery masters. Richards combines this storyline (and the resulting tangents about finding an artistic calling) with the visual progression of the pottery's creation. The two narratives — the audio and the visual — work well together without feeling cluttered. Or maybe they do. I keep getting distracted by the spinning clay.

Starring: Richard Robertson
Directed by: Evan Richards
4 min/Rockport, ME

Evan Richards and I went to the same private high school in midcoast Maine. He was in my brother's class and I was in his brother's class. The school has zero cinema courses and has fewer than 200 alumni, yet has produced two filmmakers. Figure the odds on that.

You can watch these and other films by Evan Richards at his blog, The Complete Works of Evan Richards, which isn't as much a blog as it is a collection of all his films. You can also be his friend on MySpace and check him out on IndieFilmPedia and IMDb.

Got a film you'd like to submit for the Uber-Indie Project? Go here for details.