North Branch School

LIFE IS THE SCHOOL was produced through a collaborative partnership between the students and teachers of the North Branch School and Vermont Folklife Center filmmaker, Ned Castle. North Branch Students: Cade Christner, Tom Hussey, Marco Caliandro, Nick Catlin, Will Schoenhuber, Ziven McCarty, Aine Alexander, Madeline Bernoudy, Caroline Kimble, Marina Herren-Lage, Maxine Cromis, Owen Maille, Angus Schwanenflugal, Aidan Warren, Nico Brayton, Eden Ginsberg, Althea Kane, Leeya Tudek, Wesley Miller, Francis McEnroe Nardiello Smith, Catherine Schmitt, Anika Shook-Kemp, Wren Colwell, Merry Kimble, Wyatt Thompson, Sam Schoenhuber, Griffin Louer, Kelsey Buteau, Rosemary Thurber, Juliette Snell, Lena Sandler, Sydney Weber, Hannah Zimmer, Will Crawford, Henry Wagner, Jack Christner North Branch School Teachers: Rose McVay, Eric Warren, Tal Birdsey North Branch School Staff: Donna Rutherford, Mia Allen With special appearances by: Wise King “Jasper” The Love Dog and Luna The Piranha Filmed by: Ned Castle With high altitude camera work by: Cade Christner Post-production by: Callie Bowen, Ned Castle, Drew Platt Editing by: Ned Castle, Callie Bowen, North Branch Students Special thanks to: North Branch School Board, North Branch School Parents, Cindy and Michael Seligmann, Marquis Theater, Ben Wells Film underwritten by: The Doug Fund, A Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation North Branch School http://www.northbranchschool.org/ Vermont Folklife Center http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org/

Over a fourteen month period, Vermont Folklife Center ethnographer and filmmaker, Ned Castle, conducted a film-based ethnographic documentary project in collaboration with the students, teachers, and staff of the North Branch School in Ripton, Vermont.  The project was undertaken with the hope of creating a documentary film that “captured the spirit” of the school--the culture, the people, and the collective experience of the community around it. Wren Colwell, a student at the school, describes the trajectory of the research process, film production, and ultimately the response from the students–from an insider's perspective:

In Our New Film, Life is the School
By Wren Colwell

On a day near the middle of last school year, we were joined in morning meeting by a stranger who sat in the corner and listened to us have a conference.  This isn't as creepy as it sounds, however, because the "stranger" was a filmmaker named Ned Castle, and we had been awaiting his arrival for a while...

He caught us on film in the play, the ninth grade hike, morning meeting, reading stories, and graduation, as well as days no special event was happening at all and we were just doing math.  I didn't really mind the camera, though I often wondered what interesting footage anyone could possibly get from a bunch of teenagers trying to tune homemade instruments.

In the new year we began to see Ned around more and more, as he shot some footage of the new seventh graders and got our opinions on the format of the video.  One weekend we went home instructed to write lines of poetry to use in the video, and a few weeks later we all read the best lines in front of a microphone...

I think all around there was a lot of excitement to see what Ned had made.  As soon as he hit play, it was like we knew something amazing was being shown.  A scene that stood out to me was graduation, because I have so many vivid memories of that day, but it was great to see the graduation from another perspective...

After it ended there was a bit of silence that was overflowing with emotion.  Then people began to talk.  Someone said that they had never been able to truly tell people about our school, but now they have found the way to do that.