N.H. filmmaker Deborah Scranton’s documentary “The War Tapes,” the first war movie filmed by soldiers themselves, will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday, April 29. The film began when the NH National Guard offered Scranton the opportunity to embed with soldiers going to Iraq. Instead, she presented soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., with the idea that volunteers might carry the cameras and she would tell their story.

Three soldiers chose to film their experiences. Each carried a one-chip Sony video camera, tripod, microphone, various lenses and piles of blank tape. The tapes took about two weeks to ship from Iraq to New Hampshire. In the meantime, the soldiers uploaded Quicktime files of scenes, explosions and ambushes. Using instant messaging, they chatted with Scranton about what had happened, together refining how best to tell the story.  Scranton, meanwhile, filmed interviews with the women they left at home.

In his preview of the Tribeca Festival, New York Times film critic Stephen Holden writes that “Their riveting videotapes and accompanying commentary, sometimes shouted while under fire, gives a stronger taste of the Iraq war experience than any film I can remember. ... Once encountered, you will never forget these three—Sgt. Steve Pink, Sgt. Zack Bazzi and Specialist Mike Moriarty—or their loved ones. They are the bedrock of who we are as a nation.”

Robert May, an executive producer of the Academy Award winning “The Fog of War” signed on as producer and brought Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”) on board as his producing partner and editor. Chuck Lacy is executive producer.

The film will formally open in New York on June 2. Here at home, Music Hall film series manager Trevor Bartlett says the organization is “currently courting both the filmmaker and the film director to a lock down a date for a N.H. premiere this summer.” More information and updates are available at www.thewartapes.com.

The folks at Bulkhead Pictures have been busy filming “A Bootful of Fish” at the Rochester Opera House in April. Check out their progress and view a slice of video at www.bulkheadpictures.com/Bootful-Of-Fish.htm.

Jurors at the Syracuse International Film & Video Festival selected “Listen,” UNH-Manchester professor Anthony Tenczar’s collaborative work with media artist/poet Aldo Tambellini, as Best Experimental Film in 2006. The cinematography award winner received a $2,000 film grant. The film also won the Best Experimental Film Award at the New England Film and Video Festival in October 2005 and was recently screened at the 44th Ann Arbor Film Festival.
Tenczar worked with Tambellini, a pioneering experimental film artist of the 1960s, to enable the 75-year-old to return to media after a nearly two-decade hiatus. “Listen” is based on Tambellini’s social and political poetry and confronts today’s world situation through spoken word, written text and manipulated mass media imagery. Tenczar worked as co-director, editor and videographer on the project.
“Listen” will next screen at the International Video Poetry Competition of the Potenza Film Festival in Italy, which was founded with the aim of encouraging new approaches to film language.

In April, “Live Free or Die,” an offbeat comedy written and directed by former “Seinfeld” writers Andy Robin and Gregg Kavet, received the top jury prize at the 2006 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin. “Live Free or Die,” starring Aaron Stanford, Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel, Michael Rapaport and Judah Friedlander, tells the story of a would-be criminal struggling to escape the dreariness of a northern New Hampshire town. The movie was filmed in Claremont in November 2004 with additional footage shot in July 2005.
“We were caught off guard by the win,” says John Limotte, the film’s producer, in a press release. “We think of this as an audience film, so to be awarded a prize by a panel of critics and filmmakers is a great honor.” Limotte is currently working on securing distribution as the film screens at various film festivals nationwide.

New Hampshire Public Television announced several changes to its organization in mid-April. New technologies include an automated, centralized digital master control operation and production of wide-screen and high-definition local programs beginning this fall. Using its data transmission capabilities, NHPTV is also participating in a law enforcement pilot project to convey important information to police vehicles.
Most visible to viewers will be the consolidation of the Winter and Spring Auctions into a single 10-day May Auction and a reformatting of “NH Outlook,” NHPTV’s news magazine, to air only two weeknights instead of five. The focus will shift to statewide stories that combine broadcast media, education, community outreach partnerships, and online resources to increase public awareness and engagement. Such projects include “Seeing Seniors: The Future of Aging in NH” and the new “LiveFIT NH” initiative, developed with 16 state partner organizations to address health concerns with an informative and appealing approach.
NHPTV’s other local programs, “Wildlife Journal,” “Granite State Challenge” and “NH Crossroads Classics,” will air three weeknights at 7:30 p.m.
In the restructuring, 4.8 full-time equivalent staff positions will be lost from NHPTV’s engineering, traffic, production, administrative and auction departments. For more information, visit www.nhptv.org.