By Annette Hinkle
Second chances abound in America — both in life and on the big screen — and often revolve around social issues that deal with notions of redemption and forgiveness. But sometimes, second chances are about something far more subtle —looking to the past, for example, where we can find life lessons for the next generation.
The Hamptons Take 2 Film Festival is all about second acts — giving screen time to documentaries by local filmmakers whose work deserves another look. The festival comes to Sag Harbor this Sunday with a diverse group of 11 cinematic offerings. One of the highlights will be the closing film, Nigel Noble’s “Close Harmony,” a 30-minute documentary that’s all about giving society’s oldest residents an opportunity to feel relevant again.
Back in 1980, Noble’s son, Ben, was a student at Brooklyn Friends School which hosted an annual concert pairing fourth and fifth graders with senior citizens from a senior center in Flatbush. Noble, who worked as a sound man in the film business at the time, saw potential in the intergenerational program and decided to make a simple film about the preparation in the months leading up to the concert.
Working on a shoe string budget and with help from fellow film technicians he knew in the business, Noble shot “Close Harmony” over the course of just 10 days. And in 1982, “Close Harmony” won the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject.
“It’s a film about that intergenerational program,” explains Noble, who lives in East Hampton. “It’s really nothing more than an investigation into ‘What is old age? What does that mean?’ It’s hysterical what the kids came out with. Things like, ‘When I get old, I’m not going to sit and knit.’”
“It was the first film I made. Up to that point, I was a sound guy on other people’s movies,” notes Noble, who initially attempted to be his own sound man on the shoot. “In the middle of the afternoon I’m watching this scene taking place and the teacher and kids are singing. I thought ‘This is great, I’m really happy’ and had totally forgotten that I’m the sound man and the mic is pointing at the ceiling. After that, I hired a sound man.”
The first shoot was three days and at the end of the third day, Noble notes that every member of the crew came to him and said they wanted to stay with the project and asked when they would be shooting next.
“I had no idea what the through line of the film was until after the third day of shooting, when it was suddenly spread out before me,” confesses Noble. “I was reading madly about old age at the time – I remember reading this book and saying, ‘That’s what the film is about — What is the meaning of old?’”
In previous years, the school children and the senior citizens, who practiced their songs separately, had no contact with one another until the day of the concert. But in order to make a meaningful film, Noble realized that he needed a way for the two groups to bond much earlier in the process.
“I suggested to the teacher that I needed a device for them to get to know one another,” says Noble.
That device was a pen-pal relationship in which letters were exchanged between the two groups long before they actually met for the concert. In the process, the children learned that many of their pre-conceived notions about the elderly were misguided. By the time the students and seniors finally met, they were more like old friends than complete strangers.
“I think the children thought that life was over for the old people,” notes Noble. “From the other point of view, the adults wanted to learn and appreciate the children for what talents they had.”
“There’s a very touching moment in the film with a child whose pen-pal dies in the middle of the process,” he adds. “He’s just so overwhelmed by emotion when he talks about it.”
Now that 30 years have gone by since Noble shot the film, his own perspective on aging has changed as well. He has inched inevitably toward the age of the senior subjects in his film, while those fourth and fifth graders are themselves middle age, with careers, homes and families of their own. Recently, Noble had an opportunity to see many of those children again at a reunion screening of the film at Brooklyn Friends School.
“Now being ‘old’ myself, I want to make the opposite film,” says Noble. “I need to find a program where the adults are behaving like children, or understand and need to still be involved in children — talking to them about their own desires, energy and life. I realize there’s no difference.”
Noble has also come to understand that social policies that have isolated the elderly by warehousing them in the past is not one that can continue. He feels his film is as relevant today as it ever was, perhaps even more so given the fact that the advance of technology has resulted in even more separation of the generations.
“I think life in modern society is out of step with itself,” says Noble. “Everything moves so quickly. The airplane has separated families, the computer has created a certain speed and isolation. I have five grandchildren and none of them live in the Hamptons. As grandparents, we don’t have the relationship we thought we would.”
“Old age sucks,” he adds. “This generation of older people wants stimulus, they want life and they want to hang out with each other. They need much more than warehousing.”
With “Close Harmony” Noble seems to have struck a chord that continues to resonate to this day. He notes that in the last eight months, he has received a surprising number of calls from people interested in hosting screenings of the film or starting programs that redefine society’s relationship with the elderly. Maybe it’s because so many baby boomers are now on the verge of old age themselves — or perhaps it’s just the notion that there is always an opportunity to reshape misconceptions.
“It’s only with those lessons from the past that we learn to look at the future,” notes Noble.
The Third Annual Hamptons “Take 2” Film Festival runs from noon to 5:30 p.m. and 7 to 9:30 p.m. this Sunday, November 20. 2010 at Bay Street Theatre on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor with emcee Bonnie Grice of WLIU-FM. All day passes are $20 ($15 for the evening session) and are available at the theatre box office or by calling 725-9500. There will also be Q&As with filmmakers including Nigel Noble. Among other notable films to be screened is Howard Kanovitz's "Hamptons Drive-In," which was shot by the late East Hampton artist in 1972 and documents his process in the creation of his painting “Hamptons Drive-In.” The film was discovered recently in storage at LTV Studios. The festival will also be offered at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center (288-1500 for tickets) on Saturday, November 20 with arts editor and writer Andrew Botsford as the emcee. For a full description of films and other information, visit www.HT2FF.com.
