Film in Vermont

Today's guest on the podcast is Jeanine B. Frost. With years of experience as a professional actor, Jeanine has nurtured her desire to craft authentic stories and characters, leading to being awarded the Sloan Foundation Production Grant and winning Best Cinematography, all while focusing on lifting up new talent. This award winning actor and creator of films such as NO MORE and MORS DAG (Moth...

Episode number 23...getting up there. Today, we have another great conversation with DP turned Director (and still a DP amongst other things), Sean Kirby. Sean was the cinematographer on the cult doc film 'Zoo'. His previous work spans a variety of narrative and doc work across a broad spectrum of mediums ranging from 16mm to digital and his latest project will see him as writer director t...

Our guest today on the podcast is Chiara Hollender. Chiara is a Vermont-based Iranian-American documentary director and producer. Perhaps most importantly, as she indicates in our conversation, a vessel for storytelling. She has a strong dedication to telling stories about the relationship between women and the natural world and For the past several years, she has traveled all across the country d...

Episode 21. We have another special episode and guest for you today, our first guest who’s primary focus is as an actor. Eliza Doucet is our guest on the podcast. Eliza has played lead and supporting roles in several short films. She also happens to be an identical twin; her sister, Emma , is also an actor and frequent collaborator. They even have a well-trained Labrador retriever named Cove who i...

EPISODE 20! If you are listening to this before March 12, 2026, congratulations, get out to the Green Mountain Film Festival and see some excellent work from all over the globe and also right here in Vermont…and if not, well, keep tabs on the coming years and you can still enjoy this conversation with today’s very special guest, the programmer for GMFF, Sam Kann. Sam is an artist and programmer wo...

The Film in Vermont podcast episode 19! Today’s guest is Noah Mauchly. Another member of the JAM fam, Noah is a graduate of the UK based Kingston University with a degree in Animation and Illustration and animated short films have played in festivals across North America and Europe. He has a beautiful approach to his work, by using animation as a means to explore deeply human emotions and themes,...

Today’s podcast guest is Emma Schlenoff. I have had the extreme pleasure of working with her as Vermont Production Collective board member, but this is really the first time we are shedding the “business” aspect of things and just talking creative process and what drives her. Emma is the owner and director of Witness Oak Productions. Her experience is drawn from working her way up in the industry...

Happy New Year and welcome back for the first episode of 2026. Today we have Vermont based animator and storyteller Travis Van Alstyne. Travis has a keen sense of connection to Vermont, its history, stories and other creatives here. His last project, Love of the Land, was recognized by the Vermont Historical Society with a Richard O. Hathaway Award and Vermont Public with a Made Here grant for the...

Episode 16 we have the great Samuel LaPointe. His last project was highly regarded at both the Made Here Film Festival and Green Mountain Film Fest...and secured a spot at VTIFF screenings as a result of a great showing at Made Here. Sam truly embodies the bold and free spirit of independent film. He was an absolute joy to talk with and I am excited to see what is next for him on the current proje...

Todays guest  is Austen Hamel, an 18-year-old filmmaker from Vermont who is driven by a lifelong passion for storytelling. He has been making short films since he was 10 and just released his first feature (yes, a feature film at 18...) Austen is the exact demographic I have heard so much about in some of my own advocacy work for film in the state and a key group that needs support. Late teens, ea...

Samantha Davidson Green is a film+theater director/educator based in the Upper Valley region of VT/NH. She is also the executive director at the absolutely wonderful Junction Arts & Media in White River Junction and a huge pillar of support in her community.  Her history in film and creative media is deeply rooted in the communal space and within the realm of Community Access TV and education...

Hello and welcome back to EPISODE 13 of the Film in Vermont podcast. 13 feels appropriate given its Halloween tomorrow and I first became aware of today’s guest through his work in the genre space with the found footage, Giallo inspired horrors mystery short “The Red Raven’s Kiss”. Director/writer/storyteller Austen Sprake is on the podcast today and we get into all things storytelling, using what...

John Schlag is a visual effects artist turned screenwriter/filmmaker who's breadth of work in the Vermont landscape in just the past few years is impressive and enviable. At the heart of our conversation, we dive into the idea of creating a team around you. Trusted creatives that you can lean on again and again. Develop a shorthand with and ensure what you are creating is something truly speci...

Ok, I am going to fanboy out a bit here. Sean and Sarah are two of my favorite Vermont filmmakers. Their latest film, The Thaw, is one of my favorite shorts of all time...and my wife agrees as well. They two of them have such a keen eye for details, a penchant for story telling and embedding real, honest and important themes into their work, which maintaining movies that are beautiful to look at a...

Today’s guest on the podcast is Garret Harkawik. Garret is a documentary and experimental filmmaker, as well as a composer from Southern Vermont. I first came across his work as we had documentaries that were intimate portraits of real individuals at 2024’s Vermont Film Festival. His ability to draw out the honesty and grit of a person in their day to day intrigued me and in preparing for this int...

Chris is a cinematographer, director, writer and actor based out of Brooklyn, New York with experience in a variety of on set roles from directing, gaffing to shooting. His 2024 short film "Bear Dude" was born out of the film slam at the Vermont Film Festival and is a heart warming, yet hilarious, comedic short about a bear that turns into a dude after eating a magical mushroom. We talk about writ...

I am excited to be back again for episode 8 of the Film in Vermont podcast for a chat with brotherly filmmaking duo, Nick and Cash Cassidy. Their latest film, Childish Things, is a road trippin', coming of age tale about friendship, change, nostalgia and so much more. We get into all things independent filmmaking, including the collaborative process, writing (or avoiding writing and opting for...

Back on the train, here we are at episode 7 of the Film in Vermont podcast and I am eager to share this conversation with the duo behind Kid Brother Pictures, Mark Freeman and Brandon St Cyr. The two are in the midst of pre-production (and a Seed & Spark campaign. See link below!) for their upcoming project 'First Hunt'. The team's previous film, The Green Knight, is currently on s...

I am very excited and happy to be back after a bit of an end of summer/personal life hiatus and we have filmmaker Riley Parrish Allen on the podcast today. She is an award winning documentary filmmaker (with other credits including Editor, VFX Supervisor, Sound Designer, Production Designer...she has worn many hats, but her current project is called "The Lost Factory" and explores the mystery of t...

Today we catch up with the creator/writer and director (and also wearers of so many other hats, including actors) of the episodic series, Black Girls Kissing. Julia Anderson & Kiersten White are creators passionate about crafting stories that are representative of characters that they wish they saw more of growing up. Stories, themes and characters that better represent them and with this seri...

Dillon tanner is a filmmaker, and perhaps equally as important, a community leader and organizer. He’s a founder and one of the small team running the Mothership Monthly Film Festival in Burlington, VT. The self proclaimed “ MOST MONTHLY FILM FESTIVAL IN VERMONT” is an ongoing monthly film festival where filmmakers have one month to make a film of 7 minutes or less related to that month’s theme. T...

Today’s guest is Michael Henaghan. Mike is a Director of Photography who has worked in every aspect of visual story telling from music videos with Joyner Lucas and Jelly Roll (earning a  nomination for an MTV Video Music Award). His work runs the gamut of narrative films, commercials, and music videos but with the consistent thread of keeping a keen eye on creating engaging visuals and best servin...

Today's guest is the Technical Director & Senior Producer at Junction Arts and Media in White River Junction (also  known as the  Professional Plugger-Inner). Like many of the guests we will have on, Chico is also a director, an editor, a sound man, actor and so on and so on…the epitome of independent filmmaking. I first met Chico pretty soon after I moved to Vermont as he and his film squad w...

The first guest on Film in Vermont is a DP, a director, editor, writer and a whole lot more. His latest film is a doc about Cabot Vermont, centered around Harry's Hardware and depicts a community’s resiliency and the July floods of 2023 and 2024, it is currently screening on Vermont Public. His past work includes DP’ing the horror comedy, The Yorkie Werewolf (set here in Vermont), a handful of won...

Is this thing working? Is this thing on? Announcing the Film in VT podcast. A companion podcast to the FilminVT website and database. The purpose of this series is to shine a light on film (and film adjacent) professionals making work in the Green Mountain State. What are the challenges? What are the successes? What gets people to stick around and MAKE FILMS HERE despite the bottlenecks we see. I...