Filmmakers Michael Maglaras and Terri Templeton were invited to show Visible Silence: Marsden Hartley, Painter and Poet at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, July 10, 2009.

This is the second time 217 Films has held the D.C. area premiere of one of its films at the National Gallery. The first was Cleophas and His Own in 2006.

“We are always delighted to show at the National Gallery of Art and are particularly indebted to Peggy Parsons for her invitation,” said Maglaras. “Washington is a great venue to screen films and the National Gallery showings attract the highest quality audience. I am always impressed by the quality and quantity of questions asked after a screening there.”

The Washington, D.C. area premiere of 217 Films latest work, John Marin: Let the Paint Be Paint!, will be held at the National Gallery of Art in early 2010, after its Maine premiere this December. Shooting for this film concludes in August.

217 Films first film, Cleophas and His Own, is scheduled to screen in Halifax, Nova Scotia this fall. In this film, painter Marsden Hartley (played by Michael Maglaras) recounts to an unseen visitor a sad story of the fate that befell the Mason family, with whom he spent two summers on a remote Nova Scotia island in 1935 and 1936. Those two summers forever transformed Hartley’s work as an artist, and so transformed the history of American art.