Lewiston, Maine’s dynamic Emerge Film Festival will take place Thursday, April 9 to Sunday, April 12.

This second annual event will kick off with a special 10th anniversary screening of 217 Films‘ 2005 film “Cleophas and His Own.”

This film is based on Lewiston-native Marsden Hartley’s epic poem of the same name and made its world premiere in Lewiston in 2005.  It was shot entirely in Maine, including scenes at Washburn Norlands Living History Center in Livermore Falls, just outside Lewiston.

This film screening will be held as a fundraiser for Emerge.  More detail will be posted soon on the festival website.

Read Daniel Hartill’s Lewiston Sun Journal story at this link.

Marsden Hartley, ca. 1941.  Photo by Louise Young.   Printed by permission of 217 Films.

Just a few days after the death of the great American Expressionist master Marsden Hartley, the typescript of his private, unpuplished narrative, Cleophas and His Own, was discovered among his belongings. Sixty-two years later, film maker Michael Maglaras turned this epic narrative into a feature-length film using more than 24 of Hartley’s paintings and drawings. This film presents Hartley (played by Maglaras) seated in his makeshift studio, where he recounts the tragic story of the fate that befell the Francis Mason family with whom he lived in Nova Scotia. The last seven years of Hartley’s life were devoted to reliving this experience, resulting in a body of work as a painter which is second to none in the American experience.  2005.  Not rated. 147 minutes.