The University of Maine at Farmington’s Visiting Writers Series will open the new year with a talk by filmmaker and writer Caryn Waechter.
Waechter will discuss her work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 6, in The Landing in the Olsen Student Center on South Street of the UMF campus. The free event is sponsored by the UMF Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, according to a news release from UMF.
Caryn Waechter Photo courtesy of UMF
Waechter is a director and photographer based in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Master of Fine Arts film program where she concentrated in directing. Her first short film “BEAT,” shot guerilla-style on super 8 film in underground NYC clubs, marked her voice as “bold, mysterious and musically-driven,” according to the release.
Her awards include New Line Cinema Award for Best Director for “God is Good” and Best Female Director from Tangerine Entertainment for her directorial debut feature film “The Sisterhood of Night” (2015), produced by Lydia Dean Pilcher (“The Talented Mr. Ripley”) and starring Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar films), Georgie Henley (Narnia films), Kara Hayward (Moonrise Kingdom) and Olivia DeJonge (“The Visit”) about teenaged girls finding their way through the digital age.
On the day of its theatrical release, The New York Times raved: “Caryn Waechter, the director, is impressive here in her first feature.” Waechter is also a main contributor to Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald’s YouTube documentary “Life in a Day” (masterfully cut by Arrival’s editor Joe Walker), where her footage on one specific day was picked from 80,000 submissions and 4,500 hours, according to the release.
It premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where she was invited to talk about her shooting process live on YouTube. Her footage was then used in Clint Eastwood’s 2012 Chrysler Super Bowl commercial “It’s Halftime in America.”
Once a trained ballet dancer, Waechter shoots and photographs EDM festivals and New York City’s underground nightlife. Her sophomore feature “DeadCon,” a horror film about the horrors and isolation of being a social media influencer, just came out on Netflix. It was produced by Hyde Park Entertainment and Gunpowder & Sky, according to the release.
Currently, Waechter has five projects in various stages of development.
For more information, call 778-7081 or email april.mulherin@maine.edu.
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