Join us for a Q&A following the film with director Joel Fendelman!

North Putnam is a special initiative of The Castle, Beth Benedix’s (Producer) Putnam County-based nonprofit organization that is dedicated to providing learning experiences for students where they feel seen, heard, valued and empowered, and supporting teachers in their ability to create environments that spill over with joy, creativity, relevance, rigor and authenticity.

In Fall 2019, as Beth was putting together her syllabus for her existentialism course, an advertisement for Joel Fendelman’s award-winning film, “Man on Fire,” came across her email. She immediately watched the trailer, then contacted Joel, who Zoomed in with her class after they watched the film.

Deeply moved and impressed by Joel’s non-intrusive and open-ended approach to storytelling, Beth proposed to him that they make a film that would create a conversation around public education as a vital component of a thriving democracy and that would set out to build bridges across divides.

The film depicts the larger context in which The Castle lives, the “why” behind the programs and partnerships it develops. We hope audiences come away feeling inspired by the administrators, teachers, students and community members of North Putnam and energized to develop strategies that are impactful in their own communities.

“I grew up in Miami, Florida and spent most of my adult life living in New York City. I had never been to Indiana and quite frankly had a dismissive point of view of the communities that lived there. However, as a filmmaker our job is to constantly challenge our biases through film, as a way to bridge the gap between all of humanity. At least that is what I strive to do. So, when I was presented with the opportunity to make a film in this small rural agricultural community and its public school corporation, I jumped on it. In approaching this film, I decided to commit to a style of pure observational documentary filmmaking. I wanted to make a film that showed but didn’t tell. I thought this was important so that audiences from all walks of life would feel invited to the table by not trying to tell them how to think but to give them the tools to think. Films like Hale County, This Morning, This Evening by Ramell Ross or Frederick Wiseman’s films such as Monrovia were inspirational to this approach.

I was given extraordinary access to the school and its community. Most people, including myself have never sat in a combine before (machine for harvesting corn) or remember what it was like to sit in a middle school classroom. Many people have never seen the inside of a county jail or have gotten to be a fly on the wall in an intimate family setting. But for me with this is what I love about filmmaking, the camera offers a vehicle, a permission slip to be in these sometimes quite private places and just observe. This requires extraordinary respect and humility from the filmmaker for the trust that has been given. After capturing the many hours of footage, my process is to sift through, finding the moments that speak volumes, the frames that flutter my insides and challenge me to be a better person. I then share that learning and newly found compassion with the world with the theory that by sharing my own healing through the film, that it will bring that empathy to the very audiences that view it.

I learned so much about the dynamism, rich culture and passion for humanity while spending time within the communities of North Putnam and my hope is that this film can also act as a bridge between our national partisan politics by showing that there really is little difference between us. I hope that someone who grew up in a big city can see a part of themselves in North Putnam and feel closer to a place that maybe they dismissed like I did but now see the underlying connection.” – Joel Fendelman

Joel Fendelman is an award-winning filmmaker based in NYC who strives to embrace socially conscious stories that deal with religion, social class, minorities and communicates the underlying connection between us all.

Joel most recently received an IDA Documentary Award for his fourth feature film Man on Fire, a documentary about a white Texas preacher who self-immolated in his birth town of Grand Saline in order to bring attention to the unrepented racism there. The film uses the act as a vehicle to explore racism in small town East Texas and indirectly America as a whole. Man on Fire premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January and will have its broadcast premiere on PBS Independent Lens during the 2018-19 season.