AKA MARTHA'S VINEYARD
2007 (15:00)

AKA Martha's Vineyard will have its world premiere (as a short) at the 2008 Rotterdam Film Festival on January 26th and January 8th. See the IFFR web site for details.

A powerful giant as big as a mountain, has a pet frog as big as an elephant. They live on an island called NOEPE, which means "A PLACE OF REFUGE." This is the island now known as Martha's Vineyard.

In a dream the giant, whose name is MOSHOP, saw that Europeans were coming and he mourned, then he split from the scene, knowing that these people were truly un-hip, and would not "get" the magic that subsumed their world and culture.

MOSHOP dreamed that these people on "floating islands" (sail boats) would cause them terrible harm in the form of epidemic diseases, Christianity and outright genocide. Indeed the shit was about to hit the fan, so he turned his pet frog into a stone, knowing the new arrivals would not think it, alive, as a rock.

So, though seriously injured, the tribe would survive, there. Fast forward to today to the 350 person, Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head/Aquinnah, in Massachusetts, U.S.A.

AKA Martha's Vineyard is shot on super-8 films and is a "study" for a feature documentary, and a first glimpse through that giant stone-frog's eye.

Directed and produced by Richard Sandler.