Young Filmmakers Focus on the Ocean State

See any good movies recently? In Rhode Island, the answer might begin at a local landmark like Providence’s Avon Cinema, Newport’s Jane Pickens Theater, or United Rewind in Westerly, where audiences can find everything from major releases to classics to low-budget independent films shown on the big screen. The state’s deep connection to entertainment history is visible in tributes to historic figures like triple-threats George M. Cohan (a statue in Fox Point) and Eddie Dowling (a highway in North Smithfield), reminders that Rhode Island has long played a role in the motion picture story. But as recent in-state productions like Ella McCay and The Gilded Age have shown, the future of film in the Ocean State is still being written. Young filmmakers are making their mark on the local industry, creating films and forging connections that keep Rhode Island’s legacy in the motion picture business alive.

One such filmmaker is Jacob Snowiss, a cinematographer and graduate of the University of Rhode Island’s film program, whose impressive resume includes high-profile projects such as a video piece on the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall for the Fidelity Investments Young Artists Competition. Working alongside the project’s lead, Patrick McCarthy (a Rhode Island resident himself), Snowiss applied the techniques he developed and honed at URI under the mentorship of film professor Nicholas Corsano. He “taught me the true nitty gritty elements that I was aching for, as well as how to hone the lens as a storytelling tool,” says Snowiss of time spent in Corsano’s courses.

A frequent competitor in the 48 Hour Film Project Providence (48HFP), Snowiss has worked on films that have won awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Actress. “Making films in Rhode Island is in many ways a dream come true,” he says. “The state offers such a wide array of landscapes and architectural styles that you’re almost bound to find what you’re looking for, regardless of period. The colleagues I’ve befriended around Rhode Island are vast and emblematic of the state’s welcoming demeanor.”

Audrey Collins, another local filmmaker and URI graduate, agrees. “One of the great things about Rhode Island is that it’s a very close-knit network,” she says. “Everybody lives near each other, and nothing is ever more than an hour or so drive away, and I think that helps build community.” While Snowiss works primarily as a cinematographer, Collins, who’s set to attend the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts next spring, works on set as a director, having recently screened two short films, Control and Love Bites, at an event honoring URI’s alumni filmmakers. Serving as writer on all of her own projects, she also wrote the script for Scott Embleton’s Cowboy Connor, which recently screened at the New Bedford Film Festival. “I’ve been making films ever since I was very little,” says Collins, “I think my first movies were when I was four or five – the Transformers Happy Meal toys were my first actors. Then, you know, we eventually transitioned to the Muppet stuffed animals. And then, eventually getting a little riskier and adding real people too.”

Collins’ recent work is riskier and with real people. Control features an ensemble cast of interconnected paranoids whose lives converge at a movie theater (filmed at the now-shuttered CWTheaters that previously occupied the Lincoln Mall). Her other recent work, Love Bites, is a time-hopping romance that follows the strained affair between a vampire (Rhode Island native Molly Vasileva) and her familiar (recent Rhode Island transplant Talli Russell). The film’s explosive climax features dozens of local extras gathered in a nightclub, filmed at The Salon in Providence. “We have great locations in Rhode Island,” says Collins. “We’ve had convenience stores, we’ve done dungeons, we’ve done churches, we’ve done weddings, we’ve done nightclubs, we’ve done movie theaters, we’re about to do beaches (for her upcoming short film Ripples)… I mean, people come to Rhode Island for the sights.”

Alexander Pretorius, whose skills range from motion picture cinematography to event photography and everything in between, developed
his love for movies at what was then known as Patriot Cinemas in East Providence, later retitled East Providence 10 Cinema before its closure in 2020. “That was our primary place to watch movies, that little theater,” says Pretorius, “I remember when they closed. It was so sad. It’s not like it was a nice cinema, but it was still like a third space for some people.” Describing himself as a “very visual person,” he continued his love of the moving image at Pawtucket’s Jacqueline M. Walsh School for the Performing & Visual Arts, where he honed in on any type of image composition course they had, whether it was working with the local public access station or making public service announcement parodies with his classmates on the school’s mini DV (digital video) tape cameras.

Always looking for new techniques to learn and always diversifying the types of images he can make, Pretorius now works as manager of visual media at The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a non-profit summer camp in Eastford, CT, founded in 1988 by actor Paul Newman, to give children with serious illnesses an unforgettable residential summer camp experience. Pretorius has done videography work for the camp, which serves families across the Northeast, for years, but still pushes himself to learn new skills, such as formatting visual media not just for theater screens and televisions, but also phones and tablets.

Speaking to the multi-disciplinary and multi-media nature of this new generation of Rhode Island filmmakers, Elsa Kincaid recalls childhood movie experiences not from a theater, but DVDs. “We had like three DVDs,” says Kincaid. “And it was Mamma Mia, Newsies, and I think High School Musical 3. And so I watched them an absurd amount of times because that was what we had.” While her original dream was not to work in feature film but to make ski and snowboarding videos for Teton Gravity Research in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, her interest shifted to narrative pieces, studying cinematography at URI, and she was accepted post-graduation to the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (also known as FAMU). Upon returning to Rhode Island, and a summer living with her sister in New Orleans and networking with whomever she could, she connected with director Gwenn Hope, who was looking for someone to shoot her feature film debut, Daydream. Kincaid proved to be the perfect fit (she says Mamma Mia was a frequent common reference), and spent this past June shooting the film in Bristol. Daydream, which follows childhood friends as they grow up set against the backdrop of New England summers, is described by Hope and Kincaid as a film “made in Bristol for Bristol.” The production was made possible through support from Women in Film & Television New England and was the recipient of a tax credit through the Rhode Island Film & Television Office. The filmmakers hope to show it in the community when it’s finished in May of next year, giving all Rhode Islanders a good answer to the question “See any good movies recently?”