For the 17th annual Chesapeake Film Festival – opening Sept. 27 in Easton, preceded by a one-day mini-fest Sept. 12 in Chestertown – more than 200 films from five countries and 15 states were submitted of which 32 made the grade.
Among those that were accepted by the festival team is the opening day documentary at the Ebenezer Theater, “Call Me a Dancer,” highly recommended by the festival’s executive director Cid Collins Walker and by Martin Zell in his fourth and final year as CFF president. Co-directed by Pip Gilmour and producer Leslie Shampaigne, who will there in person for an audience Q&A after the noon showing of the film, it’s the story of Mannish, a young street dancer from Mumbai, who struggles with dreams of becoming a ballet star and his parents’ insistence that he follow the tradition in India that requires a son to support them in later life. Upon meeting an Israeli ballet master, Mannish is more determined than ever to follow his dream. But can it be realized against the odds?
Martin Zell
Zell, who himself was a documentary filmmaker and a producer of major national and international special events, will introduce the environmental documentary “Diary of an Elephant Orphan.” Baby Khanyisa, a three-month old albino calf caught in a wire snare and rescued with the hope of integrating her into a herd of mostly former orphans. “You will see elephants like you’ve never seen them before,” says Zell, who has explored many parts of Africa and Asia in his myriad travels to those continents. “Very inspiring,” he adds.
The world premiere of a film short of local and regional interest precedes the pachyderm documentary. “Chesapeake Rhythms,” written by Tom Horton and directed by Dave Harp celebrates the migration of native trumpet swans to Eastern Shore marshes.
A one-day mini Environmental Festival features six films on conservation efforts regarding the Chesapeake Bay and its thousands of miles of estuaries. It will be presented at the Garfield Center in Chestertown in two sessions, matinee and evening, on Sept. 12.
Aside from environmental and social issues that have long been a CFF focus, the arts get their due as well. “Jamie Wyeth and the Unflinching Eye” headlines the “Saturday Night & the Arts” program on Sept. 28. Directed by Glenn Holsten who will also stick around for a Q&A, Jamie is part of a three-generation dynasty of painters beginning with N.C. Wyeth and his son Andrew, who is Jamie’s dad. (“Wyeth,” a festival preview film also directed by Holsten, was shown in August at the Academy Art Museum.) Jamie is best known for his painting subjects, ranging from JFK to Rudolph Nureyev along with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Andy Warhol. But aside from these and other famous faces, he also directs his eye toward animals on his farm and the rocky islands of Maine.
When I asked Martin Zell in a Zoom interview if he and his wife Linda moved from D.C. to the Eastern Shore “after you retired,” he replied, “I don’t use the R word. We moved to the Eastern Shore” – more specifically to Sherwood – “the day after I stopped working.” Well, not to quarrel with such an accomplished man as Marty Zell, but it seems to me he hasn’t stopped working.
He found a niche when he first attended the Chesapeake Film Festival shortly after he moved. Soon he was volunteering. A few years later, he joined the board of directors and will “retire” – excuse me: “stop working” – as president of CFF in November after a four-year term. But in the interim it has become apparent that he is uniquely qualified for the role. Not that his successor will not be qualified in his or her own way. But Zell has seen and done it all when it comes to film and event production.
Right after college, graduating from Drake University in Iowa with a minor in film, he took a year off to travel. Now, just in the decade since he “stopped working,” he and Linda have traveled three months a year to an estimated 15 to 17 countries – mostly to remote villages and rural parts of two continents – Africa and Asia. “I have an affinity for other cultures,” he says.
Returning after that first year abroad, Zell took a job as cameraman for Iowa Public TV in Des Moines, which led to filming and later producing documentaries, several of which won awards and national attention on PBS stations across the country. Chief among them were “Don’t Forget the Khmer,” a documentary that arose from an Iowa fund-raiser to help refugees in Cambodia. It raised $300,000. Zell was assigned to find out how that money was spent. A significant portion went to sending nurses to refugee camps for desperate people who had probably never had proper health care. “They were so grateful,” Zell says, adding, “It fed my soul as well.”
“I would label him a humanist with great understanding for people,” says John White, then program director for IPTV. “This quality is evident in many of his nationally broadcast PBS documentaries.”
In 1987, Zell moved on to form his own company, Zell Productions International based in Washington, where he produced CINE Golden Eagles award-winning documentaries for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Forest Service. But in 2000, as funding for such projects was drying up, he “transitioned to another field” to become production manager for Hargrove Inc., which he calls “the big gorilla” in major special events. In 2008, he brought his talent and experience in producing films to such mega events as the 2008 Inauguration of President Barack Obama, staging and designing the decor and presentation of 55 to 60 events a day over the inaugural’s five days. Four years later, he was executing production plans for the DNC National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., and also in 2012, for the NATO Conference in Chicago.
“You do what you’ve done as a film producer,” Zell recalls, “applying the same sensibilities that it takes on making a documentary. You make all the contacts and create a budget, present your ideas to the director you’ve hired and go from there.”
So, yes, he was pretty much up to the job of producing the Chesapeake Film Festival. And after that’s over, he’ll take off for another three months to see the world as he and his wife prefer to see it – up close and personal with people who may or may not get noticed that much.
One thing he’s observed in his travels, Zell says, is that “most people love us. Forget the radicals or the dictators. In Morocco, Muslim people were reminding us that their country was the first to recognize the United States as a nation, back in 1787, when we were barely a country yet.”
Zell takes pictures by iPhone of these regular folks and their villages and environs on his travels. You can see them by the hundreds on his site: instagram.com/martin_zman): “The adventures of a curious shutterbug who lives on the Eastern Shore . . .”
Zell even teaches a Chesapeake Forum, Academy for Lifelong Learning class in “iPhone Photo Magic.” Check it out at chesapeakeforum.org
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