FRUITLANDS 1843- POETRY+FILM in celebration of Poetry Month with ArtWRKD at The Historic Newtown Theatre

POETRY+FILM in Newtown PA during April 2024, Poetry Month at

ArtWRKD

Join poet filmmaker Vasiliki Katsarou for this one-time only screening on Thursday,

April 25, 2024 at 7:30pm at the historic Newtown Theater, in downtown

Newtown PA. Introduction by local film professor emeritus Mark Bezanson, and

followed by a Q & A with the filmmaker. Tickets for this special event are $25.

FRUITLANDS 1843 was shot on 35mm film. It is the only 35mm film written and

directed by the New Jersey-based Greek American poet Vasiliki Katsarou. Katsarou is a

a Geraldine R. Dodge Festival Poet, who has worked in film production in France and

Greece, and recently embarked on a literary publishing venture, Solitude Hill Press.

FRUITLANDS 1843 features an array of highly respected Boston theater actors, and is

also the first 35mm film experience of the noted UK cinematographer Haris

Zambarloukos (Belfast, A Haunting in Venice, Mamma Mia! 2008). The original score

was composed by UK-based composer Richard Whalley. FRUITLANDS 1843 was

featured at the 22nd Independent Film Project and screened at the Angelika Film Center

in NYC, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Harvard Film Archive, and the Drama

Film Festival in Greece. Based on a true story, FRUITLANDS 1843 tells the story of the

short-lived utopian community founded by Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson Alcott

during the Transcendentalist period in Massachusetts. FRUITLANDS 1843 was called

"breathtaking" and "Bergman-esque" by The Boston Globe and The Boston Phoenix.

And the Cleveland Film Society wrote of the film: "Haunting, stark, and extremely subtle

and powerful. The artistic telling of a quiet and powerful silence."

To live for one’s principles, at all costs, is a dangerous speculation;

and the failure of an ideal, no matter how humane and noble,

is harder for the world to forgive and forget than bank robbery

or the grand swindles of corrupt politicians.

Louisa May Alcott,

writing about her father, Bronson Alcott,  one of the founders of the Fruitlands community