Films
Wunderkind Carson McCullers
a film by Claudia Müller
This first-ever documentary film about Carson McCullers was directed by award-winning filmmaker Claudia Müller and co-produced by Phlox-Films/ ARTE/ SR/ SRF and Columbus State University’s Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians. With a runtime of 53 minutes, Wunderkind presents excerpts from Carson McCullers’s most important works and traces her short and dazzling life. The film’s numerous interviews provide insight and analysis of both. Interviewees for the film include the singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, who has been involved with McCullers since her youth and has not only written songs but also a stage play about the writer’s life. Film critic Rex Reed, one of the few surviving contemporary witnesses, and who, as a journalist, conducted one of the last interviews of Carson McCullers, describes his encounters with the writer he considered to be one of the most important artists of her time. Other interviewees include McCullers Scholar, founding McCullers Center director, and editor of both volumes of the Library of America’s Complete Works of Carson McCullers as well as the forthcoming Collected Letters of Carson McCullers, Dr. Carlos Dews; the writer of the most recent biography of McCullers, Mary Dearborn; writer and gay-rights activist Sarah Schulman; writer for the television series Dear White People, Julia, and Reasonable Doubt, Natalia Temesgen; and current McCullers Center director, Nick Norwood. The film also includes many scenes from locations important to McCullers’s life, including her hometown of Columbus, Georgia, the town she lived in for the last twenty years of her life, Nyack, New York, and both Brooklyn and Manhattan.
The film “Wunderkind Carson McCullers” can be seen on ARTE TV under the title “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - The Writer Carson McCullers”.
Watch Wunderkind Carson McCullers Documentary
A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.
About the Film
Karen Allen (Director & Screenwriter)
A short-film adaptation of Carson McCullers’s most famous short story of the same name, “A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.” presents a cinematically gorgeous dramatization of this profound and memorable narrative. Known for her work as an award winning actor in over forty feature films (Animal House, A Small Circle of Friends, The Wanderers, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Starman, Scrooged, The Glass Menagerie, Malcolm X, The Perfect Storm, The Sandlot, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, White Irish Drinkers, and Bad Hurt) and on and off Broadway (A Summer Day, Speaking in Tongues, The Monday After the Miracle, Extremities, The Country Girla), Karen Allen began directing theatre at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and continued her work as a director at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, MA (Moonchildren, Extremitiesa) and in NYC with the Obie winning production of Lucy Thurber’s Ashville at the Cherry Lane theatre. Her adaptation of McCullers’s “A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.,” for which she wrote the screenplay, represents her debut film as a director. Winner of the International Short Narrative Film competition at the Manchester (UK) Film Festival, finalist in the USA Film Festival, and a featured selection of the Berkshire Film Festival, Karen’s film stars Jeffrey DeMunn, James McMenamin, and—introducing—Jackson Smith.
Cast
Carson McCullers (Author)
Born in Columbus, Georgia, Carson McCullers was a prolific American writer of novels, short stories, essays, plays, and poetry. McCullers examined the psychology of lonely, isolated people, which she depicted through her eccentric characters and interpreted with deep empathy. She is best known for her novels, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), which she wrote at the age of twenty-two, Reflections in a Golden Eye (1942), and for her play, A Member of the Wedding (1952). Her novel, The Ballad of a Sad Café (1951), was adapted for the stage by playwright Edward Albee. Four of her novels and plays have been made into feature films. She died in Nyack, New York, in 1967, at the age of 50.
Jeffrey DeMunn (Actor)
Jeffrey DeMunn is a film, television and stage actor. His film credits include: The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Mist, The Majestic, The Blob, The X-Files: Fight the Future, Hollywoodland, Burn after Reading, Citizen X, Barbarians at the Gate, and Empire Falls. TV: Billions, The Walking Dead, Divorce, The Affair, Mob City, The Good Wife, Storm of the Century, Kojak: The Price of Justice, Moonlighting, LA Law, The West Wing, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, E.R., The Practice, Trial by Jury, and Hill Street Blues. Theater: Death of a Salesman, Our Town, The Price, Hedda Gabler, Spoils of War, Sleight of Hand, K2, Bent, Comedians, Modigliani, King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
James McMenamin (Actor)
James McMenamin is best known for his portrayal of Charlie "Donuts" Coates on the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. Other recurring television credits include TNT's Public Morals, Showtimes' Nurse Jackie, and HBO's Olive Kitteridge. He's appeared as a guest star on Person of Interest, Inside Amy Schumer, The Good Wife, and many others. He recently appeared in the feature films In Dubious Battle, The Long Home, and Blood Heist. He has worked extensively in theatre and made his Broadway debut in the 2014 production of Of Mice and Men. He has previously worked on stage with director Karen Allen in Extremities at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, and in Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre's production Ashville.
Jackson Smith (Actor)
Jackson Smith (the Boy) resides in Western Massachusetts, not far from where A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud. was filmed. The is his first experience acting in a film. Jackson loves music. He plays the piano and trombone, and spends his time creating short pieces on Garage Band. He is an avid baseball player and fan of the sport. He does parkour, and he is presently performing card tricks for anyone who will be his audience. He studies film with Douglas Trumbull; writing, directing and editing his own home movies.