Project Description

Melissa Davenport

Film Still from Blueberryland

FSC-Harvard Fellow 2006-07, 2007-08

Melissa Davenport received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and is Events & Publications Manager of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. With the Film Study Center, she will be working on two projects: The Town Dock, an experimental documentary in post-production that captures the rhythm of summer and the residents of a small town, reflected in the microcosm of the public town dock, and The Deer, a film about the closed culture of hunting and storytelling in a small town.

FSC Works

The Town Dock

Melissa Davenport, 23 min. 2009

The Town Dock is an unvarnished look at rural childhood. The film documents young people in a small town as they congregate and interact with each other, and with those from the ‘outside.’ The narrative explores freedom and fear; while the framing and sound-scape describe the fine line that ethnography walks between intimacy and display, privacy and performance.

Real-time sequences and constructed narrative time interweave against the tranquil backdrop of the lake and the town dock.