A warm welcome to "Wanda the Wonderful"

Filmmaker Carolyn Macartney continues the family theme of Skidmore’s inaugural Storytellers Institute with a film about her grandmother, known as “Wanda Savage.” Macartney will screen Wanda the Wonderful at 7 p.m. Friday, June 12, in Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. Macartney will engage in a Q&A conversation with Julie Casper Roth following the film.

Macartney never met her grandmother Wanda. Growing up, Macartney had heard bits and pieces about her, taboo subject though she was. Inspired by the intrigue and wild stories, Macartney wanted to know more. She wanted to find out who this mysterious woman Wanda really was. The film is the result of Macartney’s quest to bring to light the story and character of her amazing, adventurous, passionate and fallible, sharpshooting grandmother Wanda.  Through a mix narrative and documentary, Macartney has brought her grandmother’s story to life with interviews, archival photographs, and 16mm footage.

This is not the first family-oriented project for Macartney. She is also engaged in interviewing an aunt, Mary Jane Baker, who is a graduate of Skidmore's Class of 1948.

One of four fellows in Skidmore’s Storytellers Institute this summer, Macartney made her first film with a double 8mm film camera that she found in her granny's attic to accompany her original electronic music composition. She included in this film B&W still photographs that she printed out (by hand in the darkroom) and then animated.

The raw, provocative, fallible side of humanity is what interests her most. Macartney's films have won awards at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Onion City Film Festival, Houston Worldfest and other juried screenings and have enjoyed success in screenings and festivals around the world. She has 14 years of professional experience as a director of photography, having shot four feature-length narrative films as well as numerous music videos, commercials, short films and documentaries. Macartney's award-winning still photography has been published and exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. Among other honors, she has received an award for music composition, a DAAD scholarship to study painting at the Hochscule der Künste in Berlin, Germany, and a Kodak Faculty Scholars Award.

Macartney received a B.A. in art from Smith College and an M.F.A. in filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This summer at Skidmore she has shared her passion for documentary practice and her expertise in visual storytelling, pitching in on editing sessions, leading a master class on working with natural light, and introducing Storytelling Institute members to Nina Davenport’s lyrical and demanding view of India, “Hello Photo.”

Click here for more information on the John B. Moore Documenary Studies Collaborative at Skidmore College and the summer Storytellers Institute.