STANSTEAD, QUE/ DERBY LINE, VT: The Haskell Opera House will be offering the film NORTHERN BORDERS on Saturday, July 13 (7:30p.m.). The film was written and directed by Jay Craven and based on the latest novel by Howard Frank Mosher, a nostalgic novel of life in northern Vermont’s Kingdom County, as told by a man remembering his boyhood depicts a touching and unforgettable portrait of a people and times that are now a part of our past. Mosher has written ten novels and is winner of many awards for his fiction. Three of his novels, Disappearances, A Stranger in the Kingdom and Where the Rivers Flow North, have been made into acclaimed feature movies by Vermont independent filmmaker Jay Craven.

NORTHERN BORDERS tells the story of ten year-old Austen Kittredge, who is sent by his father to live on his grandparents’ Vermont farm, where he experiences wild adventures and uncovers long-festering family secrets. Taking place in 1940’s and 1950’s, the story unfolds as the young boy discovers that the farm is soon becoming a magical place for Austen, with its own live elephant, a great snowy owl, and a "Green Mountain whale”, surrounded by eccentric people and his stubborn grandparents, whose thorny marriage is known as the Forty Years War. A humorous and sometimes startling story, Northern Borders evokes Vermont’s wildness, its sublime beauty, a haunted past, and an aura of enchantment. Escapades at the county fair, goings-on at the annual family reunion and Shakespeare performance, and conflicts at the one-room schoolhouse are all recounted lovingly in this enchanting coming-of-age story filled with shining memories and the deepest of childhood secrets, as a boy is molded into a man.

NORTHERN BORDERS had previously been in development by Academy Award-winning producer Jake Eberts (Ghandi, The Killing Fields, A River Runs Through It) for actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Mosher was delighted when his long-time Northeast Kingdom friend and colleague Jay Craven picked up the project. He had been very pleased with the work that Craven had done on earlier feature films based on his novels, coming up with a great screen play, a superb cast and crew, and exactly the right personal vision to transform his fiction to the big screen.

Jay Craven founded Catamounts Arts, a Vermont community arts organization in 1975, is known for making films in and about the people of Vermont and adapting the novels of Howard Frank Mosher to film. He also co-founded Circus Smirkus (1986-1988). //Cast members in this latest production include Bruce Dern, Geneviève Bujold, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, Jessica Hecht, John Shea, Jay O’ Sanders, Mark Margolis, John Rothman, Kaley Ronayne, Alicia Lyn Hunt. Craven has filmed Mosher novels such as “Where the Rivers Flow North” with Rip Torn and Michael J. Fox, “A Stranger in the Kingdom” with Martin Sheen and Ernie Hudson and “Disappearances” with Bujold and Kris Kristofferson (shown at the Haskell Opera House in 2006). 

The Haskell Opera House is located at 1 Church Street, Stanstead, Quebec/ Caswell Avenue in Derby Line, Vt., quite literally straddling the Canada/United States Border. For more info or to reserve tickets ($12), contact 802-873-3022 or 819-876-2471, ext.205