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Touching “Randy’s Canvas” to Premiere in September September 18 will see the release of a touching Rhode Island film, Randy’s Canvas. Adam Carbone stars as a young man with autism, facing new dynamics in his personal life. Carbone relayed the genus of the idea and the film’s arduous road to production. With a cast of more than 50, the film allows audiences to peer into this unique landscape. Carbone explains the origin of Randy’s Canvas. “The concept of Randy’s Canvas was created by director Sean Michael Beyer over 10 years ago. Sean brought on writers Matthew Andrews and Kevin G. Schmidt to co-write and really helped make it what it is today. After working with Sean on many other projects, he cast me as Randy against all odds; because he knew I was right for the part. We also ended up shooting it in Rhode Island, which was amazing for the film. (The state) became a character.” Now using a character’s diagnosis – especially one that is (it hurts to say this, but…) “trendy” — currently, a cause celebre — can become a crutch. The misunderstood disease could easily be a tool to manipulate audience’s sympathies. Beyer and Carbone saw these trappings and decided to roll that into the character. Carbone agrees. “The film is really about an aspiring artist who is trying to find his place in the subjective world of art while falling for a taken girl at the same time. The fact that he has autism is almost a side note. (The film) is about an artist who happens to have autism.” Approaching this role was a delicate trek for Carbone. He had to open himself to new experiences and visualize through a unique lens that most people do not consider. “Me being able to play Randy was such a humbling and eye opening experience. Before this movie came around, I really wasn’t too versed about the spectrum or the people on it, aside from a couple of friends. I did a whole lot of research and studying with the wonderful people at the Autism Project to help figure out what makes Randy tick.” Those unfamiliar with autism may have a myopic view of autistic behaviors. This makes any writer or actor subject to a labyrinth of tropes and stereotypes. Carbone continued, “I think the most challenging thing was keeping Randy on track to being likable. It was a fine line of him having outbursts and being sometimes selfish, because he has autism, and coming across not likable. I do believe we stayed on track based on the overwhelmingly positive reaction we got for the movie and Randy so far.” Having shot 18 days in July and August of 2016, the following two years were meticulous and thorough exercises in post-production. Before seeking distribution, Carbone recalls, “Countless flights back and forth to LA for editing, sound designer studios, color correction, music placement, ADR and lots of TLC. I’m very picky with my edits, so I made sure that I sat next to all the different editors to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks.” After the pre-release screening on August 24 at The Greenwich Odeum, the world will be able to view and ingest the particulars and journey of Randy as he copes with the trials of what every human explores. People have seen it, and Carbone is elated by the response. “The feedback has been nothing but stellar. We’ve had two screenings now and each one we’ve sold out and received standing ovations. We got accepted in to The Autism Society’s Film Festival: Autfest. We were sharing the night with the cast of “The Good Doctor” and “Atypical,” and to our surprise, we won best picture and I won best actor. Such an honor.” Tre Maison Dasan: Three Boys Grow Up with Parents in Prison Rhode Island filmmaker Denali Tiller directed a documentary named after three boys: Tre, Maison, Dasan. At the start of the film they are 13, 11, and 6 years old, and each has a parent (two fathers and one mother) incarcerated in the state prison, the Adult Correctional Institution in Cranston. The film is scheduled to make its Rhode Island premiere at the RI International Film Festival at 12:15pm on Saturday, August 11, at the Metcalf Auditorium in the RISD Museum. The boys in the film are expected to be at the screening, she said. Documentary subjects Tre, Maison, and Dasan with director Denali Tiller. Tiller attended RISD where she now teaches as adjunct faculty. “I went to RISD for undergraduate and the film started as my senior thesis project there. I met a woman who is from Michigan and was incarcerated for 17 years in Michigan. She had two kids when she went in who were 6 and 8, and 23 and 25 when she came home, so she started a program when she got out looking into the stages of grief and trauma that children go through when a parent goes to prison. I met her, we became friends, and then I was really interested in her life story and her program that’s implemented in the Rhode Island Department of Corrections now, so I was going to the visiting hours and meeting these kids. As I got to know them, the film really shifted to be from their perspective in looking at the effects of incarceration on children,” Tiller said. “It’s a film about relationships, the importance of parenthood and that people can be excellent, amazing parents despite their incarceration or circumstances. We’re developing an extensive outreach and impact campaign with the film that has its own screening schedule with communities and institutions. As we’ve been traveling to film festivals, we try and connect with local community groups or prisons. When we were in San Francisco, we went to San Quentin Prison and showed the film there as well as the juvenile detention center and the public defenders office. San Quentin was amazing: they have a newspaper they publish out of the prison and they wrote an article about the film and the inmates’ response to it, which is also on our web site. Those are the communities and people we made the film for and are trying to connect with,” Tiller said. She has been working on the film for four years, beginning in 2014 and completing it in January 2018. It premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April and since has been screened a few times at festivals in Boston and elsewhere. It’s her first feature-length film, although it derived from a short film that she was able to use for fundraising and support. The reception has “been amazing, from a lot of different angles. We’ve had some fantastic reviews that are on our web site. People respond to it very powerfully because it’s not a ‘talking heads’ documentary and there’s not a specific call to action: you’re just led through these three boys’ lives as they’re growing up, so it’s an experiential, emotional film,” Tiller said. “The main core team is three people: me, producer Rebecca Stern, and executive producer Andrew Freiband. But the list of support is long,” Tiller said. “The on-the-ground production crew was really small. It was usually just me and my cinematographer, Jon Gourlay.” The budget was a little less than a half-million dollars. “A significant part of the budget goes into the post-production and also includes some of our distribution and outreach funding as well.” Current distribution plans, she said, are exploring both traditional film channels and possible television. She hopes to use the film in support of social workers, educators, and others who serve the communities depicted, making it available in K-12 schools and colleges. “My biggest hope for the film is that it can build a larger conversation around the impact of incarceration on families and, specifically, children. The people left behind have a lot of stigma surrounding children who have parents in prison,” Tiller said. She sees a nexus between the recently publicized separation of immigrant children. “It’s horrible what’s happening at the border, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that we’re separating children from their families every single day in this country, and that’s not just for violent offenders: that’s for people that can’t pay bail, people that were caught with a little marijuana. This has been happening in this country forever, but significantly over the past 30 or 40 years,” Tiller said. “When a parent goes to prison, a lot of times children are left in foster care, they’re left with grandparents, they’re put into the system themselves. It’s really no different in a lot of ways.” Credit screen: “a film by” from Tre Maison Dasan Currently, “We’re all still very close. I’m in close contact with the boys,” Tiller said. “The film is actually titled at the beginning as ‘a film by’ Tre, Maison, Dasan, and me. It was important for me to have the film be a collaboration with them, so there’s music in the film that they created, particularly Tre so his music is throughout the film. My interactions with them, especially at the beginning, were, ‘You take the camera, you play with the equipment, film what you want me to see about your lives,’” Tiller said. “The boys also own 10% of the film… It was important that they maintain ownership over their own stories, over their own lives, and therefore over the film.” Website: tremaisondasan.com RIIFF: film-festival.org ; schedule: prog.tsharp.xyz/en/riiff/36/film/2479/TRE%20MAISON%20DASAN IMDB: imdb.com/title/tt8283704 Trailer: youtube.com/watch?v=uWCr1j7IYxI His Pen Is Smitier Than the Sword Mr.

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