Sun, Nov 5, 2023 | 3:00 pm

Movie Screening: A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.  (30 mins)
Talk back: with Karen Allen, including Q&A
Meet and Greet: with Karen Allen
During the Meet and Greet, producers will be available to discuss Karen’s next directing project, The Batting Cage, a drama/comedy set to shoot in 2024. Attendees who are interested in getting involved in The Batting Cage are encouraged to speak with the team during the meet and greet.

 

A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (2017)

Director: Karen Allen
Independent Short Narrative – Sandisfield, MA
Adapted by: Karen Allen
Based on the short story by: Carson McCullers
Producers: Diane Pearlman, Brian Long, Karen Allen
Cast: Jeffrey De Munn, James McMenamin, Jackson Smith

 

Based on the short story by groundbreaking southern American writer Carson McCullers, written when she was just 25, the film, “A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.”,  is set at a roadside café in the early morning in the Spring of 1947. A young boy and an older man meet by chance. The man relates a luminous tale of personal heartbreak and loss, and of his hard-won understanding of the nature of love. The film is the directorial debut of award-winning NY actor/director Karen Allen.

 

 

Note from the Director

“I came across this story when I was in my early 20’s. As a young actor I was drawn to Carson McCullers as a playwright and novelist at first, and then began to read everything she’d written that I could get my hands on. “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud” always loomed large for me among her many short stories, It is a quiet, subtle, mysterious story. It sneaks up on you and has stayed indelibly etched in my imagination all these years.  It is a delicate, Zen like passing of wisdom from a older man to a young boy on a rainy day in a roadside café when their two lives unexpectedly intersect. The story, as I see it, is flooded with the raw, tangible beauty of the natural world, set in contrast to the complex, intangible yearning for love in their interior worlds. I intend to stay very close to the story Carson McCullers wrote and to illuminate the characters she has so beautifully drawn in the pages of this story.”

Karen Allen
Director and Screen Writer