Festival screens student film

It started with a violin. From there, “Nathan and the Luthier,” the coming-of-age story written and directed by recent IU graduate Jacob Sherry, evolved from an idea into a Heartland Film Festival-worthy production.

“(The violin) was something I was familiar with,” Sherry said. “I knew I wanted to write a coming-of-age story but from the point of view of someone who was repairing a violin.”

While Sherry admitted he never played the violin, he said his sister played the instrument while he was growing up, and music has been a part of his life for years.

Sherry played the piano when he was younger and, because of his sister and friends’ playing, has been in and out of violin repair shops throughout his life.

Co-producer Jon Stante explained that the violin had a subliminal meaning apart from it’s instrumental use. He said the instrument served as a representation of the broken father-son relationship between the main character of the film, Nathan, and his deceased father.

Nathan, a man in his 30s, lives a lost life in the film. His mother and father are
estranged at the beginning of the story. Then, he receives an unexpected call from his mother. She tells him his father has just passed away and asks him to come home.

From this point, the film shows Nathan rebuilding relationships at home ­— with his mother, Melissa, and with his father, through the repair of a broken and long-forgotten but cherished violin.

“I used rebuilding a violin as a metaphor for getting over something or growing,” Sherry said.

The film, which premiered at the IU Cinema in April 2011, will next be screened at the Heartland Film Festival, a 10-day celebration of independent films.

The role of Nathan is played by Jeffrey Grafton, a 2008 graduate from the IU department of theater & drama master’s program.

“There’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that it was sort of worth having stood in an open field for hours with a wind chill factor of 10 degrees below zero,” Grafton said of the filming process.

Sherry said the film took approximately one academic year to make.

“I think that a film’s life begins once it is made,” Sherry said.

Sherry said once the film’s concept was conceived, he faced the challenge of making it reality. He added that the production and post-production are essential to the life of the film, from finding actors to bring characters to life to getting the film screened to having the production distributed.

“You have to just desperately need to tell the story,” Sherry said. “It’s exhausting, and you have to somehow build and keep momentum going. You have to find a story to tell that’s really, really important to you.”

According to Stante, the film took around five weeks to produce with approximately 280-300 hours of production work.

“We shot straight, every single day, for the first week of January and heavy weekends after that,” Stante said.

Exhausting as it was to make, the cast and crew of the film said they hope everyone can relate to the characters of the film in some way. The messages of the film resonated especially deeply with some members of the cast.

“Losing my own dad was a bit surreal — fully experiencing the stages of grief, employing unhealthy coping mechanisms, fighting with my brother on the front lawn the day of the funeral,” Grafton said of his own experience.

“Human beings can’t predict how they will react to profound loss. When I read the script, I maintained that whether or not Nathan admits it to himself, his dad, despite his flaws, genuinely loved him.”

Whether viewers relate to the film on this personal level or not, Sherry said the messages in the plot are particularly relevant to young adults.

“I think almost everyone can relate to the main character,” Sherry said. “Almost everyone feels lost and will ask, ‘Who am I?,’ especially young people who are trying to find their purpose and who are still soul searching.”

Sherry anticipates continuing to direct films that will have an impact on people’s lives. Currently he is working on an independent film production company, Colorblind Pictures.

Colorblind Pictures is currently in the process of producing a documentary in India. The film will be a rickshaw voyage to find the happiest person in the country.

Sherry said he hopes seeing how people live through this film will provide a substantial message for his viewers.

“Don’t be afraid to ask for anything,” Sherry advised aspiring filmmakers. “Something that I really experienced through this was the fact that it’s amazing what people will give you when you ask. It’s amazing what doors will open.”