Hank Rogerson ’89 and Jilann Spitzmiller ’89 have been making films together since they met at Dartmouth over 30 years ago. Their newest documentary, “Still Dreaming” (2014) chronicles a group of elderly actors living at a home for retired Broadway performers who put on Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The film will screen at the Hopkins Center this Friday followed by a question and answer session with Rogerson and Spitzmiller.
What inspired you to direct and produce “Still Dreaming”?
HR: [Jilann and I] made a film that came out a few years ago that was called “Shakespeare Behind Bars” (2006), and that was about Shakespeare being done in a prison. As we were thinking about possible follow-ups to that idea, a funder actually said to us “what about Shakespeare being done at an old folks home?” That was an idea that really struck us as interesting and a comfortable follow-up to our other film. I think too that Jilann and I — we met at Dartmouth — we made films together at Dartmouth, and we have made films since Dartmouth, so we have been creative partners for over 25 years now, and we want to continue that into our middle age years and into our senior years. So I think we were also interested, perhaps rather selfishly, in what it’s like to be creative when you get older. This seemed like a good film to look at that question as a motivation for making the film.
How did you and Jilann meet at Dartmouth?
HR: We actually met during [Dartmouth Outing Club First-Year Trips]. We both chose canoe trips, but we were on different trips. We didn’t become romantically involved, as you might say, until after we graduated, but we were always friends and we collaborated on films together at Dartmouth. We met on freshman trips and were friends for all four years and then married after Dartmouth.
What kind of films did you make while you were at Dartmouth?
HR: I took filmmaking courses at Dartmouth and I made mostly fiction films. My senior year, I collaborated with Jilann and another classmate on a video yearbook, in which we documented the senior class all during senior year. In a sense, that was Jilann and I’s first documentary working together. So I did a little bit of fiction, and I did a little bit of nonfiction.
What draws you specifically to documentary filmmaking?
HR: I work in both fiction and nonfiction, but I think what interests me the most about documentary is the challenge of capturing the present reality of something and what that present reality says about that person [and] says about that time and place as it’s happening [and how the present reality] says something about humanity that we can all tap into and connect to. It’s an incredibly challenging medium to work in, because you are in the moment of now where you are trying to figure out what’s happening right here and what am I filming, but you are also thinking about what it means to the whole story, what it means down the line, what you have to follow up with, and its about being an observer and listening and showing up, and there is a lot of great life lessons with just that.
Why does a film like this appeal to a university audience?
HR: We’ve taken this film to universities before, and the response with those students have been engaged and they have been just as engaged as our best audience. People of all ages connect with their own elders through this film. To lean on a cliché, but old people are funny. They say hilarious things and they do very funny things and they are uncensored in a lot of ways. The film has a lot of humor, and the film has some heartbreak in it as well. A lot of people come away with something.
This article has been condensed and edited.
