Fairfield filmmaker to screen debut feature July 9

FAIRFIELD — A Fairfield native has completed her first feature-length film, and locals will be able to see it during two showings at the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center on Saturday, July 9.

Alana Waksman is a 2004 graduate of Maharishi School in Fairfield, where she once led the school’s speech team. She is now a writer, producer and director, and just last year debuted her first film called “We Burn Like This.” The movie has been shown at film festivals in Iowa such as in Dubuque and Des Moines, across the country in places like Santa Barbara, California, where it made its debut, and even internationally at places such as the Deauville American Film Festival in Deauville, France.

The film will be shown at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. July 9 at the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center. Waksman will be in town for the screenings, and will answer questions from the audience after both showings.

Waksman said the film is inspired by true events, both in her own family history and by events that have occurred recently in Montana, where the film is set. The movie is about a 22-year-old woman named Rae (played by Madeleine Coghlan), a descendant of Holocaust survivors who is targeted by neo-Nazis in Billings, Montana. It also stars Indie Spirit Award winner Devery Jacobs.

“This coming-of-age story shows the inherited effects of historical trauma and the strength of survival and healing,” states a news release about the film.

“We Burn Like This” has screened at 25 film festivals and has received seven awards, including one to Waksman for Best Director at the Phoenix Film Festival.

Waksman said she felt strongly about bringing the film to her hometown, since Fairfield residents played an important role in financially supporting the film beginning in 2016. That year, she showed a fundraising video at the Fairfield arts center and at Central Park Home Furnishings and Futon Shop in downtown Fairfield.

“Funding for this film has come from grants and donations we’ve received, such as people in Billings donating hotel rooms and food,” Waksman said. “That’s what has allowed us to make a low-budget indie feature film happen. People have complimented the film by saying it doesn’t look low-budget, and we were only able to achieve that because communities like Fairfield got behind us early.”

Waksman said she initially set out to make a movie about the Native American community in Montana, and was going to call it “Cheyenne Is Burning.” She made a five-minute version of the film as a graduate student at the University of Southern California. At the time, she had never even stepped foot in Montana.

“I had a cousin in Montana, and I had ideas of what Montana would be like with these wide-open spaces,” she said.

Waksman decided that if she was going to write a feature film set in Montana, she should visit the state. She thought she would live there for a year before moving back to Los Angeles. She ended up staying in Montana for six years. While living in the city of Missoula, Waksman worked on this feature film and found other odd jobs such as working at a theater in Missoula and working for an indie filmmaker named Andrew Smith.

After a few years of writing and rewriting the script and meeting people on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, Waksman realized that the story would be better told from a more personal perspective, and that’s why she changed it to revolve around the Jewish community and the threats they faced in Montana.

Waksman’s paternal grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust, and her father, Sol, was born in a refugee camp shortly after the war in Germany. When he was 2 years old, he and his parents immigrated to Brooklyn.

“For many families who have been through a horrific event, they don’t want to talk about it,” Waksman said. “My dad’s parents didn’t talk about what they went through. Most families just want to move on and forget about it because it was horrible.”

By 2016, Waksman had decided to adapt the film to a Jewish story, and that’s when Montana experienced an uptick in anti-Semitic acts such as neo-Nazi fliers left outside the synagogue in Missoula and on the doors of Jewish homes.

“neo-Nazi graffiti was showing up in Missoula and other towns in Montana,” recalled Waksman. “That was the first time I had experienced anti-Semitism so close to me. That helped me to feel that it mattered to tell a Jewish story and be a visible Jewish filmmaker.”

Waksman’s partner Marshall Granger, who is the producer and editor of the film, is also Jewish and grew up in Billings.

“He grew up being bullied for being Jewish,” Waksman said.

Waksman’s film is the culmination of her nearly three decades in theater, beginning in second grade when she performed in her first play. She was involved in Maharishi School’s speech program under the direction of Rodney Franz. During his tenure, Maharishi School’s speech team became well known throughout the state and consistently won awards at the All-State contests. Waksman realized that theater was the thing she loved most of all, and that’s what she majored in when she attended Connecticut College.

A year after college, Waksman moved back to Fairfield and ran the speech program at Maharishi School for one year.

“It was exciting to come back give and students a piece of what I had gained from the program, since it had shaped the course of my life up until then,” Waksman said.

Waksman said she is looking forward to connecting with old friends when she returns to Fairfield for the showings on July 9. Ticketing information for the shows can be found at: https://fairfieldacc.com/shows-events/

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com