A new documentary, featuring four Mainers and their connection to the 2024 total solar eclipse, will premiere on Friday at the Maine International Film Festival in Waterville.
“A Moment in the Sun,” a feature documentary film by New York and Australian filmmakers, explores how a rural community of 6,000 pulled together to welcome nearly 30,000 eclipse chasers, scientists and tourists from around the world.
“We were drawn to this story not just because of the eclipse,” says New York City-based co-director Mia Weinberger, “but because of the people we met while we were up there.”
For the 78-minute film, shot all on location in Aroostook County, Weinberger and co-director Tom van Kalken shadowed several local people in the months leading up to the once-in-a-lifetime event.
As the time grew closer, they focused their lens on a few people: a local astronomer who shared his first eclipse with his late husband in 1997, a civic planner who had been preparing for the eclipse for almost three years, a freshly minted entrepreneur with 800 eclipse-themed T-shirts to sell and a couple who got married right at the moment of totality.
Houlton gained instant global notoriety as the last U.S. stop along the sun’s path of totality and the place forecasters predicted to be one of the best clear-sky viewing locations.
Van Kalken said the film at its core is really about the human stories that take place all around us all the time.
“There’s something incredibly moving about watching a small town of a few thousand people rise to meet the moment and welcome tens of thousands of strangers,” he said.
The Houlton-based feature-length documentary began a bit by chance when the New York filmmakers started thinking about viewing the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024.
As they explored the swath of American towns cast into total darkness by the moon’s shadow, the filmmaking duo decided to tell the story of Houlton and the eclipse.
“I was watching a video of a Houlton eclipse planning public forum and I was like, ‘I love this town, I love these people and it’s so interesting and cool that it’s the last place to see the eclipse in the country,’” Weinberger said.
And from their first visit to the southeastern Aroostook County town, local Mainers shared their lives, homes and home-cooked meals with the filmmakers.
“We’ve had more home cooked dinners since we came to Houlton than we have ever had in New York,” they said while on location last April. “This has turned into a much more personal project because we really connected with the people of Houlton. We really feel this responsibility to tell a good story on behalf of these people.”
Both filmmakers have released award winning films, including Weinberger’s “The Last Hurrah, and van Kalken’s “The Salt of the Earth.”
Weinberger started her film career in comedy, eventually moving into more narrative work. And van Kalken was a writer and producer of a kids science show. They are life partners and this is the first film they directed together.
“If you just drove through town you would think it was like any small town in America,” van Kalken said. “But if you stop and meet the people and get to know them, there’s a lot of layers to it and that’s what we’re trying to get across.”
The world premiere of “A Moment in the Sun” is Friday, July 19 at Paul J. Schupf Art Center, 93 Main St., Waterville. There will be an encore screening on Saturday, July 20 at Waterville Opera House, 1 Common St.
Additionally, the Portland premiere of the film at the Maine Outdoor Film Festival is Thursday, July 25 at Maine College of Art & Design: Osher Hall, 522 Congress St., Portland.
The film is slated for a Houlton showing at the Temple Theater in September.
