Jay Craven has wanted to make a movie about Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen ever since moving to Vermont in 1974 to start a 50-year career turning regional stories into cinema.
The Northeast Kingdom filmmaker then learned about Lucy Terry Prince, a once enslaved African woman turned Green Mountain State resident who scholars consider to be the nation’s first known Black poet.
“It occurred to me that she existed at exactly the same moment as Ethan Allen,” Craven said in a recent interview, “and in some ways, her theme of freedom is the same.”
Researching timelines, Craven discovered that Allen once stormed a Guilford tavern a quarter mile from Prince’s home.
“With guns blasting and troops coming in,” the director said, “why wouldn’t she have been aware of this?”
Could the two, he wondered, have crossed paths?
So proposes Craven’s latest work, “Lost Nation,” set to premiere this week and travel to more than 50 Vermont communities over the next year.
“We took what we learned from historical research to build a sometimes surprising story,” he said.
The movie stars Irish actor Kevin Ryan as Allen, who organized the Green Mountain Boys militia in 1770; helped capture the British fort at Ticonderoga, New York, in 1775; and lobbied Congress for Vermont’s eventual statehood in 1791.
The film also features Kenyan actor Eva Ndachi as Prince, who was abducted as a child by slave traders in Africa, brought to New England and eventually freed upon her marriage to Abijah Prince, with whom she settled in Guilford and later Sunderland.
Prince’s poem “Bars Fight” — a record of what she witnessed during a raid in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1746 — was passed on by word of mouth for more than 100 years before its publication. Scholars now consider it to be the first such work composed by an African American woman.
Prince, like Allen, championed the cause of liberty. Threatened by a neighbor, she spoke out at a 1785 meeting with then-Gov. Thomas Chittenden and aides that included Allen’s younger brother and fellow revolutionary, Ira.
“There’s a link between what Lucy and the Allens were doing,” Craven said. “I thought, ‘Why not connect those stories?’”
Craven has exhibited similar creativity as a founder of Catamount Arts and Kingdom County Productions, the latter through which he has made such movies as 1993’s “Where the Rivers Flow North,” 2006’s “Disappearances” and 2013’s “Northern Borders.”
That said, “Lost Nation” came with unique challenges. The script features more than 40 roles (including those of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton) and some 50 filming locations throughout New England.
Financing the $2.2 million budget, for its part, required everything from a $100,000 online fundraising campaign to a $350,000 Massachusetts state incentive for filming there (Vermont offers no similar subsidies) to a 2022 benefit concert by singer-songwriter Jackson Browne.
“Lost Nation” is set to premiere in Brattleboro on Wednesday and Thursday, then continue on to Burlington on Friday and Saturday, Montpelier on July 16-18, and other Vermont communities over the next year.
Craven hopes its cinematic take will inspire viewers to rethink history.
“Combining the stories allows us to reexamine Ethan Allen and put Lucy Terry Prince on the footing I think she deserves,” he said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Did Ethan Allen cross paths with the nation’s first known Black poet? Jay Craven has reason to think so..