DURHAM
Use every line of the poem. Speak only when its characters speak. Say nothing else.

It seems like a rigid set of rules for a movie.

Maybe not, said Geoffrey Leighton, editor and director of photography for “Cleophas and His Own,” a small art film whose production is planned this summer in rural Maine.

The film will be based on the poem of the same name, written in 1941 by a Lewiston native, artist Marsden Hartley.

As planned by Leighton and his collaborator, director and star, Michael Maglaras, the film will follow the poem word for word. However, those words must be accompanied by images.

“We can do almost anything,” Leighton said. He and Maglaras plan a dreamy, sometimes tragic film.

Written in the final years of Hartley’s life, it tells the story of a small fishing family and their grief when two brothers drown in a storm.

A family tragedy

It is a true story. In the late 1930s, Hartley spent summers with a fishing family on a Nova Scotia island. He grew to love the family, Francis and Martha Mason, and became infatuated with one of their sons, Alty.

But in 1937, Alty, his brother, Donny, and a cousin drowned when a hurricane struck. The tragedy forever darkened Hartley’s work. His writing became preoccupied with death and his paintings, for which Hartley is chiefly known, grew somber.

“It changed his whole life,” said Maglaras, who first read “Cleophas and His Own” less than two years ago.

Much of the poem captures Hartley’s grief. It does something else, though, said Maglaras.

“It tells me that greatness is really around us all the time,” he said.

It’s an idea which Maglaras has been trying to communicate since his first reading.

A former opera singer, Maglaras so loved the poem that he recorded it on a CD, which he released on his own label, 217 Records. Shortly after, the self-described film fanatic decided to translate the story to the screen.

“I’ve never been more committed to a project in my life,” said Maglaras, who will be directing for the first time. The 54-year-old actor is also portraying Hartley. The story will be set primarily in August 1943, just weeks before Hartley’s death.

Flashbacks and images of Hartley’s paintings will illustrate, intercut with austere black-and-white film. Meanwhile, Maglaras will provide the voice-over narration, again reading the complete text of Hartley’s poem.

‘Larger-than-life’

“It recites itself,” he said. “It films itself, too. You have to let the text direct.”

Leighton, who runs his own production company in a farmhouse loft in Durham, has joined the charismatic ex-singer.

“Michael is a larger-than-life kind of figure,” Leighton said. He sweeps people along with his enthusiasm and is a generous collaborator, he said.

Leighton hopes to sell the finished film to a cable network such as Bravo or to PBS. His company, Leighton Images, will perform much of the technical work on the film at its Durham studio.

A Waterville native, Leighton came here seven years ago from Los Angeles, bringing with him accounts from major hotel chains, including Hilton. Locally, he has made commercials for Central Maine Medical Center and has documented Maine’s laptop program for Apple Computers.

“We found that with the nature of photography, we could do it all here,” Leighton said. “It’s not like we get walk-in business.”

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