LEWISTON — After spending the past few years making earnest and artful documentaries about life in Lewiston, filmmaker Craig Saddlemire has created a scripted, Web-based comedy on his Maple Street home.
“My So Called Housing Cooperative” is scheduled to premiere Monday on Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo.
“It’s a way for us to reflect and think about what we’re doing and laugh at ourselves,” Saddlemire said.
Each episode examines life in the housing cooperative he helped start in 2008.
At the time, it was the first in Maine. Members of the co-op share in the home’s expenses through the use of purchased shares, administered by an overarching nonprofit organization.
It could be dry stuff, but the first episode, “The New Member(s),” makes fun of some of the minutia of living cooperatively. It also warmly teases the personalities.
Saddlemire jokes about keeping minutes for co-op meetings, recalling rules for when the house needs to be notified about someone sleeping over and whether he can keep his bicycle in the stairwell.
Saddlemire, a Lewiston city councilor, also pokes fun at his own seriousness.
“There’s a lot of playfulness,” he said. It’s something that doesn’t seem to exist on the subject anywhere. “If you search ‘housing cooperative’ on YouTube, you’re most likely going to find lectures or PowerPoints.”
In all, Saddlemire plans to create six or seven episodes. The collection will serve as his final project toward his master of fine arts degree at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier.
He’s finishing the second episode, and he’s happy to show the public his creation. But his primary audience is made up of the people in his house and folks who are considering entering a cooperative.
“I hope it is able to spread a little bit in that world,” Saddlemire said. He imagines it building on word of mouth.
“I don’t have any benchmark I am trying to reach in terms of how many people view it or anything like that,” he said. “The ideal scenario is to make art at low to no cost and share it with the world.”
The series will be available at householdmovie.org/coop and www.facebook.com/socalledcoop.
dhartill@sunjournal.com
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- Lewiston filmmaker Craig Saddlemire will debut a Web series Monday. “My So-Called Housing Cooperative” is a fictionalized look at the home Saddlemire shares on Maple Street in Lewiston. It will be shown on Facebook, Vimeo and YouTube.
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