If I'm being honest, I may have shed a tear or two while watching Joel Fendelman's North Putnam, a feature documentary having its Midwest premiere this week as part of the Academy Award-qualifying Heartland International Film Festival.
It wasn't so much the film, I suppose. It was the life I saw within the film.
I wasn't raised in the rural school district of North Putnam represented in the film, though my brother, who passed away a couple of years ago due to pancreatic cancer, was raised in the area and graduated from North Putnam High School.
My brother, Josh, never did much with that diploma. Truthfully, his far too short life was a series of "almosts," "not quites," and "maybe someday" moments that never really came to be. He was a good kid. And yeah, I still called him a kid even when he passed 40-years-old. Like me, he was an oddbal who never quite fit in. I figured out how to make that work for me. Josh never did.
He died that way.
North Putnam isn't about Josh, though in some ways it feels like it is. The film, a special initiative of Putnam County-based nonprofit The Castle, depicts a year in the life of a rural Indiana school district and the community it serves.
Fendelman, director of such films as Man on Fire and David among others, crafts North Putnam with an eye toward building bridges and valuing the humanity of this community that I've grown to love from a distance over the years having returned on occasion to speak in schools and meet with community leaders. As a longtime activist myself, I've wheeled the trails of Putnam County and I've gotten to know the community that is a rural town a stone's throw from Greencastle and nearby Depauw University.
North Putnam is a film with a mission, an aim to spark action-oriented conversations about the interdependent community tapestry of public schools, community development, and environments that empower, value, and encourage authenticity.
To say that I loved North Putnam is putting it mildly. While the film's personal relevance is undeniable, the truth is I believe that has very little to do with my passion for this empathetic and beautifully photographed film offers refreshing storytelling that values listening as much as talking, observing as much as directing. North Putnam never feels forced yet somehow leans into its vision of "action-oriented conversations." It doesn't feel like North Putnam sets out to inspire, though North Putnam does inspire and it'd be nearly impossible to not rush out of the movie theater and return to the community even more deeply committed to building more engaged, impactful communities and school systems.
More than once during North Putnam I thought about Josh, I cried, and I wondered why this lovely young man somehow got lost within the cracks of a rural life he never really understood and a world he was never really equipped to deal with effectively. I can't help but think that if The Castle had been around back in his high school days, things might've turned out differently.
And here I am crying again.
For me, a paraplegic and double amputee with spina bifida who has lived far longer than anyone expected, the right teacher and the right mentor came along moreso in my college years. Father Boniface Hardin, founder of Indy's Martin University, took my brokenness and helped me turn my life into an artistic statement. I can't help but think that's what North Putnam does - it doesn't turn a blind eye to the challenges of the community, however, neither does it glorify them. Instead, it paints a stunning portrait of the power of a community, its schools and its teachers and its leaders, to search deeper and create something marvelous and extraordinary and real.
Easily one of my favorite documentaries from the 2024 Heartland International Film Festival, North Putnam is screening on Friday, October 18th, at 7:45pm at Landmark Glendale 12 and on Sunday, October 20th, at 4:45pm at Noblesville's Emagine.
Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic
