'Reparation' movie shot here to be shown at Indy Film Fest

Monday, July 11, 2016

"Reparation," a film shot entirely in Greencastle and other Putnam County locations in the summer of 2014, will be shown at the 13th annual Indy Film Fest July 14-24.

Directed by 1994 DePauw University graduate Kyle Ham and adapted from a play by DPU communication and theater professor Steve Timm, "Reparation" is scheduled to be shown at 9:15 p.m. July 18 and 12:45 p.m. July 21 at the Tobias Theater at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indianapolis.

"Reparation," Ham announced Monday, will also open at Ashley Square Cinema in Greencastle Sept. 4-8. Tickets go on sale at the box office on July 14.

Since embarking on the film festival circuit, "Reparation" has won a number of audience choice, screenplay and acting awards, including the Best Film Award at 2015 Santa Fe Film Festival.

The film also took honors for Audience Choice for Best Feature Drama at the Sedona International Film Festival; Best Screenplay, Breckenridge Film Festival; Audience Award Winner, Austin Film Festival; and Best Narrative Feature at both the River's Edge International Film Festival and the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival.

"Reparation" is listed among "10 must-see movies and events" at the 2016 Indy Film Fest in a recent Indianapolis Star article. by Danielle Grady.

"In the movie, Bob Stevens (Marc Menchaca whose credits include 'Homeland') is a veteran and farmer who can't remember three years of his life," Grady writes. "A stranger named Jerome (Jon Huertas a regular on the TV series 'Castle') shows up to Bob's house, claiming he knew Bob in the Air Force police. Meanwhile, clues to Bob's foggy past are appearing in his eight-year-old daughter, Charlotte's (Dale Dye Thomas), art work."

The news article opens by stating, "The 13th annual Indy Film Fest will include around 100 films -- a modest number when compared with the nearly 800 submissions the festival received."

"Reparation" is a film about a man who can't remember his past. But it also qualifies as a story about DePauw and about relationships that endure long after graduation and a community you never leave.

The initial attempt at turning Timm's play, "The Activist," into a film lasted more than a decade and ended tucked away on a shelf. Ham had seen the play as a student, and it stuck with him so much that almost as soon as he left DePauw to join the entertainment industry, he reached out to Timm, his former adviser, to ask for rights to the adaptation. Timm agreed, but only if he could help.

Their collaboration, known as "The Broken," started getting bites in Hollywood a few years later. But as more agents, directors and producers offered their two cents, the rewrites added up, changing the story into something slightly different each time. Those rewrites continued until 2006, when a producer friend convinced Ham and Timm it was time to move on.

"We were exhausted," Ham conceded.

Neither Ham nor Timm looked at it again until 2013. By then, Ham had many film and television credits to his name, but he'd never directed a feature. Looking for a project to make his debut, Ham dug out the old script he and Timm had left behind.

"For both of us, it was a heartbreak kind of thing," Ham said in a recent interview. "We had been so close to getting it packaged and sold in Hollywood for somebody else to make the movie, but nothing ever came of any of that work. Meanwhile, we felt we'd destroyed the story we wanted to make."

Remembering its potential, Ham once again contacted Timm. Determined to make the film they wanted, they stripped the screenplay of the extra weight it had accumulated from years of overdevelopment. With a fresh rewrite and a new name, "Reparation," Ham and Timm floated their resurrected project in Hollywood to gauge interest. The response was more positive than ever.

Encouraged, but working on a tight budget, Ham knew that to make the film a reality, it needed to come full circle -- back to Greencastle.

"To pull this off, I knew we would need a community of people who knew us and who believed in our work," Ham says.

And it was that community that participated in shooting scenes not only on the courthouse square during the farmers market but at a lawn and garden center on U.S. 36 near Bainbridge along with a number of rural and campus locations.

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  • The film REPARATION is also opening at ASHLEY SQUARE CINEMA in Greencastle September 4-8th!! Tickets go on sale at the box office on July 14th!!!

    -- Posted by kyleham on Mon, Jul 11, 2016, at 3:15 PM
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