The College of Arts and Sciences is pleased to announce that award-winning director Jay Craven will be the Commencement speaker at the 2:00 PM ceremony on May 18th. Craven's narrative films include High Water (1989 w/ Greg Germann, Jane MacFie, Dennis Mientka); Where the Rivers Flow North (1993, w/ Rip Torn, Tantoo Cardinal, Michael J. Fox, Treat Williams); A Stranger in the Kingdom (1997, w/ Ernie Hudson, David Lansbury, Martin Sheen); In Jest (1999 w/ Bill Raymond, Rusty DeWees, Tantoo Cardinal); The Year That Trembled (2003, w/ Fred Willard, Marin Hinkle, Jonathan Brandis, Martin Mull), and Disappearances (2006 w/ Kris Kristofferson, Genevieve Bujold, Gary Farmer, Charlie McDermott, Lothaire Bluteau).
Craven directed, produced, and co-wrote the 2005 Emmy Award-winning public television comedy series, Windy Acres (2004 w/ Rusty DeWees, Bill Raymond, Seana Kofoed). His documentaries include After the Fog: Interviews with Combat Veterans (2006), Dawn of the People (1984), and Gayleen (1985).
Craven's films have played 345 U.S. cities and towns; 52 countries; and more than sixty international film festivals, including Sundance, Seattle, South By Southwest, Vienna, Vancouver, Nantucket, Avignon, Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Havana, Savannah, and the American Film Institute's AFI Fest. Also, his work has appeared on television broadcasts on the Disney Channel, Sundance Channel, Starz, Encore, PBS affiliates in eleven states, and has been syndicated to more than 150 commercial U.S. TV stations.
A tenured professor of film studies at Marlboro College since 1998, Craven graduated from the Hill School and attended Boston University's School of Liberal Arts (student body president-1970-71), the School of Visual Arts, and Goddard College, from which he holds an MA.
Craven also founded and directed Catamount Arts (1975-91) in St. Johnsbury and directed its wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary film and performing arts producing, presenting, and educational program. Catamount began in 1975 as a four-night-a-week traveling 16mm film series to small rural towns. By 1984, its program included nightly 35mm film screenings and 60 annual world-class music, theatre, and dance events. Artists presented included Merce Cunningham Dance Theater, Feld Ballet, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Miriam Makeba, Guthrie Theater, Miles Davis, Spalding Gray, Flying Karamozovs, Kodo Drummers, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Stephane Grappelli, Mummenschanz, American Repertory Theater, and many others.
At Catamount, Craven supported a program for older indigenous Vermont visual artists (the GRACE project) and renovated St. Johnsbury's former Post Office into the Catamount Arts Center (offices, workshop spaces, gallery, and 120-seat 35mm theater). At Catamount, Craven also co-founded and produced (1986-89) the Circus Smirkus, a professional circus arts training and performance program for youngsters aged 10-18.
Craven has consulted extensively on arts management issues for the New York State Council on the Arts, Burlington City Arts and more than thirty non-profit arts organizations and has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Bush Foundation, the Vermont Council on the Arts and others. He is a regular commentator for Vermont Public Radio and writes a regular arts and media column for the Burlington Free Press and St. Johnsbury's Caledonian Record.
