Martin Lederle-Ensign is an 18-year-old musician and filmmaker who is taking a gap-year before beginning college at the University of Mary Washington in 2013. He’s using the year to make Crooked.
David Ensign has not been 18 since 1978. He is a writer, story-teller, and part-time Presbyterian pastor in Arlington, VA.
Obviously, this is a blog rather than a web site, so we don’t really have a traditional “home page.” But we wanted to create a single post that explains this project to folks we’ll meet along the way as Crooked grows over the coming months. So welcome to Crookedfilm’s home page.
A bit more than a year ago, as Martin began his senior year at Arlington’s Wakefield High School, he was trying to develop and focus a senior project that started with his desire to add the banjo to his repertoire of instruments that already included violin and mandolin. While learning to play the banjo was all well and good, in and of itself it wasn’t quite a senior project. So, inspired by a wonderful documentary featuring legendary banjo artist Bela Fleck‘s exploration of the African roots of the banjo, and a Smithsonian magazine article on Virginia’s Crooked Road, Martin decided to make a short documentary about the music of the Crooked Road as a contextual piece to take the senior project a bit beyond learning to play a new instrument.
David became the producer of the documentary part of the project. It turns out that “producer” means “the guy who produces the wallet when the bill comes due.” He was also driver, cameraman and caterer. (Don’t ask about the soup supper that one late night when the only thing open along the road was a small grocery store.)
More than that, though, he got the chance to spend a lot of time with his son while supporting a project that fed his lifelong passion for music, and his longstanding but previously unfulfilled desire to make a film.
The end result was Crooked, the short film that Martin wrote and directed.
Martin showed it to a few local audiences, and the near unanimous response was, “that’s great; I want to see more.”
With that in mind, Martin decided to take a gap year before beginning college and use the time to take Crooked way beyond a short student film, into a documentary length study of the music, musicians and instrument makers along the Crooked Road. Because it is no longer a school project, this time around dad gets to do more than produce the wallet.
Indeed, through the incredibly generous donations of more than 70 backers through a Kickstarter campaign, this time we’ll hit the road with equipment that is capable of capturing the fullness of the music as well as the beauty of the land and its people. We also have time to gather much more of that story, and time to put it together.
In the next several months we’ll make several trips down the Crooked Road to film local jams, interview musicians and visit with some of the remarkably skilled craftspeople who make world-renowned instruments from the maple and spruce that grow along the Blue Ridge. We’ll explore the deep roots of the music, and the social history from which it springs.
Along the way, we’ll use this blog to post clips, photos and stories from the Road. Come along for the ride!