<p>The Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival is not simply a four-day event at the Chilmark Community Center.</p>
The Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival is not simply a four-day event at the Chilmark Community Center, rather it has emerged over its 16-year residence as a focal point for community dialog on topics that directly impact the lives and welfare of Islanders, particularly our young people. While the festival shows films of all types, those films are gateways to public conversations, with qualified experts participating — all brought to the Island by the festival to create a forum for public discussion.
Over the years, Thomas Bena and his staff have presented programs on sometimes uncomfortable always challenging topics: on-campus rape, our health care system, racism, homosexuality, inequality, ending poverty, children’s rights and our environment, to name a few. The festival uses the same forum to raise us up with delightful profiles of great artists, presentations of live local music and quirky stories of inspiring people. As an Island community we have a natural tendency to look inward but the work of The Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival is to look out — to deepen our engagement and understanding of the issues of our times. Ideas matter.
Few organizations have done more than the festival to advance public understanding of the farm to table movement. Where else would a room be packed with Island farmers and students discussing organic farming, seed banks and our precious eco-system? The rural character of Martha’s Vineyard is front and center, topic one, every year in the festival’s programming.
The festival has a hands-on relationship with our Island children —programming films selected especially for and by them, enabling those same youngsters to experience that thrill of story-telling by teaching them how to make short films in our local schools and then giving them the opportunity to show their work at the festival.
There are legitimate questions and issues raised by the prospect of providing a year-round home to MVFF in West Tisbury or anywhere on the Island. My hope would be that the Island community, especially those who are directly impacted by the proposed move to West Tisbury, give Thomas Bena and his board an opportunity to be heard, to move through a legitimate process of give and take in a spirit of welcome and open give and take. The MVFF consists of Islanders, families with children and our neighbors who have worked on our behalf for many years in the true spirit of a nonprofit undertaking. We owe them a chance at a year round home. Wherever the festival ends up, ideas matter to a community, especially an Island community. Thomas and his board and staff are not real estate developers trying to line their own pockets, they are us and they care about this Island as much as we do.
Len and Georgia Morris
Vineyard Haven
Comments
Mr. and Mrs. Morris, thank
mark reisman west tisburyMr. and Mrs. Morris, thank you for your detailed defense of mvff's activities and, above all, for using your actual names in writing your letter (it adds credibility). I would guess that most people agree that mvff provides a valued service to the island and hope that it finds a campus in an appropriately zoned location. In the meantime, it provides this service from other locations. But the West Tisbury residents voted to protect their historical, agricultural and residential center with zoning limits that we abide by and value, much as Vineyard Haven, Chilmark, Edgartown and other island residents do in their communities. We do offer other buildings in other areas of West Tisbury (including Ag Hall, the Grange, the West Tisbury library, Polly Hill, among other facilities) to the entire island for many of the activities that overlap with mvff's, including screening films, holding community discussions, focusing on agricultural initiatives and providing many kinds of programming for children. If you feel that "we owe mvff a chance at a year round home," find one in an appropriately zoned location, perhaps in Chilmark or elsewhere, or let it continue to use existing facilities throughout the island. On second thought, it might be difficult for mvff to try to build in Chilmark, since Mr. Bena has appeared before the Chilmark planning board to advocate for a building moratorium that would block the 6000 feet barnlike structure that he proposes to build to show films in WT. Moreover, why don't "we owe" the residents of West Tisbury the right to live in their residential and agricultural community in accordance with the zoning rules that they voted for? When you say "give Thomas Bena and his board an opportunity to be heard," your letter ignores the following: Mvff and its board deliberately chose to buy the Walsh property before notifying the Walsh neighbors and abutters and before bringing its plans before the West Tisbury community. That approach smacks of intimidation and not community involvement or respect. If the plans for developing the site are early and open-ended, as Mr. Bena writes in his letter to the editor, why couldn't they have waited to buy property until their plans were formulated? Then real and meaningful community discussion could be had when it really matters (before the fact), and the transaction would not be felt by many in the community as a hostile takeover. If Mr. Bena favors community involvement and deserves our goodwill, why is he using a dubious legal loophole to build in a location against zoning regulations that would otherwise apply? Why would that strategy engender trust in the West Tisbury community? Why would we believe Mr. Bena when he says he values community input if he wants to enviserate town regulations in our historic district? By the way, I respectfully submit that if that legal strategy works, and it will be tested in litigation in this case, there is nothing to prevent its being used in every town on the island, including in Chilmark, Vineyard Haven and Edgartown, to circumvent zoning protections that most people value in the towns in which they choose to live.
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