Film Studies Department Chair Johanna Dery’s first film involved a man, a fan and a sign that said “for free.”
“It was an exercise, a continuity exercise, and I got my friend Glen to star in it and in one scene he comes out of the house in… a winter coat and puts a fan on the sidewalk,” Dery said. “In the same scene, he comes out again in shorts and a t-shirt and he picks up the fan and walks off.”
This film marked the start of Dery’s film journey, as she later went on to having her films screened internationally.
According to her website, Dery has films that have been screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation.
Additionally, Dery has won the 2012 Helen Hill Award and has been awarded several grants over the years.
Graduating with a BFA in film/animation/ video from the Rhode Island School of Design, Dery originally planned to study and pursuepainting when she came across film studies. “I think I just happened to be exposed to filmmaking that is closer proximity to art than it is to entertainment,” Dery said. “I was seeing animation from Eastern Europe and that got me really excited to pursue film.”
Dery added, “It was really a strange cocktail of things that I fell in love with, it was contemporary experimental film but also very early American avant-garde filmmaking and then animation from Eastern Europe and that just all drew me into film.”
Dery recalls one of her favorite projects as being a “love letter to Providence, RI” where she spent her college years.
“I received a grant to make that from the LEF Foundation and it took a couple years, I worked on this film in the evenings and created it in my apartment,” Dery said.
Additionally, around the time Dery was hired at Keene State nine years ago, she was employed to make an animation for the New York Times website.
More recently, Dery had her short film “Georgia’s Line” screened at the 2022 Monadnock International Film Festival (MONIFF).
“I actually worked with Keene State alumni who are professionals in the film industry and hired them as my crew and then they each mentored a few students on set,” Dery said. “It was a really cool project that fostered a connection between students and alumni and gave students a real world experience.”
According to Dery, being a woman in a maledominated industry was a challenge she had to overcome when she first began teaching.
“I started teaching when I was 29 and I was a young woman and film is and has traditionally been very male dominated so I would not be very much older than my students and it was very common that my entire class would be male,” Dery said. “I think being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field is just something that’s just always been a dynamic to play.”
As department chair, Dery said she works hard to ensure the film studies department has the support it needs to be successful.
“I think because of COVID and the challenges that it places on everybody to connect, it feels really important for me to get people to build connections between faculty and students and among students themselves,” Dery said. “I believe learning is relational so it happens within relationships and we need each other to engage with the learning and reflection and skill building and mastering of these tools.” Since becoming a professor, Dery said she has enjoyed seeing the next generation of filmmakers pursue their own creativity.
“I love teaching because I think through creativity and the creative process that students will learn about themselves and the ripple effect of that is huge,” Dery said. “It’ll inform them what career they’ll want to pursue or what kind of lifestyle they create for themselves and who they collaborate with.”
Dery added, “It’s a privilege to design problems for yourself and then solve them and that’s something that we do as children when we play… We’re like, ‘Let’s build a fort,’ and then we go about building the fort. As a grownup now… you’re building a fort, the script is your blueprint and you’re going from there, I feel grateful that I have held onto this core piece of myself that enjoys creativity and problem solving and play.”
Senior film productions major Paige Pribilla said Dery has been a helpful and insightful professor.
“She’s taught me a lot about animation techniques and also about collaborating and how to work with others,” Pribilla said. “She’s been helping me out with some pre-production aspects and giving advice. She’s also helped me get some film gigs… [and] also helped me get a summer animation teaching job.”
Similarly, senior Sydney Gemme said Dery helped her obtain an internship working with Monadnock Farms and has been a helpful mentor.
“She cares about her students further than just the classroom and their well-being,” Gemme said. “Anytime I had a question about anything she would make me feel very comfortable to come up and talk to and she was always available to her students. She’s just a great listener to her students.”
Nicole Dumont can be contacted at
ndumont@kscequinox.com
