NORTH GREENBUSH — Two 24-year-old women filmmakers affiliated with WMHT traveled to Taiwan in May to exchange ideas and strategies with public broadcasters from three dozen countries. Catherine Rafferty and Rebecca van der Meulen made a round-trip journey of 16,000 miles to discuss ways that their documentaries and short-feature films can address social issues in edgy and provocative ways without overstepping the bounds of good taste and licensing standards.
These young, emerging filmmakers are out to remind viewers that this is no longer their grandfather’s “Masterpiece Theatre” station. Alistair Cooke’s tweed jackets, leather wing chair in front of a fireplace and sonorous British accent need to move aside as public TV aims to remain relevant by attracting a younger and more diverse audience.
“When we talked with filmmakers from other countries, it was clear that we’re all trying to break into what had been a boys’ club,” said van der Meulen, who hired a predominantly female cast and crew for “To Wade or Row,” a 15-minute dramatic film that she wrote and directed. It is a deeply affecting cautionary tale that imagines a rural community in a place that resembles upstate New York after the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down Roe v. Wade. Two women health care providers and their allies go underground at a roadside motel and perform clandestine abortions as the local sheriff tries to catch and prosecute them.
“To Wade or Row” aired last year as an official selection in WMHT’s TVFilm program, a half-hour independent short-film showcase that highlights upstate filmmakers. TVFilm is overseen by Rafferty, education producer at the station. Its 15th season kicks off June 30. It is funded with a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.
In Taipei, the broadcasters shared creative ways to tackle controversial and often taboo subjects such as abortion, mental illness, mass shootings, systemic racism, poverty, drug addiction, sexual harassment and political oppression.
Rafferty and van der Meulen were among just seven applicants accepted from U.S. public TV stations as part of INPUT, an all-volunteer annual conference aimed at challenging the boundaries of public TV with compelling storytelling. The conference is hosted in major cities around the world and the cities are chosen because they are in places where democracy and free expression are threatened.
“Although these storytellers come from various cultural backgrounds, I found more similarities than differences in the films I watched,” said Rafferty, who made the 2022 WMHT documentary “Bridging the Divide” about a public art project to beautify Troy’s Collar City Bridge, long emblematic of the city’s racial divide.
There was a frank sexual education program from Denmark public TV that showed a female narrator’s genitalia in close-up as she described her anatomy and sexual functions in detail.
After the screening, a woman from the Netherlands asked Rafferty if WMHT would show the anti-abortion point of view as a counterbalance to van der Meulen’s film’s pro-choice perspective.
“I explained that this was not meant to be journalistic coverage of a topic or a town hall debate,” Rafferty said. “It is a single artist’s perspective.”
Both women took note that European public TV stations are much better funded and enjoy substantially larger budgets for film projects than their U.S. counterparts.
“There is a real value in the exchange of ideas at INPUT,” said Will Pedigo, chief content and engagement officer at WMHT, who attended the conference in past years in Greece and Thailand. “It changed my life and career arc.”
“I felt so fortunate I was able to go to experience it,” van der Meulen said. “I got inspiration for my scripts and I will be carrying a lot of ideas forward.”
Paul Grondahl is the Opalka Endowed Director of the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany and a former Times Union reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].
