Creative works of filmmaker, composer fueled by pandemic

The pandemic hasn't slowed down Alan Kryszak, a filmmaker and composer who also teaches creative arts coursework at the University of Maine at Machias (UMM). If anything, it has allowed Kryszak to focus on work that might not have otherwise happened. He had the time to build his studio at the home he shares with his wife in East Machias, and that opened the floodgates for additional creative opportunities. Among a number of new works composed during the pandemic, take, for example, the 2020 release of "Lux Internum," 12 nocturnes for solo piano that features Svetlana Belsky, a highly regarded Russian pianist.
"Pianists were losing their minds. They're used to playing every week," explains Kryszak. Belsky is one of his favorites. He discovered Belsky when he found one of her recordings on a CD of an obscure composer he favors. "She has a very detailed, subtle technique." He knew her style would match well with his work. He reached out, and the collaboration began last November, most of it taking place over social media. He describes the project as a glimpse into the Polish nocturne legacy, 200 years in the making.
Kryszak knew as a child that he had Polish ancestry but found out only recently that he is 50% Transylvanian. It all makes sense, he says with a laugh. As a child, and to this day, he has an eye for the suspense of horror genres, including Dracula. In fifth grade, "I drew a really bloody graphic story, 'The Staircase of Dracula.'" Rather than being chastised for it, a nun came around, looked at his story, and said, "That's really nice. Some day you're going to make movies." And he does, primarily with his Downeast Documentary students.
Films garner attention
Attending cinema in person hasn't been happening for the last year for obvious reasons, so Kryszak wasn't surprised that there were just a handful of people at the Boston, Mass., premier of the latest Downeast Documentary film, Privacy & the Power of Secrets. He took heart because next door it was the opening day for Nomadland and only one person attended. "It was a really strange experience," he says. "It should have been depressing, but it wasn't. I was alone at my own premiere, wearing baggy jeans, an untucked plaid shirt." He adds that The Boston Globe wrote "a really nice piece about it," saying that this is how movies like this should be made. To receive a compliment like that made all the difference. Now, he notes, the film is being considered for the Austin Film Festival.
The UMM Downeast Documentary program comes from work he began in the early 2000s when he was working just outside of Buffalo, N.Y., with visually impaired students who were musicians and poets. As the technology instructor, he built the studio and worked with his students to create two documentaries. When the 2008 recession hit, the school's funding collapsed and the program was closed. When he and his wife moved to East Machias in 2013 and he began working at UMM he knew he'd be able to revive the idea.
Downeast Documentary released in 2016 its first film, Whatever Works; in 2017, Who Made You in America; in 2018, When the Chevy Breaks; and in 2019, Privacy & the Power of Secrets. Students, experienced or not, are plunged into the film work right away, and subject areas often deal with difficult subjects such as racism, opiate addiction, poverty and, in the case of the latest film, secrets and privacy concerns ranging from animal cruelty cases in lab breeding and testing work on dogs to the use and misuse of Passamaquoddy tribal songs.
Kryszak takes the students "right out into the streets" of Machias, Washington County and other regions of Maine to set up shop, using cellphones and other technologies to film interviews, places, sounds and more. In all the films, whatever the subject, the class learns the importance of honesty. "You can't leave things out or add things in to change" points of view. "The point is often [that the first] look at a person is not who you think they are." The results have been well received with premieres and awards bringing larger audiences to the student work.
Kryszak doesn't rest on his laurels, which are numerous. His life has been full of creations that take an off kilter approach to old forms. That essence infuses the Downeast Documentary films and can be found in the nine silent film scores he composed for Turner Classic Movies, among many other works. "The films were so strange and dark, about an unemployed man who was poverty stricken." He pauses; that dark thread that he finds so compelling has been with him since he first began to draw at age two on a big roll of paper his parents set up for him on the kitchen floor. Combine that early drive that has never stopped with the musicians he grew up with, "who were fearless about saying what needed to be said," drop in a little of the rich spookiness of Transylvania that runs in his blood, and Kryszak's unique voice begins to be understood.
For more information about Kryszak's work visit www.alankryszak.com.