Set on the legendary and stunning Nantucket island, BRIGHTER STARS tells the story of James Miller, an ambitious young man who dreams of being the next big star of Hollywood’s Golden Age. However, James’ heart has long belonged to his childhood friend, Harry Goulart, with whom James shared his first real intimacy. When Harry announces his engagement to the kind and intelligent Nancy Garofalo, James is distraught and his dreams are threatened. That is, until he meets Marco Ferreira, a newcomer to the island who quickly falls for James and encourages the troubled young man to embrace the strength within him. As love and lust come to a head, the Great Depression sweeps the island community, forcing James to fight for survival, protect his beloved home, and strive for a better future beneath the promise of BRIGHTER STARS.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Much like the ambitions of its main character, BRIGHTER STARS began as an ambitious dream. Author Logan Kelly first began thinking about the story of James Miller back in 2013 but didn’t begin serious work on it until late 2019, when he finally sat down to outline the historical epic. Then, came the COVID-19 pandemic. During those many months, Kelly finished the outline and decided he had no choice but to finally begin the book itself.
However, even in those early days, Kelly was dreaming of something bigger, something that would bring audiences together for an event that (despite its historical setting) would hold a mirror up to our current world and inspire hope. Indeed, it was a dream as big as the movies. Following his move to the New York Metro Area, Kelly was introduced to rising New York actor Mark William (BroadwayWorld Award Winner) and his manager Preston Ridge, whose experience in the world of independent film includes the likes of the Academy Award nominated The Whales of August, notable for being the last film of screen legend Bette Davis. Following a successful reading of the project at Manhattan’s legendary Studio 353 in August 2026, the trio locked in a pre production script of which they are most proud.
Since then, the team has been hard at work preparing BRIGHTER STARS ready for a 2026 production, which included rounding out their package. After all, James Miller is nothing without his Marco Ferreira, and in March 2026, they found him in Game of Thrones legend, Lino Facioli. A promising star from the age of 10, Facioli (also known for Sex Education, The Boy in the Mirror, Masters of the Air) has become an integral member of the team, bringing his flawless talent, powerful insight, and unmatched drive to the role and his involvement.
Now, no longer a trio, but an ever-growing team of creatives, the BRIGHTER STARS family is honored to partner with Filmmakers Collaborative Fiscal Sponsorship program, as they move forward toward production later this year.
THE IMPACT
The hunger for more queer stories has been palpable over the last decade thanks to hits such as Call Me by Your Name and Love, Simon. As the audiences who fell in love with these stories have matured, Brighter Stars will cater to the prime adult age demographics across the LGBTQIA+ community and give them an epic the likes of which they’ve never seen before and have long sought out. In a time when our modern world has become as tumultuous as the one James Miller fought to survive, the need for movies like BRIGHTER STARS has never been greater. Our story is designed to give strength and hope to not only our queer viewers, but all audiences who have ever felt othered or rejected by society, and remind them that they’re dreams are possible, as long as they hold true to those they love.
INFORMATION AND MATERIALS
If you would like to know more about the project, we are happy to share production materials, including our complete Pitch Deck, Synopsis, screenplay, and budget sheet. Please contact a member of the BRIGHTER STARS team or Logan Kelly.
brighterstarsmovie@gmail.com
logankellyinquiries@gmail.com
On Summersweet Pond, third in the Threatened Species Film Series, celebrates the wonderfully interconnected interactions in the web of life found at freshwater ecosystems, from Buttonbush to Bee to Beaver. The film explores how resident and migratory species implicitly depend upon the health of freshwater communities, and the threats to the biota of ponds, while taking the viewer on a journey through the beauty of four seasons of pond life.
Although filmed primarily in Eastern Massachusetts, the series has broad national appeal, as demonstrated by the national and international success of its predecessors Beauty on the Wing: Life Story of the Monarch Butterfly and The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay. The Threatened Species film series covers meadow, marsh, dune, backyards, woodlands, shoreline, and freshwater and salt pond habitats.
The mission of Kim Smith Films and the Threatened Species Series is to educate and to promote the stewardship of endangered and threatened species. The natural beauty of Essex, Middlesex, and Suffolk Counties plays an integral role in creating an awareness to conserve our shared environment. Celebrating the beauty of wildlife and their habitats is not only a place where we can all meet but a lens focused on what we can become.
We recently received letters of interest from American Public Television for both On Summersweet Pond and Saint Peter’s Fiesta, our next two documentaries currently in production. The letters of interest demonstrate confidence in our ability to offer beautiful and educational films to public television programing and is especially noteworthy for our underwriting partners.
For more information about the film, underwriting, and to see a longer sample, please contact kimsmith.designs1@gmail.com
For nearly 100 years, Gloucester’s annual Saint Peter’s Fiesta has captured the heart and soul of this vibrant fishing city. From the nine-day nightly novena prayer service through to the closing midnight harbor-side procession on the final night of the festival, the film explores the deep ties and generations of families that bind this vibrant ethnic community.
Festa di San Pietro is more than just a festival—it is a living tribute to the cultural and maritime legacy of Gloucester and a heartfelt reminder of the bond between sea and community.
The mission of Kim Smith Films is to create educational documentaries that celebrate and preserve our cultural and natural heritage. Our films are created for young and old and developed for national and international audiences, as demonstrated by the success of our two previous documentaries.
We recently received letters of interest from American Public Television for films currently in production, both Saint Peter’s Fiesta and On Summersweet Pond. The letters of interest demonstrate confidence in our ability to offer beautiful and educational films to public television programing and is especially noteworthy for our underwriting partners.
For more information about the film, underwriting, and to see a longer sample, please contact kimsmith.designs1@gmail.com
Mary Dague lost both arms defusing bombs in Iraq. She tried for years to write her story and couldn’t. Eighteen years later, she’s building a world where that trauma belongs to someone else—narrated by DANI, the artificial consciousness she created to watch over her fictional selves. The film reveals her rebuilding identity through imagination, and asks what happens when the only way to tell the truth is through fiction.
“The Last Yztari” is an innovative hybrid documentary that explores the complex terrain of trauma recovery through the lens of fantasy, digital identity, and narrative reconstruction. The film follows Mary Dague—a double-arm amputee, gamer, writer, and survivor of childhood sexual abuse—as she navigates the liminal spaces between physical embodiment and virtual existence, using storytelling as a mechanism for psychological survival and self-determination.
At the film’s conceptual core lies Mary’s decade-long science fiction novel, “The Last Yztari,” which functions as both creative outlet and therapeutic framework. Through richly stylized animation, the novel’s protagonist Xia—a genetically engineered guardian with fractured memory and severed identity—emerges as a profound metaphor for dissociation, recovery, and the reconstruction of selfhood after trauma. The parallel narratives of Mary and Xia create a dialogue between lived experience and imaginative processing, examining how fantasy serves as both escape mechanism and integrative tool.
The documentary’s visual architecture is deliberately hybrid and layered, employing multiple iterations of AI-generated imagery to reflect the evolving relationship between human consciousness and digital representation. Observational sequences from Mary’s daily life dissolve into virtual gaming landscapes and animated sequences, creating a fluid visual grammar that mirrors the protagonist’s navigation between different modes of being. These aesthetic choices challenge traditional documentary form while reflecting contemporary questions about embodiment, presence, and authentic selfhood in digital spaces.
Central to the film’s exploration is Mary’s relationship with her husband James, himself a gamer and caretaker. Their dynamic becomes increasingly complex when James returns from deployment with his own psychological wounds, transforming Mary from care recipient to caregiver. This role reversal illuminates the film’s broader investigation into interdependence, emotional labor, and the ways couples negotiate shared trauma while maintaining individual agency. The gaming community that both inhabit serves as a crucial third space where traditional power dynamics are suspended and alternative forms of intimacy and leadership can emerge.
Mary’s online identity as “Wonder Nubs” represents a radical reclamation of agency and humor in the face of societal marginalization. Within gaming environments, her physical disability becomes irrelevant, allowing for expressions of competence, leadership, and community that are often denied in physical spaces. The film examines how digital avatars function as sites of empowerment and authentic self-expression, particularly for individuals whose bodies have been marked by trauma or difference.
The documentary’s treatment of multiple characters processing various traumas through different relationships with AI and digital representation creates a broader meditation on contemporary survival strategies. Through Mary’s interactions with generative AI tools in her creative process, the film explores how emerging technologies might serve as collaborators in meaning-making and narrative reconstruction for trauma survivors.
The work challenges conventional representations of disability, resilience, and recovery by refusing inspirational frameworks in favor of complex, contradictory portraiture. Mary emerges not as symbol but as artist—someone who has constructed elaborate internal and external worlds that enable not merely survival but creative flourishing. The film interrogates how we define wholeness, agency, and authentic selfhood when traditional markers of these concepts have been disrupted.
“The Last Yztari” ultimately raises fundamental questions about the nature of identity construction in an increasingly digital age: How do we maintain coherent selfhood across multiple platforms and realities? What role does imagination play in trauma recovery? How might virtual spaces offer possibilities for being that physical spaces foreclose?
Mary’s military service as an Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician in Iraq, where she lost both arms in an improvised explosive device explosion while protecting a school, provides the historical context for her journey. However, this experience of war and its aftermath serves as departure point rather than defining narrative, allowing the film to explore the ongoing creative work of rebuilding identity and meaning in civilian life.
Three formerly incarcerated men, transformed through education and restorative justice, journey from prison cells to campus classrooms as they rebuild their lives on the outside while pursuing a college degree.
Cohort One presents Kentel, David, and Nathan, each of whom served a lengthy prison sentence (8-20 years) for a serious crime. While incarcerated at MCI-Concord outside of Boston, they met Dr. Hilary Binda, a Tufts civic studies professor, who has become a fierce advocate for incarcerated students while developing the Tufts University Prison Initiative of Tisch College (TUPIT).
Seeing the potential in these intelligent and insightful men whose difficult circumstances led them to prison, Hilary has spent the last decade working to help them — and others like them — fulfill their promise. In addition to the degree program (that grants Tufts BAs both inside and outside of prison), she has created a reentry program to help women and men adjust to life after incarceration.
Showing what is possible when the justice system focuses on potential rather than punishment, Cohort One is a story of hope and redemption.
PIECES OF BEETHOVEN:
featuring Sir Andras Schiff, Steven Isserlis, Gabriela Montero, Steven Osborne and the Kammerphilharmonie Bremen with Paavo Järvi
Two hundred years ago Beethoven died, and fans and scavengers descended, hunting for souvenirs. Our film for the bicentenary starts with his death, and explores how the scattered fragments of his manuscripts – and hair – are being tracked down and deciphered, through a magical marriage of dedicated scholarship and brand-new technology. The story circles around his Eroica Symphony, written at a moment of great crisis, and cementing his reputation as the first, and greatest, artist hero of Western music.
When Beethoven dies in March 1827, he’s the most famous musician in Europe, and worshippers flock to pay homage – with scissors. Three days later, he’s completely bald; everyone wants a piece of him.
His celebrity arises from the time and place, as well as his talent. Beethoven bursts on the scene as the Enlightenment is set on fire by French revolutionary ideas. As Napoleon approaches, German Romanticism is born, and with it the idea of the artist creator, the bridge between mortals and God. Beethoven is the perfect embodiment of this; unlike his predecessors, Haydn and Mozart, writing to order as servants of the nobility, Beethoven declares that his talent makes him the equal of any aristocrat.
He writes what he wants, when he wants – and then invites patrons to pay for it.
So, he can spend months, or years, working and reworking a single piece; and all those notes and ideas are in a vast hoard of musical sketchbooks, which he cherishes and takes with him on his constant moves around Vienna (he’s a noisy, alarming and unpopular neighbour). When the sketchbooks are scattered at his death, the secret of Beethoven’s genius vanishes too.
But today, forensic science, musical detective work and passionate perseverance are putting the pieces back together. At the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, we discover how ink blots, quill shapes and apparently random scribbles are clues to what goes where.
Lewis Lockwood and Alan Gosman spent two decades decoding the sketchbook for the Eroica Symphony: the composer’s blazing refusal to be defeated by his failing hearing, tearing up the musical rules as he does so. They show us Beethoven developing his ideas, note by note, and Paavo Järvi and the Kammerphilharmonie Bremen orchestra demonstrate his different versions of the great fanfare that announces the final movement.
But what comes then? A whispered tune, so simple it can be plucked on a violin string. Beethoven takes that tune and develops it, first into an intricate set of piano variations, and then into the barnstorming finale of his symphony. How? Through improvising on the piano. Beethoven was more famous as an improviser than a composer in his day – but because there was no way to record his performances in the moment, most of them are lost.
Today’s unchallenged virtuosa of improvisation is Gabriela Montero. She’s never played this piece of Beethoven – until now. We watch her explore what Beethoven does with it, adding a few suggestions of her own. And Gabriela has a computer connected to her piano, so everything she improvises is preserved and transcribed, to feed into her own compositions.
Meanwhile, what of the hair? Locks of ‘Beethoven’s Hair’ have been passed down through generations. Tristan Begg, a young Beethoven obsessive, reads the Heiligenstadt Testimony, in which Beethoven pours out his his hopes that one day, doctors will find out why he suffers so badly with his health.
Tristan is a palaeogeneticist, working in the lab where the Neanderthal genome has just been sequenced. He realises that he may be able to do the same for Beethoven, using these carefully guarded scraps of hair. But the first four he gets hold of turn out all to have totally different DNA; only one is Beethoven’s – but which? Eventually, one of them matches another with a reliable provenance, which delivers the answer to Beethoven’s final illness: a tendency to liver disease, complicated by a Hepatitis B infection – and mysteriously high levels of lead.
Enter Carol Albrecht, who has spent decades translating the ‘conversation books’ Beethoven used after he became deaf. Carol shows us Beethoven’s Vienna, and tells us about the detective work involved, revealing that Beethoven, though not a heavy drinker by the standards of his day, liked his wine sweetened – with lead.
So, by the time Beethoven goes to work on his late piano masterpiece, the ‘Diabelli’ Variations, he’s old and ill, in constant pain. Back at the Beethoven-Haus, we see how slowly he is now working, how much less confident he is of his ideas; it’s full of notes not just crossed out but scratched completely away with a knife, to make sure only the right version gets to the printer.
And in between, there are scribbles in different pens and in red chalk, notes to himself – it’s a total mess. But somewhere in there is a record of the ageing Beethoven, developing his immortal 9th Symphony. How to make sense of it?
Once again, technology comes to the rescue; Susanne Cox at the ‘Beethovens Werkstatt’ project has invented a piece of software that analyses and separates all the different elements on a page. We watch and listen as every element magically sounds in turn – and then international virtuoso Steven Osborne performs it for us; one moment lyrical, the next as radical as Steven’s other love, modern jazz.
There’s another mystery in the Diabelli sketchbook: fingerings – for Beethoven himself. Why would he have composed at the piano, when he was already stone deaf?
David Ginty runs the neuroscience lab at Harvard, and recently discovered that certain kinds of touch are processed with hearing, in the brain. Beethoven heard through his hands.
But why he lost his hearing is the biggest mystery of all. We film Tristan back in the lab with a newly-discovered scrap of hair, that seems to have fallen onto a manuscript page when Beethoven was shaving, at the time he first realised he was losing his hearing. Whatever is in his DNA at that moment should throw light on the deafness.
We end the film with the end of the Eroica symphony, which we’ve seen and heard developing, from first illegible scribblings to finished manuscript. Famously, Beethoven scrubbed out his original dedication, to Napoleon, and just called it ‘Eroica’ – ‘Heroic’. It’s a fitting description of Beethoven himself, struggling and persevering, checking every note and marking until he’s satisfied.
But the other heroes of this story are the musicians and scholars who dedicate years, or decades, of their lives to deciphering scattered fragments on fragile scraps of paper that have survived two centuries; and thanks to them, we understand why Beethoven still towers above all other composers, as we’re transported inside the head of Western music’s greatest genius, hearing his music as never before.
Set in the unforgiving heart of Kolkata, Where the River Bends follows Ganga, a single mother and sex worker, as she fights to secure a better future and education for her 11-year-old son, Abhi. Though gifted and full of promise, Abhi faces rejection from every school — not because of his merit, but because of Ganga’s past, her career, and her social class. As the walls of class and morality close in, Ganga’s world begins to crumble, forcing her to confront the same impossible decision her own mother once made: to let go of the child she loves for his chance at a better life. It is a socially conscious drama about a mother’s fight to secure a future for her son as she battles poverty and prejudice. A story about breaking barriers of entry in a world that pins everything against you, while love guides your every decision. Interwoven with memories, unspoken love, and quiet defiance, Where the River Bends is a deeply human story about sacrifice, shame, and survival — where a mother’s greatest act of love may be learning how to say goodbye.
The film follows the complex relationship dynamics and the impossible choices Ganga faces. The gross misrepresentation, in film, of the lives of those stuck in systemic poverty through an orientalist gaze, while othering the community, made us feel like there was a story within that needed to be told. One that felt more human and universal.
The team behind this project will bring about an authentic connection between the screen and the audience. We believe film absolutely transcends itself as a medium simply used for entertainment. It is the ultimate collaborative artform. Beyond parasocial connections, one feels with the characters, films teach us how to feel for one another. It is our job to acknowledge and appreciate those differences. Especially through our art. Our words and images not only make us feel but also bring a sense of unity. We want Where the River Bends to be a film that brings us together with our primal sense of love. There is no better time to tell this story than now.
SCRATCH is a tense sci-fi horror short film about grief, identity, and technology that learns to exploit our pain. The story is told through the eyes of Maggie, a rugged and determined 21-year-old female with a troubled past. When her estranged childhood friend passes away, she is left with a floppy disc containing a therapy program. Talking to it, she goes down a rabbit hole of synthetic connection and dark truths, being given the choice between false comfort or real closure. With a grunge, late 90s/Y2K style, SCRATCH will transport viewers into Maggie’s unraveling world, making for an emotional and visually entrancing short horror film.
Mixing elements of narrative and experimental, the short aims to create a uniquely psychological horror experience, accurately showing the experience of technology addiction. Maggie’s story is one of drive and avoidance. She runs from her past, only to cope with it through synthetic means. We plan to use every tool in our filmmaking tool belt to express this negative transformation, and to lure the viewer into her chaotic, yet empathetic, world.
This project is currently in the pre-production phase, and we are slated to shoot at the end of January 2026. It is a senior capstone film at SCAD, using the combined skills of emerging graduates in the B.F.A. and M.F.A. Film and Television program, along with its amazing equipment. As this film taking place in the late 90s, production design is a crucial component to the project. We are hoping to raise $4,500 to cover costs of production design, crew meals, equipment, and other essential costs. Any donations will immensely help this film, its cause, and our careers as filmmakers, and we will be extremely grateful. Thank you!
The Reinvention of Chad Marks is a powerful new documentary currently in production that offers an intimate and unfiltered look inside America’s federal prison system through one man’s extraordinary transformation.
After receiving a 40 year federal sentence and spending nearly four years in solitary confinement, Chad Marks began an unexpected journey from inside prison that would place him at the center of a compelling legal and human rights story. His experience reveals the psychological toll of incarceration, extreme sentencing practices and the crippling challenges of re entry into society, while offering a deeply human portrait of accountability, resilience and hope.
This is more than a film. It is a profound reminder that hope can survive in the darkest places and that one story can ignite real change.
**Along with Executive Producers, MaryBeth Stanley and Margie Sullivan, we are honored to have team members, Attorney Lisa Parlagreco as legal expert for The Reinvention of Chad Marks and Ellen Lacey Wallett as film and video editor.
This film is fundamentally about Americans who refused to accept injustice as inevitable. “Still Seeking Utopia” reveals how visionaries and marginalized groups formed utopian communities when America failed to deliver on its promises. We look at how how these idealistic reformers worked to create a more just and equitable way of life, and left a lasting legacy on American culture.
