Dartmouth Events

Jay Craven interweaves the stories of two Revolutionary War-era Vermonters: the rebel schemer Ethan Allen and Lucy Terry Prince, a formerly enslaved woman defending her family from local intimidation.

The picture is a Revolutionary War-era action drama set in the early upstart Republic of Vermont finds rebel schemer Ethan Allen leading the resistance against New Yorker land claims. Leading invasions by his Green Mountain Boys into Yorker strongholds of Guilford and Brattleboro and an ill-fated attack on the British in Montreal, Allen navigates thick entanglements with allies, enemies and family at every turn.

Lost Nation's parallel and intersecting story features Kenyan actress Eva Ndachi as Lucy Terry Prince, whose poem, Bars Fight, about the 1746 Deerfield Massacre, is the first known work of African American literature. Enslaved in Western Massachusetts for 30 years, Prince then settled with her family on a Guilford homestead carved out of the forest by her husband, formerly enslaved frontier transport operator, Abijah Prince. Like Allen, Prince upset the status quo in her assertive use of early Vermont's legal and political systems to defend her family from local encroachment, harassment and intimidation.

Filmmaker Jay Craven's 10th feature film unearths parts of New England's history of slavery that rarely make their way to the big screen—in part because of a stunning scarcity of information about the lives of women and people of color during that time. With this film, Craven said he "hoped to capture an indelible moment that shows the complexity and power of an early version of the 'American dream'—and the promise of the American Revolution. Lost Nation allows us to consider the life and actions of larger-than-life rascal and pioneer, Ethan Allen,—and lesser known early Black Vermonters."

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