SYNOPSIS

A documentary captured over a road trip across the heartland of the United States, American Dendrite is a meditation on the climate, culture, and collective consciousness of people connected by living alongside the Mississippi River system. With a vintage Super 8mm film camera, director Adam Marshall Present and his crew trace the path of water flowing from their home city of Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana. Each person they encounter along the way is asked to share stories, memories, or what they are feeling at that moment - with their only prompt being to listen to what the previous person up the river has shared. As this “flow of conversation” takes place alongside the country’s most vital and storied river, the result is a living time capsule of this pivotal moment in American history. A wide range of participants express their personal challenges and reasons for hope, uncovering a shared spirit of what it means to be an American right now. This timeless yet contemporary road trip, which can be likened to a game of telephone down the river, sheds light how the forces of water, geography, and circumstance bind us together.

ADAM MARSHALL PRESENT (director / producer / DP / editor) is an emerging director who focuses on the connective bonds between humanity and the natural world, through unconventional storytelling. Present grew up in New Jersey and attended film school at Northwestern University. He has been a producer’s assistant on NBC’s Chicago Fire, P.D., and Med television shows, and has worked with the Independent Film Alliance in Chicago to develop community-building programming for local university film students and recent graduates. He is currently a post-production assistant at nonfiction studio Words + Pictures in New York City. American Dendrite is his feature directorial debut.
CAROLINE BATES (producer / assistant director) is a writer, director, and producer based in New York City. She currently works as an assistant director for independent and commercial production companies including Mulberry Queens Films, Object & Animal, and JSL Studios, and previously worked as a development intern at ShivHans Pictures. Her debut short film, a coming-of-age story about growing up alongside Florida’s Space Coast, won Best Chicago at the Chicago International Film Festival's CineYouth Fest and was nominated for Best Florida Short Film at the Florida Film Festival. She graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science in Radio/Television/Film and is currently in development to direct her first feature film.
MAYA RETER (field producer / sound designer / production sound mixer) is a sound artist and storyteller from the cornfields of Illinois, currently based in Chicago. She has hands in many facets of audio, but most frequently helps craft audio fiction, theatrical works, and documentaries. Maya recently completed her Masters in Sound Arts and Industries at Northwestern University, supplementing her undergraduate studies at NU in Journalism and History. When she's not staring into the sweet glow of ProTools, she's probably out in the woods recording voice memos of the trees.
GRACE FROME (co-producer) is a producer and casting professional raised in Silicon Valley, educated at Northwestern University, and based in Los Angeles. After graduation, she worked at Horseless Cowboy, a creative consultancy focused on voiceover production and casting with credits on projects such as the English version of Netflix’s “The Glory” and Vivienne Medrano’s “Helluva Boss.” Currently, she is at Central Casting, the industry’s leading background casting company, where she is the background casting assistant on the HBO show “The Pitt.” Outside of her professional work, Grace’s writing revolves around the stories of complex women and their relationships to nature.
XANTHE BROWN (post-production supervisor) is a Chicago-based editor and colorist who has been cutting films since she was 12. She fell in love with filmmaking as the designated editor on her cousins’ contrived mockumentary narratives, piecing together shorts from hours of improvised footage and explosions ripped off of YouTube. Having graduated film school from Northwestern University, she has now had the pleasure of working on all sorts of different editorial and color projects, but in keeping with her childhood, satire and off-beat dramedy have emerged as her primary genres. She is thrilled that what she did on summer break as a kid is now her career.
MITCHELL ZEMIL (animation artist) is a freelance animator working out of Brooklyn, NY. His work ranges from traditional hand-drawn animation and stop-motion to digital techniques and motion graphics, and his work can be seen in projects for Adult Swim, YouTube, and Planned Parenthood, among others. A filmmaker in his own right, he is the co-creator of experimental documentary Sarasota Half in Dream and the webseries Preserving Worlds. He is an adjunct instructor at Montclair State University, and spends summers working at Camp Androscoggin as their art director. He enjoys quality time with his dog, pottery, and board games with friends.
MARY KATE RILEY (sound designer), originally from Maryland, is an audio engineer, sound designer, and recent graduate of Northwestern University’s Sound Arts and Industries MA program. Prior to her graduate studies, she studied film production at Ithaca College and then coached sailing at a youth foundation in Los Angeles, CA. Her most recent work includes the sound designs of four short films, showcased on her website, mkateriley.com, as well as her other works, including self produced films. She is currently interning at Mystery Street Recording Company in Chicago, IL, and works as a freelance artist locally and remotely.
NICKI COYLE (film scanning / post production consultant) is a lab technician, filmmaker, and scanning tech dedicated to making film affordable and accessible. She has many years of high quality laboratory experience covering nearly every aspect of the film process, with an emphasis on photochemical and scanning workflows for restoration and production projects for features, shorts, music videos, and experimental films. Nicki attended CU Boulder where she found a deep respect for analog processes and experimental film, and has since worked on many films from the Stan Brakhage collection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, among many others.
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