CinemaSavannah, local filmmakers partner to debut award-winning 'Iron Family' documentary

If you’ve lived in Savannah long enough, chances are you’ve encountered the mind and antics of Chad Faries. Savannah State students often regard him as that quirky, down-to-earth, academically rigorous English professor who tirelessly presses for more grit, detail and self-reflection in their writing.

Neighbors, and some visitors, know him as the Airbnb guy with a great tree house in Thunderbolt. And maybe you know him as memoir writer, poetry presenter and Fulbright winner who rolls around town on a vintage Triumph motorcycle.

There’s a lot to Chad Faries. Some may see more than a few of his facets, but likely many don’t know he has a bright and highly creative sister, Jazmine Faries, living with Down syndrome in the small, Upper Peninsula town of Iron River, Michigan.

That is, until now.

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Jazmine and her family are featured in the critically acclaimed documentary, “Iron Family,” debuting Friday night at Savannah Cultural Arts Center. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. with a 7:00 p.m. screening. Afterwards, Jazmine and filmmakers host a panel discussion with question and answer session.

Like her older brother, Jazmine is enamored of words. And over the years, she’s written volumes of letters, poems, and stories. Playwriting, though, is her specialty. With a swirling imagination and penchant for pop culture, Jazmine, envisions a parallel life in which she is fashion designer to the stars and married to Matthew McConaughey. Thoroughly committed to this vision, Jazmine deftly adapts her alter ego into an episodic, theatrical soap opera she has aptly titled, “Double Life.”

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“Jazmine has been writing and performing these plays for years,” emphasized Chad Faries. “They started in the garage, then moved to Windsor Center, a community hall in Iron River. I had my own footage from multiple seasons, but by the fifth season I knew we had to do a better job documenting this. I knew the next year, I had to start thinking about how to share what was going on here with more people.”

And then one day while running in Forsyth Park, Chad crossed paths with acquaintance and local filmmaker, Pat Longstreth. Soon after, they met, brainstormed and decided on a plan to document Jazmine’s play over the course of a week.

“What won me on the project was Jazmine,” recalled Longstreth. “She’s funny, and brave, stubborn, and she really believes she can do these things that she writes. Her ideas are real and possible to her. Once we got into it and started documenting, I knew this story would need more than seven days of filming because of the complexity and family relationship dynamics at play.”

Longstreth and wife, Anne, initially went together to Iron River in 2020 with limited equipment, just enough for a 15 or 20 minute film short. In seven days, though, the documenting duo captured a 45-minute collage of material that was so compelling they knew more footage was necessary to adequately flesh out ideas and show more closely the interpersonal goings on.

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Over the course of a year, the couple made three more trips back to the Upper Peninsula to dive more deeply into the story’s background and setting. The extra time allowed the Longstreth team to capture significant moments granting a more poignant lens into the emotional push and pull between people on screen.

In one scene Jazmine and Chad stand beside each other on a bridge overlooking the Iron River. Jazmine jokingly assigns names of the seven dwarves to family members based on personality traits. She assigns Chad “Dopey” and her mom “Grumpy,” and they laugh together at her reasoning for delegating the names as she does.

And then they jump into deeper waters, discussing where creativity comes from, and Jazmine begins speaking about how her creativity comes from her dreams, and how in her dreams she can do anything and could do anything in real life if it weren’t for the blockers stopping her. The brother and sister then have a subtle heart-to-heart in which both gently reveal how very much they simultaneously respect and envy one another for their respective creative outputs.

The scene conveys so much about each person and sheds light on the greater humanity within us all in how we are often compelled—sometimes with great difficulty—to hold two equally strong and disparate feelings for people while engaging with them. The scene’s subtlety is sublime and lingers on the heart long after the moment has passed.

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Further emphasizing the beauty of the exchange is how the scene is set up with shots of overhead and oncoming drone footage that shows the beauty of early fall on the rural landscape of Iron River.

“Iron Family” has garnered great reviews and critical acclaim this year on the independent film circuit. The Fresh Coast Festival in Marquette, Mich., celebrated the release as Best Feature Film, and at Slamdance Film Festival, the documentary earned the coveted 2022 Audience Award.

For Jazmine, all the media attention and interviews are as if her double life is finally bluring into the here-and-now. In recent months she’s attended red carpets, visited Los Angeles and met a range of people in the entertainment industry.

“We have had a lot of fun making this movie, and it has made Chad and I and Mom closer,” said Jazmine Faries. “I have really liked doing the podcasts and being with Chad, and I think if you really want something and want to do it, you just keep doing it because it’s what you do. Also, I picked up a great dress for the premiere. It’s black and very breezy, and I can’t wait to wear it.”

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA events, things to do: Iron Family documentary