Local Filmmaker’s ‘Indigo Dr.’ Spotlights Abductions of Girls
AUSTINTOWN, Ohio – Local filmmaker Adam Michael will premiere his film “113 Indigo Dr.” at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 17, at Golden Star Theater in Austintown.
The Youngstown-based director-screenwriter shot the hourlong film this year. The evening will begin with a screening of Michael’s short film “Theater 4.”
Tickets are $12 and available in advance on the Golden Star Theater’s website, and at the box office.
Michael specializes in short films of 10 to 30 minutes in length. “Indigo Dr.” is his first full-length film.
The film is actually three short films that total one hour and will be screened in succession. It is about a man who appears to be normal but is secretly holding women captive in his home.
“Indigo Dr.” was shot in early May at a farmhouse in Andover. Each of the three short films focuses on a different captive girl, with the overarching plotline running through all three.
The cast includes Anthony Dain of Columbus, Megan Lynn Hostetler of Indianapolis, Adrienne Lauren of New York, and Leah Harper of Cleveland.
“There is a lot of human trafficking in this area and that is what inspired me to write this story,” Michael said, adding that he wants to raise awareness of the problem. He will donate proceeds to Cleveland Missing, a nonprofit that offers support and resources to the families and survivors of abductions.
The plot bears a resemblance to the notorious case of Ariel Castro, who held three women in his Cleveland home for three years before they escaped in 2004. It was a news report that shocked the nation.
“Everybody knows this story,” Michael said. “I didn’t want to say that I took [the plot] from that Cleveland situation. So, I intentionally didn’t read the details so as not to copy it.”
The short film, “Theater 4,” is about a young woman who enters a movie theater and finds herself trapped in her own dark drama. It was shot in one night at Golden Star Theater in Austintown.
Michael wrote and directed “Theater 4” and produced it through his film company, Candid Life Entertainment.
Michael and his wife moved from Cleveland to Austintown about a year ago. “It just seemed like the right place to be at this point in our lives,” he said.
The native of Vineland, N.J., attended Elizabethtown College in Lancaster, Pa., and then worked in the higher education field in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco
His next film project is a documentary on David Vosburgh, who founded Opera Western Reserve in Youngstown in 2004 and served as its artistic director until retiring a few years ago. Michael shot the film in Massachusetts, where Vosburgh lives, over the summer.
He is currently editing the film and will have a public screening in the Mahoning Valley when it is completed.
Vosburgh was a Broadway actor and opera singer who worked on New York stages for decades. He later moved to Youngstown, where he was an instructor at Youngstown State University and a pillar of the Valley’s arts community for two decades.
Pictured at top: Adam Michael edits footage. He will premiere his movie “113 Indigo Dr.” Saturday at Golden Star Theater in Austintown.
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