An accidental moment of intimacy sparks one girl to turn on another, revealing the intricacies of adolescent friendship and saving an amphibious life.
SALAMANDER is a coming-of-age narrative feature set in 1986 small-town Massachusetts, following Katie, an awkward, earnest 11-year-old Catholic school girl adrift in a household of well-meaning but emotionally absent men, quietly struggling to cope. She constructs an elaborate mythology around her missing mother--possibly CIA, possibly vanished like Jim Thompson, the legendary American "silk king" who walked into a Malaysian jungle and never came back--because she cannot bear to call it loss. When a local boy's accidental death briefly illuminates the invisible kids around him, Katie misreads grief as currency and sets a chain of events in motion that destroys her only true friend's shot at history, costs her the fickle affection of the popular girl next door, and ultimately lands her alone in a stolen rowboat, begging the sharks to come find her--not because she wants to die, but because she desperately wants to be seen. Framed against the real and irreversible tragedy of the Challenger explosion, SALAMANDER asks what it means to survive becoming yourself--and finds its answer in the regenerative biology of its title creature: the thing that grows back what it loses.
Jen Heck (PGA) is an American filmmaker whose award-winning work has screened at the Whitney Biennial, Sundance, and major festivals worldwide. She has filmed documentaries from Mount Everest to the West Bank, often directing while operating camera in remote locations. Her television work includes MTV's "True Life," "Teen Mom," and "House Hunters International." Her films have garnered numerous awards and nominations including honors from New York Women in Film and Television, the Iris Prize, Cinequest, Zurich's Pink Apple, the Short Movie Awards, the Provincetown International Film Festival, the Big Muddy Film Festival, and Newfest. Her short film "Hold Up" (Sundance, 2006 - writer) was honored with inclusion in Sundance's 40th anniversary short film retrospective. She holds degrees from NYU Tisch and Columbia University.
She is currently developing a documentary about Prince with Mayte Garcia and Van Jones, a documentary about the 1984 Great Adventure fire, a feature version of her short film Salamander, and a true story about the savagery of modern small-town life called School Committee.
Columbia University Film Festival, 2009, Audience Award
Iris Prize, 2009, Nominee
Actor - David Alan Basche
Cinematographer - Martina Radwan
