Matthew Dougherty moved to Bearsville in 2017 with enough savings to spend a year making a movie. Nearly a decade into his first documentary, he needed time to work without the expense and demands of New York City.
“To work full time to pay your rent, you can’t make a movie like that, because the hustle is just too time consuming,” Dougherty said.
Finishing it would take another nine years, a move to Los Angeles, and a return to the Hudson Valley, where he found collaborators through coffee dates, backyard screenings, and a WhatsApp group called Hudson Valley Filmmakers he helped start.
The result, “The Natural State,” premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in September and will screen at the Woodstock Film Festival on Saturday, Oct. 17 at the Orpheum Theatre in Saugerties. Its completion marks the end of a project that began in 2008, when Dougherty discovered the archival footage online at its center, 18 years before its premiere.
The documentary follows U.G. Krishnamurti, an Indian thinker raised to become a spiritual leader who instead rejected the role. Around his 49th birthday, he underwent a weeklong experience he called “the calamity,” which he described as the destruction of his sense of self. Known as an “anti-guru,” he resisted being called a teacher, turned away followers, and refused money and praise. He died in 2007.
Julie Thayer, a New Yorker drawn to Krishnamurti, recorded hundreds of hours of footage of him in the 1980s and ’90s. According to the film’s press materials, she followed him in hopes of destroying her own ego.
Dougherty came across her footage and personal journals online while researching Krishnamurti as a potential film subject. He reached out, and Thayer quickly gave him permission to use the material.
By 2017, Dougherty had saved enough money to leave New York City and devote a year to the project in Bearsville. He moved to Los Angeles in 2018, where he met Robin Schwartz, his partner and the documentary’s producer and co-editor.
They returned to the Hudson Valley in 2022 and now live in West Shokan with their 6-year-old daughter. By then, the film was nearing completion, and Dougherty needed help from sound mixers, colorists, and producers.
“I think that there’s a real creative ethos in this area. It’s like people who live here aren’t in the hustle and bustle as much,” Schwartz said. “They believe in the vision, and so I think that’s how we finished it.”
That year, Dougherty connected with Mae Ryan, an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer at More Perfect Union who moved to Red Hook in 2020. She became the film’s associate producer.
“We just got coffee together, and we were talking about how it felt like there were a lot of people who live in the Hudson Valley that are filmmakers, and especially a lot of people who had moved up here during and after the pandemic,” Ryan said.
They decided to bring some of those people together. Their first gathering drew 20 people to Ryan’s backyard in Red Hook for a screening of short films by local filmmakers. After several meetups, they started a WhatsApp group called Hudson Valley Filmmakers. It now has about 300 members.
“It was kind of amazing to all of us, like oh wow! There’s a really great community of filmmakers up here,” Dougherty said.
Through the group, he met Clare Manchon, a composer and musician who became a co-producer of “The Natural State.” Dougherty composed the film’s score.
Manchon’s credits include composing for “Secret Mall Apartment” and contributing music to “The Housemaid” and “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” She lives in Kingston with her husband and musical partner, Olivier Manchon, and their two children.
She said the WhatsApp group helps film professionals find one another without the competitive pressures of larger industry hubs like New York or Los Angeles.
“People will post that they’re looking for a DP for something or a makeup artist or an intimacy coach, whatever it is, and everybody chimes in and gives recommendations and rave reviews with local people,” Manchon said, using the shorthand for director of photography.
Members also gather for regular work-in-progress screenings at Upstate Films, where they offer feedback on one another’s projects.
Not every collaboration on “The Natural State” began in the group. A scheduling conflict brought Dougherty to the film’s sound mixer, Coll Anderson, who lives and works in Bearsville.
“Matt was working with another sound guy who I sort of trade favors with, and he had a scheduling conflict,” Anderson said. “Really wonderful things come from accidents.”
Anderson’s credits include sound effects editing on “Barbie” and “The Whale,” and sound effects recording on “Black Swan” and “The Odyssey.” He moved upstate with his wife and two daughters in 2008 and said the area offers economic and creative freedom that can be difficult to find in a city.
“In film there’s this sort of unwritten rule of New York, L.A., Toronto, London. And it’s a little dated because now, clearly, there’s a wider working environment,” he said. “We get to work a lot longer here, which I think is conducive to a creative level of thinking that’s better than the city.”
His decision to build a studio upstate was partly inspired by Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas’ filmmaking facility in Marin County, California.
“We were kind of like, okay, let’s try and if we build it, they will come,” Anderson said.
Today, he works with directors, effects editors, sound mixers, and other film professionals who live throughout the Hudson Valley. Some are just minutes from his studio and regularly work there.
“There’s like an army of people up here, and we all sort of are working on our own projects, but we all kind of keep in touch with each other and help each other,” he said.
Anderson has also built ties beyond the film industry. Beginning around 2010, he served for about 12 years as an emergency medical technician with Company 5 of the Woodstock Fire Department. He also works winters as a ski patroller at Belleayre Mountain.
“I wanted to have a connection to the community that was deeper than my work,” he said.
For Schwartz, the Woodstock Film Festival screening will bring the finished documentary to the community that helped her and Dougherty complete it.
“You know this is my home. These are the people I’m surrounded by,” she said. “I’m just dying to see how people respond.”
“The Natural State” screens at 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17, at Upstate Films’ Orpheum Theater 1 in Saugerties. The 100-minute documentary will be followed by a Q&A with Dougherty and Schwartz, presented by Woodstock Healing Arts. Tickets are available through the Woodstock Film Festival website.
Photos by Michael Sofronski/The Overlook.
Isabella Schoonover is a staff reporter for The Overlook covering Woodstock, Saugerties, Hurley, and surrounding Ulster County communities. Send correspondence to isabella@theoverlooknews.com.
