visual artist
© Heddi Vaughan Siebel 2007
24/212: The Green Mountain Run
22 min, 2005
It’s not about who you can beat but how fast you can go. Each spring, for thirty years, students/athletes from a unique Vermont school battle to run across 212 miles of their state from the Massachusetts line to the Canadian border within 24 hours. Bone burning truths reveal that records may be kept or broken, but honor springs proudly from commitment.
Director/ Producer/ Camera: Heddi Vaughan Siebel
Music: Parrish Ellis, The Small Room Sessions, Truthface Recordings 2001
Broadcast on Vermont Public Television 2005
The Expeditionist
Documentary Work in Progress
The one thing I know about my grandfather John Vaughan is his greatest disappointment—that he never reached the North Pole with the Ziegler Expedition of 1903. The ship is lost. And after a winter’s wait, they must abort their crossing of the polar pack ice. I expect the burden of failure was a heavy one to bear. My grandfather’s regret reverberates through two generations of my family before my dying mother gifts me the Commander Anthony Fiala’s book, Fighting The Polar Ice, published in 1906. Inside this long silent testimony I discover another voyage—an inner voyage of betrayal and grace— every bit as compelling as the men’s life and death struggle in the frozen north. In spite of insubordination and a mysterious death, Fiala creates photographs and the first arctic film. If I could reconcile one thing in my life, it would be the outcome of this expedition.
Two journeys of discovery—one historical and the other personal— intertwine in my film The Expeditionist; and a hard-bitten arctic adventure becomes a voyage about art and the act of looking.
Director/Producer: Heddi Vaughan Siebel