New opportunities at an old setting

"The Ride," a 10-minute short about Paul Revere, was one of the films shot at Old Sturbridge Village last year.

Score another victory for the state's tax breaks for film production. Efforts to entice more film work to Massachusetts are being felt all the way out in Old Sturbridge Village, the living museum 60 miles west of Boston that re-creates New England life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The village's 200-acre complex of historic buildings, country roads, and rolling fields has seen a spike in activity as a setting for period films over the past year, which village marketing manager Pam Lozier says is a direct result of the tax breaks.

Los Angeles-based Meriwether Productions shot a 10-minute short called "The Ride," about Paul Revere, at the village over six days in May. The company brought in 10 professional actors and used local residents and village staff in smaller roles. The short debuted at the Boston Film Festival last fall.

In June, Insignia Films did a one-day shoot for a program about Kit Carson for the PBS series "American Experience." That one "involved horses in the morning and the printing press in the afternoon," says Lozier.

Springfield television station WGBY has been working since last summer on a series about 19th-century lithographers Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives using the village as the background. The station is making three 30-minute documentaries based on a collection of 787 Currier & Ives prints at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts.

"We've tried to re-create some of the prints that made [the printmakers] so famous," says Lozier. The filmmakers wanted a range of seasons and shot in the summer, fall, and this past week at the village.

(A special advance screening of the first part, "Printmakers to the People," takes place on Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Academy of Music in Northampton. Filmmaker Mary Steele will be joined at the event by Springfield Art Museums director Heather Haskell and Mount Holyoke College history professor Daniel Czitrom. An 11-minute trailer is at currierandives.org.)

"We try to schedule the shoots after hours," says Lozier. "Right now there's not a lot of daylight and there's limited electricity out in that village, so we push for Mondays, when we're closed, and early or evening shoots - especially if it involves bringing in animals. 'Kit Carson' had a horse that was brought in and 'The Ride' had a couple of horses."

The village charges just enough to cover its fees, Lozier says, which include the costs of having a curator on site when there's filming in a building and extra security and maintenance. Film fees are not, she says, part of the village's budget.

So are they looking for bigger projects?

"Well, because we're a museum people can't just construct something on our property," says Lozier. "And there are no vehicles in the village during hours - that cuts it back to smaller film productions. We have increased it this past year, letting in more PBS-type shows. We're comfortable with it now."

There's nothing yet on the calendar for 2008, she says, although the producers of "The Ride" are shopping for financing to do a feature film, "and if that happens they will probably come back to the village." Last spring Lozier was getting three or four inquiries a week about using the facility.

The last large-scale movie shot at Old Sturbridge was "Hawaii," a 1966 feature starring Julie Andrews and Max von Sydow as New England missionaries. It was directed by George Roy Hill.

"We all know that if we got a blockbuster movie in here it would really help the village as far as attendance goes," Lozier says. The village would welcome that, she says - "as long as it wasn't a horror flick."

LOCALS TO BE HONORED: Imagine magazine, which writes about "the business of film, television, and new media production in the Northeast," will be honoring five members of the regional film community on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in a celebration party at the Regattabar in Cambridge.

They are Roger Lyons, national trustee and president emeritus of the Boston/New England chapter of the National Television Academy and director of commercial production for BZ Productions; William J. Murphy, a Rhode Island politician who sponsored film tax incentives in that state; Don Packer, co-owner of the Boston production facility Engine Room and a founding member of the Massachusetts Production Coalition; Carolyn Pickman, a casting director who worked last year on "The Box" and "The Women" and, in past years, on "Gone Baby Gone," "The Departed," and the Providence-based television show "Brotherhood"; and Ernest Thompson, winner of an Academy Award for his screenplay for "On Golden Pond."

For information about the event, contact Imagine magazine at 617-576-0773.

CONVERSATION WITH: British director Simon Pummel has spent most of his career making videos (including for the rock band Queen) as well as spots for MTV. He'll be at the Museum of Fine Arts Wednesday at 8 p.m. to present his first feature film, "Bodysong," an impressionist gumbo of images on birth, love, sex, violence, and death. It features music by Jonny Greenwood, lead guitarist of Radiohead. A trailer is online at bodysong.com, and screening details are at 617-267-9300 and mfa.org/film.

BERGMAN MINI-FEST: Nothing quite says oh-my-god-winter-is-really-here like a four-day homage to Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish director and king of atmospherically icy "winter light," who died last year.

The Harvard Film Archive is showing, over four consecutive days starting Friday, a sampling of Bergman's work, beginning with "Summer Interlude" at 7 p.m. and "Winter Light" at 9 p.m. Also scheduled are "Sawdust and Tinsel," "Through a Glass Darkly," "The Magic Flute," "In the Presence of a Clown," "The Virgin Spring," "From the Life of the Marionettes," and "The Face" (also known as "The Magician"). Full details are at 617-495-4700 and hcl.harvard.edu/hfa.

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.