Watch: Four Seasons Lodge

"You have to be obsessed," said director Andrew Jacobs, talking and coughing (he was fighting a cold) over the phone about what drove him to make the documentary Four Seasons Lodge. "If you're not obsessed with the subject, if you dont feel impossibly devoted to it, it's really hard when you have a full time job at the same time and you're trying to raise the money and organize the shoot, and then organize [the film] and edit it and market [the film]. i'm exhausted."

Jacob's passion for the subject was enough to get the legendary documentarian Albert Maysles on board as one of the cinematographers, and he first found out about this "different side of Dirty Dancing-land" while reporting on the Catskills for the New York Times, where he has been a staff writer for the past ten years: "I was talking to some people at a bungalow colony and they said you should go down the road and talk to the Holocaust survivors bungalow colony. They're all Holocaust survivors. I was intrigued, I walked up on the lawn and there was Hymie [Abramowitz, the Lodge's unofficial handyman] and he was super friendly and open and invited me back to the card room. I was bowled over by everyone's warmth and their stories. went to their party—a crazy contrast between these horrible things they had experienced and these great, kickass parties, house band, schmaltzy entertainers, and they dressed up like they were going to a wedding."

The story ended up being a piece of short reportage and when he heard from Hymie that they were planning to sell the colony next summer, he "felt this urgency. [The story] wasnt really a book, and it wasnt really a magazine article. I thought it would be this great movie, even if I hadn't ever really done a movie before."

Jacobs took every spare weekend he could grab and hung out at the colony, with an amazing cast of characters. They ended up focusing on ten residents, who make up a fascinating portrayal of human survival and community. "It was kind of remarkably communal and the residents have these intense relationships that you dont really see much in american society. People are so itemized and separated. Here you have people who had lost their families so they created a new familiy and they did it up in the Catskills. It allowed them to reinvent this Eastern European, rural shtetl communities. It's pretty amazing and it was kind of encouraging. I think about what happens when you get older and what kind of community you can create. These people are not rich, they're of modest means, and they wanted to create a community together. They found a way to make it work for them, even though theyre surrounded by people who are fading and dying and keep moving on. They get up for the next dance. Life can be beautiful even when it's not so easy. Even when times are rough you can find some beauty and joy in life."

Jacobs and learned a lot from this community of grandparents and grandmothers, united by their immigrant status and their survival: "there's also a bigger message, for people who've experienced real trauma, there's a light at the end of the tunnel—you never completely lose that, the memories and pain, but you can find joy in this life."

And working with the unstoppable 82-year-old Maysles, who seemingly has a movie a week (Muhammad and Larry on ESPN, Get Your Ya Yas Out) and a robust cinema up in Harlem, also taught Jacobs about aging gracefully: "he kind of does what they do, which is don't stop moving. That's my takeaway from being with older people—as soon as you start to slow down, that's when you start to atrophy. Relaxing becomes, in some ways, your enemy."
 

Four Seasons Lodge opens today, Wednesday, November 11, at the IFC Center in New York City for a one-week run. Jacobs and his team will be appearing at the 8:00 pm shows. Click here for ticket information.

Check out the trailer: