Jennifer Maytorena Taylor’s work has shown at venues like the Sundance, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Locarno Film Festivals, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, and the New York Museum of Modern Art. Previous credits include the award-winning documentaries “New Muslim Cool” for “POV” and PBS, “Special Circumstances” for national PBS, and the Emmy Award-winning “Home Front.”

“For the Love of Rutland” was scheduled to screen at the 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival. A digital version of the fest has been organized due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “For the Love of Rutland” will screen in Hot Docs Festival Online, which will launch May 28 and is geo-blocked to Ontario, Canada. More information about the program and how to tune in can be found here.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

JMT: Filmed over three years in a hardscrabble Vermont town, “For the Love of Rutland” follows the story of Stacie Griffin, a remarkable woman in recovery, as she and the town’s inhabitants grapple with the widespread effects of the opioid epidemic and get caught up in a battle over the possible resettlement of a small number of Syrian refugees. Stacie, after a lifetime of being invalidated and shamed for her poverty and addiction, emerges as an unexpected and resilient leader in a town divided by class, culture, and the toxic politics of today.

“For the Love of Rutland” explores the forces racking much of post-industrial and rural America — including income inequality, the opioid epidemic, falling populations, and xenophobia. But the film also uncovers passionate civic engagement, intense love of home, and the stories of ordinary people who become extraordinary in their desire to think and feel for themselves.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

JMT: My family is originally from Los Angeles, and on my father’s side has very deep roots in on the West Coast in Northern Mexico and Southern California, but my parents moved my siblings and me to Vermont in the back-to-the-land 1970s when I was in elementary school. It was a really big culture shock for all of us, and even as the years passed we maintained a bit of a “one foot in-one foot out” relationship to the Rutland community.

I think having that hybrid perspective as an insider and an outsider led me to spend a lot of time observing how life in a small community works, how people are dependent on each other and intertwined and often supportive, but how they also still create barriers and divisions – especially around perceived differences of culture and social and economic class. Just like it is everywhere, people can be incredibly kind and incredibly cruel, but in a small town their actions can be more noticeable and more immediately impactful, and sometimes that duality of kindness and cruelty comes from the same person.

Although it’s been more than 35 years since I lived in the Rutland area, I have always wanted to tell a story about small town life from the perspective of someone who’s felt pushed aside and squashed by those harsh class dynamics that are the sort of underbelly of an otherwise really beautiful place. And it just so happened that I began filming in 2016 as all of these dynamics started shaping our current national situation of extreme ideological polarization and income disparities — issues now laid so horribly and lethally bare by the current pandemic.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

JMT: I especially want to challenge narratives and assumptions about how income inequality factors into our current political and ideological polarization. If Stacie can see herself in people who are apparently so different from her — while also struggling with the gravest of personal and economic disadvantages — what is stopping the rest of us?

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

JMT: The biggest challenge in making the film was sticking with the story over three years, and dealing with the ways that the story would start forming and then fall apart — especially as the new federal administration created so much chaos around the Muslim ban and stopping refugee resettlement. That’s the kind of challenge any filmmaker faces when making a project that spans several years, but in this case it was especially challenging since we had so little control over the forces shaping what was happening.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

JMT: I got “For the Love of Rutland” funded entirely through grants from foundations that support independent films about social issues, such as Sundance Documentary Institute, Fork Films, the NEA, and JustFilms at Ford Foundation. Several of those funders had supported my previous work, so fortunately I could draw on that established working relationship and track record — but of course I still had to work hard to secure the funding, as the landscape is very competitive.

As independent filmmakers often do, I structured the fundraising in increments, first shooting some test material to raise early development and production funds, then using that early footage to cut a trailer and other samples to raise production funds, and then using more advanced samples to raise post-production funding.

Additionally, I participated in a number of labs and residencies such as the Sundance Film Music and Sound Design Lab at Skywalker Ranch and the Points North and Tribeca Film Institute Rough Cut Retreat in Camden, Maine that CNN Films sponsored. Even though the labs were not grants per se, they still were absolutely invaluable experiences and opportunities for creative exploration as well as for relationship-building.

Finally, I kept the budget modest by serving as my own cinematographer and sound recordist for most of the scenes, and by staying at my family’s semi-hippy passive solar house in a farming town just outside Rutland, where my mom still lives!

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

JMT: I wanted to be a modern dancer when I was in college, but I wrecked my knees, so I eventually got interested in film because it has a lot of moving parts and interaction with sound and space in the way that dance does.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

JMT: The best advice I ever got was to remember that when you’re making a film about someone else’s story, it’s not about you. And the worst — and most discouraging — advice I ever got was from someone who told me to give up on a particular idea for a film because he thought it sounded boring. Not to overly interpret things along gender lines, but the best advice happened to have come from a woman and the worst from a man.

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?

JMT: Surround yourself with colleagues who will both support and challenge you, and don’t work with people who make you feel belittled or that they are not listening to you.

Find joy every day when you’re working, even when you’re making a serious film. Humor and food often connects us more than anything.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

JMT: That is a hard one because I have so many! A recent favorite is Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart.” It’s so damn funny and moving at the same time. I wish I had been that cool in high school.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?

JMT: I teach full-time and run the MFA program in Social Documentation in UC Santa Cruz’s Film and Digital Media Department, so I’ve been super busy working with students via countless Zoom sessions as they make their films during this weird time.

I’m also doing the research and development for my next film, which will be about the science and ideology of sound, and working on my not very good jazz bass playing. But doing jigsaw puzzles and riding my bike are the things keeping me most sane right now.