Presentation
The Villagers : Scenes from America's
Retirement Utopia
The utopian vision of real estate developer, Howard Schwartz, The Villages is a master-planned retirement community located in central Florida. It is America’s fastest growing “city”, with a population in excess of 140,000, that attracts retirees from all over the country and beyond. Over the course of three years, I visited The Villages many times, experiencing this often-surreal world and trying to understand what attracts a never-ending stream of new residents, many of whom are leaving behind families in colder climates to spend their latter days surrounded by their same demographic in what is sometimes referred to as “the Disney World for retirees”.
Though the production process for a documentary film was mostly finished by 2020, like so many things, the project’s completion was upended by the pandemic. Put to one side for several years, these collected recordings will be revisited.
Stephen Crompton
Stephen Crompton is filmmaker and photographer whose work explores the American-made landscape. His work has been featured in festivals and exhibitions in the US and abroad, including the Sarasota Film Festival, Virginia Film Festival, the San Francisco Documentary Festival, Athens Film and Video Festival, and the Sidewalk Film Festival.
He received his MFA in Film & Video Production and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Iowa. He earned a BA in Film and Television Studies from Aberystwyth University in the UK.Crompton serves as Associate Teaching Professor of Film at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
Gallery
