Alamo Theatre to screen Maine-made independent film

Director Samuel Dunning celebrates his Maine roots in ‘silly’ and ‘wholesome’ movie

July 7, 2026

By Annie Means

Freestyle canoeing, or canoe dancing, pairs choreographed paddling with music. Photo courtesy of Canoe Dig It.

Bucksport’s historic Alamo Theatre will host a screening of Canoe Dig It, a Maine-made independent film, on July 9. The mockumentary comedy follows the nation’s top canoeists as they travel to a freestyle canoe competition in northern Maine.

An eccentric cast of characters, including a young paddling wunderkind, a bickering pair of summer camp owners, and a backwoods natural duke it out to prove who’s the best freestyle canoer.

Freestyle canoeing, also called canoe dancing, requires athletes to paddle as elegantly as possible to choreographed musical numbers. Picture figure skating, but in a boat, with a paddle, and arguably, a lot less grace.

The film’s director, writer, and star, Samuel Dunning, pokes fun at his Down East roots in his feature debut, scattering the film with Maine mannerisms and tropes about his home state. Originally from Brunswick, Dunning first learned about freestyle canoeing on a visit home to see family.

“It was equal parts wholesome, impressive, and silly,” Dunning said of the sport.

With an abundance of time on his hands during the COVID lockdown, Dunning took the freestyle canoeing premise and adapted it into a feature length script. He wrote the entire script in Maine, he said, and filmed most of it at a summer camp on Thompson Lake.

The movie could have been shot in Vermont, upstate New York, or other New England states with more generous film tax breaks, but Dunning was determined to make his feature as authentic as possible.

“The movie is a love letter to Maine,” Dunning said. "Having grown up here, moving away really painted a picture of how special Maine is as a place."

That hometown spirit also shows up in how the film has found its way to audiences. After an underwhelming festival run in 2025 and several lackluster distribution offers, Dunning decided to distribute the movie himself. A friend in the industry suggested he try locally owned theaters, so Dunning spent months cold-calling independent cinemas across the state.

The screening at the Alamo will be the film's 16th in Maine—and it's a particularly fitting venue given what the theater represents. At a time when independent theaters are disappearing across the country, many of Maine's historic movie houses have endured as vital community gathering places. That makes the pairing of Dunning's film and the Alamo a natural fit.

The Alamo houses Northeast Historic Film, a nonprofit that archives, collects, and preserves the moving-image heritage of northern New England. Beyond screening both blockbusters and independent films, the organization hosts concerts, digitizes footage, sells stock film, mounts exhibitions, and holds one of the world’s largest collections of home movies and amateur film.

“Our motto is ‘The Alamo Theatre is your community cinema,’” Jane Donnell, head of Northeast Historic Film’s Theatre, Distribution & Donor Services, said.

A staple in Bucksport since 1916, the building stopped operating as a cinema in 1956. In the years since, it continued to serve as a community hub—first as a grocery store, then a health center, and finally a rock and roll bar before being pulled back together as a cinema space.

Now, Northeast Historic Film is a member-supported organization, funded largely by grants, donations, and revenue from its video services. “Of course decisions at the federal level have impacted us,” Donnell said.

The clearest blow came when a $206,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities was revoked—money that was meant to fund Northeast Historic Film’s effort to digitize, catalog, and present news footage from every television station in Maine.

But, the Alamo persists and works hard to give their members what they want: “We know our audience and what typically works.” says Donnell.

Canoe Dig It, a Mainer’s movie, fit perfectly into Alamo’s programming.

This collaboration between independent creators and independent cinema means a lot in a world where Hollywood and major cinemas green light largely sequels and pre-existing IPs.

“Independent film is the frontier still beating the drum of creativity in this industry," Dunning says. “People want originality more than anything else these days,” he continues.

The curators at the Alamo know exactly how to deliver that originality.

Find more of the Alamo’s programming here. Learn more about Canoe Dig It at this link.

The Canoe Dig It screening on July 9 will begin at 7 p.m. Advance tickets aren’t available and seating is first come, first served. Doors open 30 minutes prior to showtime.