NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — A short film from the Mariners’ Museum and Park has been selected for the first-annual Fredericksburg Film Festival taking place next month.

The museum’s short film, “In the Name of the Oyster,” was submitted in the Documentary Short category and is the first-of-its-kind for the museum and the film’s director, Kyra Duffley.

“When our small, completely novice production team of two was started in 2021, we never could have imagined a possibility like this,” said Mariners’ Museum creative director Kyra Duffley in a news release. “I’m honored to share the story of mariners working in the world around us, reflected by these two 1908 paintings and then seen through the Mariners’ mission of connecting people to the waters and one another.”

The film was originally released as an installment of the museum’s popular Beyond the Frame series in October 2023 and is based on paintings by Clifford Warren Ashley and features the women-owned Matheson Oyster Company and the all-woman oyster team at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The museum describes the film as “uniting the paintings’ subjects with real-world oyster harvesting and restoration practices” and … “shines a light on environmental sustainability in a historic industry with considerable regional impact.”

The first annual Fredericksburg Film Festival is set to be held May 2-5, with film screenings at locations in downtown Fredericksburg.

“My genuine hope when people see this film is that they will not only reflect on the actions they can take today to shape a better tomorrow,” Duffley said, “but also feel empowered to search deeper when looking at a work of art and use it as a catalyst to find and build connections with others.”

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For more information on the festival, click here.