Alex Fortin held his video camera, looked intently at the viewer and began to pan up the Bangor Public Library, filming the old building on a sunny, cool Monday morning.

There wasn’t much activity outside the library, which was closed for Patriot’s Day, but Fortin, a 10th-grader at Hampden Academy, found he could get some work done. He filmed secondary shots, known as B-roll, for his documentary-in-progress about the library.

Rachael Callaway and Gaelin Kopec-Belliveau, who are both in the eighth grade at Leonard Middle School in Old Town, stood outside the library with their backs to the building. They took video of the traffic passing on Harlow Street for their own documentaries.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could get up on that roof?” Callaway asked, looking at an apartment building across the street. “I wonder if we could do that.”

That kind of interest in new perspectives is just what the artists from Slightly Askew are looking for from the students. Four members of the collective are in Bangor this week to lead the kids, now on spring vacation, through the process of documentary filmmaking and theater performance.

“The Bangor Project,” including the students’ contributions, will be presented from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday in the former Freese’s building in Bangor. The presentations are free and open to the public.

There are roughly 50 Slightly Askew artists scattered around the country and the world. They travel to different cities to work with students and on their own projects.

The four-person team came to Bangor at the invitation of Abby Stiers, a University of Maine graduate student who is pursuing a master’s degree in fine arts and who now has an assistantship through the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy.

“Part of the goal of the assistantship is to help youth connect to the community of Bangor,” said Stiers, 28. “I had heard about Slightly Askew … and I thought it would be cool to bring them here.”

This week’s program, which is organized by the University of Maine new media department as part of a UMaine-City of Bangor project, is funded by a grant from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Margaret Chase Smith Center. The Bangor Y gave the group a discount on the use of space in the Hammond Street building, and Realty Resources Management donated the show space.

The Slightly Askew artists are volunteers but do receive a stipend.

Although Stiers would have liked to have seen more than four local students – three filmmakers and another student doing a theater piece – involved this week, she says she already has learned a lot.

“Hopefully, this will generate more interest in workshops I can teach,” Stiers said.

Slightly Askew has projects under way in New Orleans; Austin, Texas; Cleveland; Boston; Augusta, Ga.; and Pittsburgh. Bangor is one of the smallest communities in which the artists have worked.

But they don’t necessarily see it that way. When they work in a city they tend to focus on one neighborhood, usually with a lot of history.

“A big mission of our organization is that we’re going to neighborhoods where there might not be any kind of arts program established,” said Slightly Askew artistic director Meryl Murman, a 24-year-old from Cleveland who has spent the last six months in New Orleans. “We’re not working in the big arts center [of a city].”

The group of three young documentarians started their week Sunday getting familiar with the cameras and brainstorming documentary ideas.

They spent Monday morning with Slightly Askew artists Joel Tomar Levin of New York and Wil Kristin of Portland, Ore., reviewing their footage from Sunday and learning film and camera lingo such as wide shots, white balance and B-roll. The group eventually hit the streets, cameras in hand, to start filming their documentaries.

All three students said they wanted to spend their vacation week working on this project because they are intrigued by film. It’s something they say they could see themselves doing for a career.

Callaway decided on a project similar to something she’d seen on YouTube in which a person gave away hugs. That prompted a discussion about point of view and whether she should include herself in the documentary. Eventually, it was agreed that she should.

Kopec-Belliveau chose to focus on a man who played music outside of Bahaar Pakistani restaurant in downtown Bangor.

Fortin will focus on the Bangor Public Library, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary.

“I was just trying to find an interesting subject to do research on, so I chose that,” he said.

The group started at the Pakistani restaurant, which was closed. Kopec-Belliveau shot some B-roll anyway.

Then they walked to the Freese’s building, where other Slightly Askew members were setting up the performance space and working on their own projects, including one about the 1937 shooting of the Brady Gang, which occurred in downtown Bangor.

The students were to spend Tuesday and Wednesday doing interviews, more filming and then editing the documentaries.

The artists from Slightly Askew get something out of their time in Bangor, too.

“There’s so much space here,” said executive director Christin Meador, also 24. “As an artist you really appreciate that.”

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

990-8287

The Bangor Project

When: 6-9 p.m. Thursday and Friday

Where: The former Freese’s building, Main Street, Bangor

How much: Free