BUXTON – For the last three years, you could say Patrick Bonsant has been eating, sleeping and breathing the history of Buxton.

On Saturday, the results of his efforts – a three-hour documentary that spans the history of Buxton, starting around the 1675 King Philip’s war – will premiere for the public at the Buxton-Hollis Historical Society at 6:30 p.m.

That is, of course, if Bonsant, who heads the public access station Saco River Community Television, stops tinkering with the film he’s dedicated so much time to completing. As of Tuesday afternoon, he said, he was still making last-minute edits.

“I don’t think we scratched the surface with this three-hour film. There is so much to cover but after three years I said, ‘I think there is a movie here,’” Bonsant said.

“I was sleeping at the station in Hollis. I set up an edit system in the living room. I’ve been working on it all the way through and I’ve spent several hundred hours on it,” Bonsant said.

Bonsant, along with his co-producer, Matthew Fletcher, and a few station interns, created what they believe is an interesting take on the history of Buxton.

“I think this movie will be something the people of Buxton can look to for a number of years as a source of information,” he said.

Fletcher agreed, and said he had no idea what the duo was getting into when the project began.

“I was surprised at the scope and the broad strokes we had to go through to cover Buxton, Maine. Neither Pat nor I thought it was as much of a big deal as it is. It was a big project,” Fletcher said.

Jan Hill, the president of the Buxton-Hollis Historical Society and the host of Saturday’s event, and her husband, Brent, are some of the select few who have already seen the film.

“We sat down one evening at 9 p.m., just to watch 15 or 20 minutes of it, and then we thought we’d go to bed and watch more later when we had more time. At midnight we were there at the end. We thought it was very entertaining and we couldn’t seem to leave. It got our attention. I thought the whole thing was great,” Hill said.

The documentary begins as the King Philip’s War is ending in 1675 and land is being cut into distinct townships. At that time, Buxton was known as Narragansett No. 1. Narragansett No. 7 is now known as Gorham. The rest of the townships were in present-day Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Bosant said he started the project by gathering a group of residents together to hear their thoughts on the history of Buxton and how the town has fared throughout history. From there he began researching, and in the edit room, found the holes he needed to fill.

“I think what really impressed me was how tough, resilient and scrappy Buxton people are,” he said. “The last 25 minutes of the film, the narration is turned off and I just let the people of Buxton express their hopes for the town’s future and talk about its past.”

The Indian Wars, early settler life, the industrial history of the town and even the landscape are also covered in the film.

Bonsant said he enjoyed learning about the about the hydro-powered dam, which changed the course of development through the town

“It was a key factor in how the town changed – in some ways for the better and for some ways it was a detrimental aspect of the town’s history because it changed the topography of the area dramatically,” Bosant said.

Fletcher said his favorite part in filming the project was a helicopter ride he got to take along the Saco River shooting footage out of the side of the chopper, but he also got a chance to learn a lot along the way.

His favorite section was the same as Bonsant’s: learning about the lives of past artists in the area.

“The artists section, with Gibeon Bradbury and his life painting portraits of people in Saco and Biddeford before photography as a way to document the well-to-do people of the area in that time, was interesting,” said Fletcher.

Fletcher said some other interesting scenes to shoot were a Civil War re-enactment and underwater diving excursion, although those segments may not have made the final cut and could be used for other upcoming projects.

“It ended up being long, but without it being boring. It’s not bad and it’s not boring. Any kind of film you make, ultimately you need an audience for it and to have a certain video quality and audio quality that is good enough to be entertaining. You walk away from this feeling something, definitely,” said Fletcher on the documentary.

Bosant said he started out the project when he was in Plummer’s grocery store and he noticed a postcard history book written by James D. Libby.

“I think that’s what really got my imagination rolling, because I was able to see a glimpse of people standing on cliffs that are now 40, 50, 60 feet under water. I thought to myself there was a larger story here,” Bonsant said.

Since then, his research has taken on a fairly large scope and has been used as the kickoff for other projects, including a documentary on the Saco River Indians, which is set to air on Maine Public Broadcasting this month.

(The print and earlier online version of this story misspelled Patrick Bonsant’s name)

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