User Reviews

Starboard Light is a love story of place and connections. The film is a poignant portrait of the people who shaped a house into a place where a family gathered for multiple generations. The small cape house in Chatham Massachusetts became a magnet that drew people to it like a moth to light. Does a family make a house or a house make a family. It is clear that it is little of both.

The archival footage that Nick Fitzhugh incorporated into the film helps to provide the history and the longevity of this old house and its importance to the family. And his filming of the house in more recent times draws you in, so that you can feel the harbor breeze and hear the floors creak. You can't help but want to be there and experience what he and his grandparents, his cousins, aunts and uncles, and extended family did over decades. But the energy and love that his grandparents, and great grandparents invested in this place made it come alive. Without them, there would be no gathering place. They created an ethic of caring and returning home to Chatham that would become ingrained in all of the children, and their children.

It is a poem and a beautiful piece of film making that many families will identify with. Whether it is a hunting camp, a small cabin on the ocean, a multi-generational home — each begins a tradition of belonging and connecting with family. And when that place is no longer, the challenge is keeping that tradition alive. I believe that this family will succeed.

Watching this documentary took me back, the Cape Cod smells, the sounds, the sand on your shoe less feet, the constant breeze, the clothes on the line blowing in the wind, the trips to the big beach, the mornings at the bay, sailing, swimming in the pond on the way home from the beach to wash off the salt, the books and story reading, comic books left in the attic, clam chowder cooking on the stove, many visitors over the summer. My father had the wisdom to purchase property on Summit Street (hill) in Wellfleet, Cape Cod in 1953. He paid 4,000.00 to build our cottage. I had 3 older brothers, me being the only girl. We had bunk beds and shared a room, my parents had their own private room. It was the most wonderful, happy childhood I could ever have. The one home where we all came together, for years and years. We had this home for 33 years. I visited it 4 years ago, after several years. The house is the same, a little different, screen porch now glassed in, but all and all, it looked the same. Someone loves it, and I am so thankful. Every time I smell pine trees, it takes me back, and it always will. The Cape is a part of me, in my blood, forever. My father once said to me in his last years of life, "I should have given you trips to Europe, or something like that". I told him that he gave me a magic place to call home, something that I looked forward to going to every year all of my life. A Home on the Cape!