Local focus

Each morning, 17-year-old Ada Welles wakes up to a set of index cards prepared by her father: “Your name is Ada Amelia Welles.” “You do not remember anything.” “You lost your memory following a car accident.”

Unable to form new memories, Ada is forced to place her trust in the persons her father tells her are her friends. But she soon discovers that the line between trust and truth is more blurry than she thought …

Set for a screening June 14 at the Parlor Room at Signature Sounds in Northampton, “The Cards” is a 55-minute psychological thriller written and directed by Jake Bridgman last year when he was a senior at Northampton High School (he’s now a student at Emerson College) and filmed in Hadley, Amherst and Easthampton with the help of a $2,000 grant from Northampton Community Television.

The screening is part of Focus Locus, a monthly initiative introduced earlier this year by NCTV. Occurring on the second Tuesday of the month at the Parlor Room, the series features intimate showings of locally produced works by video artists and filmmakers, including video “open mics” (for YouTubers) and discussions among creators and aficionados.

The 7 p.m. programs are free and attendees are welcome to bring their own beer or wine (no hard alcohol).

The Parlor Room is at 32 Masonic St. in Northampton. parlorroommusic.com

Documenting cultural decline

Retiring after a 20-year career as a graphic designer with her own company, Southampton artist Adell Donaghue spent three years wandering across the United States, stopping at intervals to paint bucolic landscapes and highway scenes “as a way of documenting American wanderlust and cultural decline.”

“I create art by funneling the world through my psyche in peculiar ways,” Donaghue says. “The secret for me is to remain open to exploration, allowing the soul of a place to reveal its magic.”

Opening with a reception Saturday, 5-8 p.m., at Elusie Gallery in Easthampton, “My Pyrrhic Victory” is a show of multimedia works and hand-pulled prints by Donaghue exhibiting what she calls “my perplexed feelings about the time we live in. Growing up in the United States in the twentieth century, I have spent my life observing an empire in decline. Creating scenes of vernacular architecture, carnival and the empty spaces along the American highways in light and shadow, I ask my work to whisper across time and space – this is how it felt to be here!”

— Dan DeNicola