ROPEd

Based on Margaret Atwood's poem "Half-hanged Mary" and on true events that took place in 1685, in Hadley, Massachusetts, ROPEd is a short dramatic film about a fiercely independent woman, a healer by trade and a landowner, who is condemned by her neighbors to die by hanging. That Mary Webster was acquitted of the most serious charges of witchcraft in a Boston court holds no sway over the vindictive townspeople out to rid her from their community. A calm evening seeing her tend to her day's end chores turns deadly, after men turn up to forcibly take her. They march her out to a field, where a full lynch mob awaits, and promptly hang her from a tree, leaving her there to die. However, the rope's knot, being a crude improvisation, fails to immediately do the trick, and Mary fights on, one raspy breath at a time, to save her life, as night settles and a storm approaches. In the morning, the townspeople gather to take Mary down from the tree, only to make a startling discovery, one that will haunt them to their graves. (Sedona International Film Festival)