“Last Warmth: A School Forest Documentary,” directed by YSHS senior Kian Barker, will debut May 7 at the Little Art. Pictured in a still from the documentary is School Forester Miles Gilchrist, right, with villager and tree-seeker Lauren Cromer in the School Forest Club’s quintessential tractor trailer. (Video still)
‘Last Warmth’ — A love letter to School Forest
- Published: May 6, 2025
For more than 75 years, Yellow Springers have looked forward to the tradition of hot chocolate, tractor rides and the smell of fresh-cut trees at the annual School Forest Festival. Through the decades, it’s been the work of generations of high schoolers to plant and tend the trees villagers cut down in winter, keeping the annual tradition — quite literally — alive.
This month, a new documentary — helmed by and starring School Foresters themselves — debuts, giving local residents a behind-the-scenes look at the School Forest Club’s work tending the forest from seedling to tree, and every stage in between.
“Last Warmth: A School Forest Documentary” will screen Wednesday, May 7, at the Little Art Theatre.
The News spoke via email with the film’s director, local resident and YS High School senior Kian Barker, who said he began filming “Last Warmth” in May 2024 as part of his senior project. Filming began during the School Forest Club’s annual end-of-year trip — last year, the group traveled to the Hocking Hills — and continued throughout the club’s yearly events, ending in early April this year.
“So the documentary is truly the full School Forest experience,” Barker said.
That experience began in earnest on Dec. 18, 1948, with the very first School Forest Festival. The festival was a joint effort of then-Glen Helen Director Ken Hunt and Antioch College graduate student Alan Woog, along with school administrators and students. The initial few crops of trees were cut from the Glen’s Pine Forest, established in the Glen in the 1920s, until the seedlings planted by the first School Forest students specifically to be cut as Christmas trees matured.
In an effort to showcase the “rich history” of School Forest, Barker said “Last Warmth” includes photos dating back to the 1950s and archival footage from 1997 — which Barker noted was a decade before he was born.
“Longtime School Foresters might have an interest in seeing if they [have a] cameo” in the film, Barker added, but emphasized that the “main focus of the documentary is to immerse the viewer in the traditions, culture and feelings of the current year.”
Villagers may know Barker as an already seasoned filmmaker: Last year, as the News reported, Barker and several other YSHS students premiered the short film “OTIS,” and Barker and fellow senior Miles Gilchrist have created two full-length web series, “My Life in Quarantine” and “The American Theatre,” over the last several years.
Those works, however, were scripted, fictional narrative efforts — “Last Warmth” marks Barker’s first foray into documentary filmmaking. He said he was inspired to create the documentary last year as he and his fellow School Foresters were out “under the stars” during a winter campout in the Glen’s Pine Forest.
YSHS social studies teacher John Day — who has served as the School Forest advisor for just over three decades — regaled the reclining students with a tale about the life cycle of a pine tree, Barker said, and about how “cycles of nature, cycles of students, had passed through the forest and the club, and the trees still stood and watched it all.”
School Forest Advisor John Day is a prominent figure in “Last Warmth.” (Video still)
“When I heard that,” Barker added, “I knew that I had to capture that magic on film for my senior project, and I thought there wasn’t a better way to do so than a documentary.”
Staying faithful to the theme introduced by Day, Barker said he aimed for the film to capture the shared imagery between the life cycle of a School Forest tree and that of a student, noting that watching the trees grow and then be taken home by villagers every winter “mirrors graduating classes” in its way, “helping School Forest symbolize the high school experience.”
Musing on the novel experience of documentary over narrative film, Barker said he’s always favored filmmaking that’s “more improvisational than planned,” noting that even within his and his friends’ scripted works, the “best moments are often found in the moment.” Though filming a documentary means, inevitably, less control over the events portrayed on-screen when compared to scripted narratives, Barker said there’s “just something about capturing genuine moments as they happen that you can never really replicate” in scripted narratives — though he added that he hopes to “come close” in future works.
Barker edited the film in its entirety and filmed most of the work himself, though he did hand the camera to other School Foresters occasionally, which allows him to appear on-screen in some scenes. He added that he was given “invaluable feedback” on an early cut of “Last Warmth” by local resident and renowned filmmaker Steven Bognar — though he noted that the person who has “seen every draft of the film and given the most notes out of everyone” has been his mom, Melissa Tinker.
Barker also pointed to Day — or “Dayglow,” as he’s referred to by School Foresters — as a great supporter of the work, referring to the advisor as an “inspiring, sage-like figure who guides the club with an expert hand.” Day is also responsible for the film’s title; in one scene, Day extinguishes a campfire on a cold School Forest morning and says to School Forester Miles Gilchrist: “Miles, this is going to be your last warmth.”
Barker noted that Day’s words can be interpreted in a number of ways as the young filmmaker and his fellow seniors get ready to cross the stage at graduation in a mere few weeks.
“School Forest is one of the last outlets teenagers have to be kids — camping out with your friends, playing Sardines and roasting marshmallows,” Barker said. “There’s none of the stress that comes with everything else in your senior year — there’s even an unofficial rule that we’re not allowed to talk about college.”
Barker is headed to New York University in the fall, and he expects to keep studying and making films beyond the small Ohio town that served as a living backdrop for his growth as an artist. “Last Warmth,” he said, is his Yellow Springs swan song — at least for the time being.
“One could think of [‘Last Warmth’] as my definitive statement about this community — but I’m still very young, and I have a lot to learn, and I’m sure there are more aspects of small-town life I’ll want to explore on film,” he said. “But as I head off to college, I suppose it’s ‘goodbye’ — for now.”
“Last Warmth” will debut Wednesday, May 7, beginning at 8 p.m. at the Little Art Theatre. Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $5 at the door.
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Although I didn’t participate in the program when I was a student, I always admired those who did. Kudos to the YSHS students, faculty, and staff who keep this great program alive.