But mostly, during those Hoboken years, she was making Delivered Vacant, an epic documentary that took 8 years to complete, and went on to premiere at the New York Film Festival and Sundance. She took a few months off to direct and edit Habits & Choices, a documentary about drug addicts living with AIDS, for the Jersey City Medical Center, and shot a documentary for the Sundance Institute.

In 1993, while still living in Hoboken, Nora began working on a screenplay, My Mother's Early Lovers based on an unpublished manuscript written by a Vermont writer, Sybil Smith about her agrarian/socialist parents who had lived on a commune with Scott and Helen Nearing. Nora and Sybil wrote the script together, with Nora commuting to Vermont periodically for readings and fund raising. Finally in 1995, Nora moved back to Vermont, started Off The Grid Productions and began gearing up to make My Mother's Early Lovers, her first dramatic feature film.

Seven years later, Nora and Off The Grid are still in Vermont, enjoying the close-knit film and arts community, the beautiful hills, and the progressive ethos of the state of Vermont. Since finishing My Mother's Early Lovers, Nora has collaborated with a Vermont-based international puppet theater, Dragon Dance Theatre, to make a short film based on a Zapotec myth, Sun and Moon Were Children and Walked on the Earth. Currently Nora is screening her new feature film, Nothing Like Dreaming.

Off The Grid Productions has expanded to include a small recording studio. Musicians working with us include singer/song writer David Ferm, who created the haunting score of My Mother's Early Lovers and who is now working on his first cd, the amazing guitar master and composer Larry Polansky, who scored Nothing Like Dreaming, sound designer/composer Brenda Hutchinson, and fire music creator Michel Moglia.

As you might surmise, we are not literally off the grid, as some in Vermont are, powered by sun or wind. For us, being "off the grid" is more a state of mind, a seeking of alternative modes of expression, a willingness and desire to grapple with ideas, images and sounds that push the boundaries of convention and expand the imagination.