March/April 2010


NYC African Burial Ground Debut
“Cemeteries are at least as much for the living as the dead.”

On February 27th, the African Burial Ground National Monument visitor center debuted in downtown Manhattan. From roughly the 1690s-1790s, the site was a burial ground for free and enslaved Africans. Many people are unaware of the history of slavery in New York City, and the burial ground itself was only discovered by accident during the planned construction of a Federal office building

Lead Producer Molly O’Brien worked in collaboration with Amaze Design, the exhibit design firm, to produce several media exhibits for the center. The overall interpretive aim of the media was to encourage public understanding and appreciation of the site – its history, the people buried there, how research was carried out and what information it has yielded, as well as the community’s ongoing connection to the burial ground.

Media exhibits included an environmental audio program that provides a subtly textured soundscape for a burial scene, heightening the solemnity and emotion of that exhibit, a computer-based interactive that gives visitors a chance to delve into the fascinating scientific research on the remains, and a video interactive featuring contemporary individuals talking about the significance of the burial ground for contemporary individuals today.

The New York Times wrote:
Cemeteries are at least as much for the living as the dead. They are the locus of tribute and memory; they affirm connections to a place and its past. … That is a reason why Saturday’s opening of the African Burial Ground Visitor Center, near where these remains were reinterred, is so important. Among the scars left by the heritage of slavery, one of the greatest is an absence: where are the memorials, cemeteries, architectural structures or sturdy sanctuaries that typically provide the ground for a people’s memory?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/arts/design/26burial.html
Photos courtesy of Amaze Design




NLP to produce September 11 Memorial visitor film
Northern Light was recently selected to produce the film for the September 11 Memorial. The company is excited to have been chosen and ready to take on the complex yet crucial task of finally creating a film for visitors. More information to come...





NLP receives ITVS funding for This is Where We Take Our Stand
Northern Light Productions, together with Displaced Films, recently won funding to finish production on This is Where We Take Our Stand, a film that tells the story of over 250 courageous veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who convened in Washington DC in March of 2008 to testify about their experiences in these two wars. By turning their own experience into a weapon against the wars they had fought, they often were at odds with fellow soldiers, their families, their friends, even themselves.

Now, with funding from ITVS, Northern Light Productions will explore what has happened in the lives of these men and women in the aftermath of Winter Soldier, and how they have navigated both the impact of that event and the tumultuous changes they have experienced since. Two years later, their stories are perhaps even more relevant to all of us.

To see a prelude to the creation and release of the feature documentary, 6 webisodes are available at:

www.thisiswherewetakeourstand.com



NLP to premiere work at Harvard’s Gleitsman Social Change Film Forum
Northern Light Productions is producing four short films for the Gleitsman Social Change Film Forum, produced by the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kenney School in collaboration with the Sundance Film Festival. The event will honor two documentary films, previously screened at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, at Harvard on April 16-17. The event will convene a targeted audience of film executives, social change experts/practitioners, academics, and Harvard students to participate in a series of conversations with the hope of catalyzing the change the filmmakers sought when they began their projects.

NLP’s work will introduce the two chosen feature documentaries, A Small Act and Countdown to Zero. Each of these videos will profile students or graduates who are dedicated agents for social change. Our subjects range from the founder of Shokay, a clothing line that sources Yak fur from Tibetan herders, to a team of Zuckerman fellows who developed an iPhone application to organize medical records and help reunite families in Haiti.

Three of these short profile films will premier at the forum on April 16th and 17th, but you can check out all four online following the event.







NLP to create exhibit media for Morris Speedwell
Morristown NJ is home to the Factory at Historic Speedwell, the spot where
Alfred Vail and Samuel F. B. Morse perfected the electro-magnetic telegraph in 1837-1838. Now it’s a National Park Service designated Historic Landmark, and Northern Light has been selected to create a four-screen experience for visitors - one screen will be about the development of the telegraph, another will be about the stringing out of telegraph wiring, a third will be about the development of the telephone, and the fourth will be about the development of the internet.