Northern Light Productions

Shoot at Quixote Studios

2012-01-12T08:42:00.002-08:00

Tuesday the NLP team headed over to Quixote Studios to shoot a segment for the Historic Tours of America's Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum. The footage from the shoot will be transformed into a hollographic-like image using the pepper's ghost illusionary technique for the museum, which is now closed for renovations. This technique made the shoot quite challenging, according to our cinematographer Jesse Beecher. The camera position had to be precisely at the same level as the stage the actors were on in order for it to be transformed using pepper's ghost. Using a plate glass and special lighting techniques, pepper ghost can make objects seem to appear or disappear, transparent, or make one object seem to morph into another.

Shoot at Quixote Studios

2012-01-12T08:42:00.001-08:00

Shoot at Quixote Studios

2012-01-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

The Future of Interactive Screens

2011-12-14T11:18:00.000-08:00

Senseg, a developer of touchscreen technology, is developing a screen in which users can actually feel textures. No more mimicked interaction by having your smartphone vibrate. With this new technology, users will actually be able to feel 3D textures. From the roughness of a rock, to the contours of a shape, Senseg is bringing interaction to a whole new level.

When implemented into the design of an interactive exhibit, it opens up a whole new world of interactive film making. With these new screens, not only will you be stimulating your sense of sight and sound, but touch as well. Imagine, for example, you wipe away sand to reveal a video. But as you push the sand aside, you actually feel sand. Or perhaps your at a natural history museum. Aren't you just dying to know what that dinosaur bone feels like? With a Senseg screen you will be able to, to a certain extent.

The possibilities are obviously endless. Adding a sense of feel to an interactive exhibit will heighten the users sensation, and create a more realistic experience and an overall better environment. Get ready for a whole new world of interaction at museum exhibits!

News from the Bullpen

2011-12-08T07:18:00.000-08:00

Last week we screened a short fundraising piece for a documentary-in-progress by one of our own.

Michaela O’Brien, Northern Light AP extraordinaire, traveled to Bogotá, Colombia in October 2010 to film at the Hogares Luz y Vida orphanage. She observed the inner workings of the orphanage and documented the work being done to care for one hundred permanent residents, most with serious disabilities or terminal illnesses. The film has evolved into a portrait piece which explores the day-to-day lives of these children and gives insight into their outlook on life.

Michaela will be launching a Kickstarter campaign early next year to help fund further production in Colombia, and hopes to continue gathering interviews and filming with some of the incredible children, nurses, and staff members she met during her last trip.

For Northern Light, this was a great opportunity to see Michaela’s personal project and offer critical feedback and advice. We are all looking forward to the successful funding and completion of “Luz y Vida” (“Light and Life”).

Fred Wiseman—objectively speaking...

2011-12-04T19:43:00.000-08:00

Documentary legend and Boston native Frederick Wiseman spoke at Radcliffe College in Cambridge tonight, just a mile or so from Northern Light. While non-fiction filmmaking progressed (or regressed, depending on your point of view) from 60s-era Direct Cinema to Ken Burns-style historical epics to today's cable TV diet of shark attacks and serial killers, Fred has quietly continued making his trademark films on American public institutions—hospitals, military units, high schools, etc—utilizing the fly-on-the-wall approach he helped pioneer.

But don't call it Cinema Verité!

“What I try to do is edit the films so that they have a dramatic structure. That is why I object to some extent to the term observational cinema or Cinema Verité, because observational cinema to me connotes just hanging around, with one thing being as valuable as another, and that is not true. At least it’s not true for me. And Cinema Verité is just a pompous French term that has absolutely no meaning as far as I'm concerned.”

Those are Fred’s words on the subject, which he more or less reiterated tonight. Going along with it was his assertion that “objective filmmaking” is an oxy-moron, and that “documentary is just another form of fiction.” All this from one of the founding fathers of Verité, whose work is perhaps more associated with objectivity than any other filmmaker in history!

It was good, sobering food for thought. Here at Northern Light we would never claim our work to be entirely objective or without bias, as much as we might try to make it so. Films are made by human beings who all interpret reality through a different lens. We can only aspire to be fair. We can only make a concerted, systematic effort to consider multiple interpretations, then present “reality” the way we see it, including as many of those viewpoints as possible.

For his part, Fred was a lot more interested in talking shop tonight than discussing abstract notions of objectivity or the common good. His passion was clearly in his craft. A lot of the questions from the audience aimed to get his take on the state of documentary or of public television today. He politely side-stepped most of these questions; although he might have addressed them indirectly, later, when he responded to a question about the “digital revolution” in filmmaking:

“The only thing I see coming out of the “digital revolution” is a greater number of lousy films!”

HOLIDAY TIME AT NLP!!

2011-12-02T14:43:00.000-08:00

How many producers does it take to set up the office tree?

Sean: "Glad I can help guys!"

Jesse: "What if we wedge a VHS tape between the tree and the stand to help support the tree?"

Ben: "I'm not here."

Conserving old VHS tapes by making them "decorative" gifts.

Keiko decorating like a champ!

Jesse adding the traditional NLP tree top: the "angelic" Etta James!!

"Z"eric adding his favorite ornament to the tree.

The design team showcases their art!!!

Grand Opening of Utah Museum of Natural History

2011-11-29T10:29:00.000-08:00

Since the beginning of 2011, Northern Light Productions has been producing media for the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City, Utah. Our team made up of Producer, Kate Raisz; Project Manager, Tim Lay; Associate Producer, Michaela O’Brien; Motion Graphic Artist, Eric Carlsen; and Editor, Andy Kukura have been working full steam to create three audio programs and seven video programs that communicate the breadth of Utah’s fascinating culture.

Much of our footage was shot on the RED camera and our immersive audio environments share native legends passed down through many generations, while also introducing issues of current concern like environmental sustainability.

To celebrate NLP's hard work Kate Raisz and Tim Lay attended the opening of the museum last week and were very pleased with the turnout and finished product. To learn more about the museum visit their website.

July/August 2011

2011-09-23T08:59:00.001-07:00

An update is a little past due, but at least we're squeezing it in before the official end of summer. A plethora of projects have kept things humming, and, as always, we've been on the road. A few highlights:

In July, Lenny and Jesse shipped off to Guam for a week of shooting for the War in the Pacific National Historic Park. They spent time with local elders who had amazing stories about the Japanese occupation of Guam during WWII, went net fishing with a local Chomorro, and took in the beautiful South Pacific scenery. That project is full speed ahead in multiple edit suites and things are looking good.

Content for the Ford's Theatre Museum is also churning ahead, and we enlisted the skills of a local beat poetry group to perform for a 6-screen video wall piece written by Abraham Lincoln and remixed by Molly.

We had a number of production days for the Mob Museum (on track to open Valentine's Day of 2012) including a wonderful reenactment of the historic Appalachian meeting of Mobster bosses, and one more trip out to Sin City for a series of interviews. Make sure you tune in to watch CSI on October 12, an episode that stars former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman as himself, being murdered at the opening of the Mob Museum. Couldn't ask for better publicity than that.

We returned to the desert at the end of August, this time to Phoenix, for a shoot for our film about the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. Our lead characters were premiering an original two-man show about Bill and Dr. Bob, the founders of AA, at a theatre in Mesa, AZ, and we spent time with them as they tweaked, blocked, re-wrote, and performed. The actors lives, as well as the lives of the men they portrayed, where perhaps equally inspirational.

As we wait for the cooler weather to set in, we've got our sites set on a number of projects that are revving up, including the National Hellenic Museum, the US Marshals Museum, and several others. Stay tuned!

May/June 2011

2011-07-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

The Avid suites are packed to the gills here at Northern Light, with editors working in shifts and footage flying as we move to post in a big way on a range of projects.

Our work for the War in the Pacific Museum in Guam is advancing in the office and gearing up on the other side of the globe too, as Lenny and Jesse head to the Western Pacific and Jenny, Keiko and others hunt for archival media. Several films for the Utah Museum of Natural History are being put together, after Kate's two-week shoot that crisscrossed the state. And our final shoot out at Mount Greylock is in the bag as Andy brings that film into online. On the way back from Greylock, Susan and Jesse swung by Conway, MA, to record a choir Molly had tracked down that sang a historical hymn from the Civil War era. The piece will be installed as an ambient audio element at Ford's Theatre in an exhibit that conjures up what it would have been like to witness the passing of Lincoln's funeral train. And to round out our work on the museum side, Bestor, Lenny, Ben, Matt and Jesse recorded interviews with Tony Blair and Rudy Giuliani for the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

On the broadcast front we had a successful fund-and-awareness-raising event for our newly-renamed Big Top Without Borders project at the Boston Globe. Many thanks to those who attended and showed support. Plus, both Weapons of Mass Disruption and This is Where We Take Our Stand will screen at the Chautauqua Institution's week on American Intelligence in western New York, as well as several of our films from the International Spy Museum. And look out for the new season of CurrentTV's Vangaurd, and specifically the premiere of their Recovery High episode on August 8th, which a number of people at Northern Light shot for over the last academic year.

Happy summer, stay tuned and keep cool, with regards from the NLP crew!

March/April 2011

2011-04-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

Spring is upon us in Boston, though one crew dispatched this month had a final heavy dose of winter. Susan and Jesse headed up to Igloolik, Nunavut (that's Arctic Canada, for one more level of orientation) to spend a week with Artcirq on their home tundra. The trip coincided with a visit to Igloolik from Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that created an emotional backdrop for a people struggling with a difficult history of oppression. Artcirq, and the young adults that make up the circus, shown through as a positive force in a very interesting community.

Meanwhile, Bestor, Matt and Mike headed off on a European cyberwar tour that took them from Estonia, where they spoke with the president of that country, to Germany, to discuss the virus Stuxnet with the man who decoded it, to Russia where they spent time with computer security superpower Kaspersky. The film is in full editorial now, and we've got a team of animators working with Eric to develop its graphic look.

Filming for the Smithsonian Art Museum's exhibit about decorative arts from the White House continued, with two more interviews with political celebrities, first daughter Susan Ford Bales, and first lady Laura Bush. Both shared a wealth of interesting stories from the White House. Mrs. Bales recalled hosting her high school prom in the East Room (every single member of her senior class attended, even though the Beach Boys declined a request to provide the night's entertainment), and Mrs. Bush recalled how it was her mother-in-law that insisted they install fiber optic lighting for the bed during her renovation of the Lincoln Bedroom, because it was too dark to read.

More interviews were held in Boston and Cleveland for the Mob Museum, which is in full editorial and coming along nicely. We had a shoot out in Concord during the annual reenactment of the battle at the Old North Bridge for a film that will be at the Minute Man National Historic Park. Beat poetry scripting is underway for the Ford Theatre museum, our films for Mount Greylock and the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center are nearing completion, and, as always, there are plenty of other balls in the air.

January/February 2011

2011-03-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

Lot's going on at NLP HQ, as usual, where the best way to keeping warm through a Boston winter is to keep in perpetual motion.

On the production front we sent a crew out into the cold of the Berkshires to pick up some snow-covered footage of Mount Greylock. That visitors center-bound film is about to hit the edit room, and we got some nice imagery from the windy summit, a ski race down the side, and the rolling hills surrounding the tallest mountain in Massachusetts.

We had trips to San Francisco and Minneapolis for our film exploring the new battlefiled of cyberspace, which features some of the leading experts in the digital arena. Another outing later this month to Russia, Estonia and Germany is in the works to get the international angle on a truly global story that continues to unfold. This project was born out of a recent exhibit we did for the International Spy Museum in DC (always worth a trip if you're in the capitol city), and is just about as relevant, and hidden, as can be.

We had our first interview for the film we're making for The 9/11 Memorial Museum with former Governor George Pataki in New York. He talked about his experience and insights on September 11th and in the days that followed. Over the next year we'll be speaking to several other high-profile political figures about their memories of the event. Already we can tell this fill be a powerful film, serving both as a glimpse into the personal lives of very public individuals at a trying time in US history, but also as an important historical record of events.

We've visited several other political celebrities as well, for a film to be featured with a collection of decorative arts from the White House at the Smithsonian Museum of Art. First daughters Lynda Bird Johnson Robb and Patricia Nixon Cox both spoke with us about their memories of private and public life in the White House.

Two projects near the finish line: The Waterworks Museum here in Boston opens on Sunday, March 27th. If you're in town drop by and get pumped. The Laogai Research Foundation in DC opens its museums' doors on April 7th, also worth a trip.

In other news, the trilogy of Making Sense of Place films produced in association with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy will be rebroadcast in March on WGBH's WORLD Channel. Tune in.

Of course work continues on all our other projects, including a new arrival for the Utah Natural History Museum, and even though, at the moment, the snow is melting and the days appear to be growing warmer and longer, we all know New England too well to be fooled. There's a little more winter to come, so we'll keep in motion.

November/December 2010

2010-12-30T10:33:00.000-08:00

We've been working hard the last two months here at Northern Light, on a mix of projects that took us from our backyard of Boston to equatorial Africa. Not a bad way to finish off the year.

In November we began production work on the new Waterworks Museum, just down the road from the NLP office. This place is one of Boston's hidden historical gems: two indoor multistory pumping systems--chrome, steel, wood-paneled, and massive--that used to move millions of gallons of water up hill and into the taps of 19th century Bostonians. To accompany these towering artifacts, we're creating a three-screen show that takes the audience back in time to the grand opening of the Chestnut Hill Reservoir pumping station, as well as other media pieces that explain the mechanics and impact of the waterworks facility. It'll be opening to the public in March 2011.

As for geographically medium range trips, Northern Light was in Washington, DC and New York filming interviews for the Lao Gai Research Foundation. We spoke to some amazing people who had endured horrendous treatment in the Chinese prison system and graciously shared their stories with us. Their fierce perseverance and perspective will make this small museum about China's biggest secret truly remarkable.

We also traveled to Las Vegas to conduct our initial interviews for the Mob Museum, including one with Mayor Oscar Goodman. After only one trip we can tell that, with a little digging, there are some seriously wild stories to unearth from the sand and steel of Sin City... and maybe a few other things too.

To round out our globetrotting, Northern Light sent a team to Guinea with Artcirq, the Inuit circus group from northern Canada. Because of political unrest due to recent elections, a military-enforced curfew, and sporadic protests and gunfire, Artcirq was delayed by several days. But we spent time with Kalabante, an equally stunning African circus group preparing to host Artcirq. And when Artcirq finally did arrive, much circusing commenced. Check out photos and footage from the trip at the Artcirq Facebook page.

To help get ourselves focused on 2011 we landed a new project for the Ford Theatre in DC. The piece will be a multi-screen interactive look at president Lincoln's legacy, housed just across the street from where we was shot. We're looking forward to getting started on that project and everything else 2011 has in store. Happy New Year!

October 2010

2010-11-11T10:39:00.000-08:00

Fall is flying by, and there's a flurry of work. We started the month off on the right foot by landing two new projects that we're excited to gear up for. The first is a film to accompany a new exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum featuring decorative arts from the White House. The film will be comprised of a series of interview with first daughters, recounting what it was like to live with these historical objects.

We will also soon begin work on media for the War in the Pacific National Park in Guam, sure to be a fascinating project. It will be comprised of several interactive video stations, audio and video programs, as well as interactive games.

The work we did for the African Burial Ground National Monument Visitor Center was recently honored with the National Interpretive Design Project Achievement Award, praising the overall design and accessibility of the exhibit. Next time you're in New York it's worth a visit.

We're also headed to Guinea to film the Inuit circus group Artcirq, as they collaborate with an African circus group and tour the area with an original, multicultural show. Check out the new Artcirq website for updates from the field.

In other news, the new Regional History Museum at Tryon Palace officially opened to the public this month, packed full with NLP media, images, sounds, virtual tours, games, and general audiovisual wonderment. Research and writing have begun for a number of first person testimonial films for the Lao Gai Research Foundation in Washington DC. We've also begun work on the next batch of archival-driven journeys through Indiana's history at the Indiana Historical Society. And our first shoot for the new Mob Museum in Las Vegas is on the calendar.

Stay warm. Stay tuned.

July/August/September 2010

2010-09-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

As always a busy summer at Northern Light. We kicked it off with a shoot down in San Antonio at the annual Alcoholics Anonymous convention for our film "One Day at a Time" about the history of AA and it's first two members.

We also had a series of shoots in New York City to complete the film "This is Where We Take Our Stand". What began as a series of webisodes about the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War produced in association with Displaced Films, is now a broadcast length film set to air in early 2011 on PBS, thanks to the generous support of ITVS. The film is more relevant than ever as the nation's focus moves to operations in Afghanistan, and lessons learned in Iraq are at risk of being forgotten.

Our work with Tryon Palace Historic Sits and Gardens in New Bern, North Carolina is wrapping up as the dozens of video pieces we're producing for the museum and self guided tours go into their final edits. In addition there is a theatrical orientation film, a five projector immersive experience in a 360-degree environment, and multiple interactive games, all slated to launch with the opening of the new visitors center in October.

A range of other projects are in the works as well. We've been filming several interviews for a film about the famous Morgenthau family, being produced by Dog Green Productions. We're wrapping up a film about telecommunications giant MCI and its founder Bill McGowan that will premiere in Washington DC in a few weeks. And work continues on our Steampunk project, Artcirq: The Inuit Circus, and Near Oracle, which was well-received at a recent pitch session during the Camden Film Festival.

As autumn begins we've been outside, tromping around under the colorful trees (or helicoptering over them), working on two projects celebrating the photogenic outdoors. One is an orientation film for Mount Greylock, Massachusetts's highest point. The other is for Pautuxent Research Refuge, right outside of Washington, DC.

Stay tuned for more, or tune in to our newly revamped website: www.nlprod.com

2010-06-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

June 2010

NLP Awarded Funding for Film on Inuit Circus

Northern Light Productions and filmmaker Linda Matchan, Norwegian financier Svein Andersen from FilmCamp, and Norwegian co-producer Kalle Rikardsen, had a successful pitch in Toronto last month at the TDF (Toronto Documentary Forum) with their film “Artcirq.”

The film centers on a collective of young Canadian Inuit performers who make up the world’s only Arctic circus, following them from obscurity to the worldwide stage at the 2010 Olympics and reveals their unique connection to another indigenous culture on the other side of the world. Their struggles are examples of the extraordinary power of art and performance to impact young lives in a profound way, and highlight just one group of youth who are eager to protect their imperiled traditions.

Having recently received partial funding from the LEF Foundation, we will soon be back in Igloolik, Canada filming for the project.We are currently working with our Norwegian and Canadian partners to secure additional funding.

Check out our trailer and stay updated on Facebook!

Destination Indiana Opens

How do you turn an archive of 1.6 million historical images into a compelling, innovative exhibit that will appeal to a wide swath of visitors?

That was the challenge behind Destination Indiana, a new interactive media exhibit recently launched by the Indiana Historical Society. With such an enormous archival resource at their fingertips, the IHS wanted to an exhibit that would highlight their collection and enable visitors to explore Indiana’s heritage in a fun, user-friendly way. Project goals included:

· Design a participatory experience;
· Appeal to a wide audience with varying levels of comfort using technology;
· Connect visitors to Indiana’s heritage through noteworthy events and everyday life.
· Enable users to customize the experience;
· Design the exhibit so that both individuals and small groups can use it.
· Design a scalable format that the IHS can expand over time.
· Create an experience with enough depth so users can enjoy a return visit.

Northern Light Productions teamed up with Unified Field on the project. The first task was to develop a conceptual framework that would serve as a blueprint for all resulting work, but still be flexible enough to allow for new content to be added over time. This would drive the editorial work of selecting and organizing photos into thematic groupings that invited browsing and exploration. We knew there needed to be multiple ways to enjoy the content. Some audience members would want to sit back and enjoy a flow of historic images; others would want to have lots of options in terms of zooming and panning and getting additional information. Some visitors would seek images from their city or county; others would investigate specific topics, such as the Civil War or the immigrant experience in Indiana.

The first phase of the project was planned as a proof of concept, and the IHS hired a professional evaluator to conduct a summative evaluation that would inform the second phase of work: expanding the exhibit to include the entire state and many more thematic journeys.

The result: eight “drive yourself” time-travel stations that invite visitors to travel back in (Indiana) time and explore every corner of the state using innovative digital technology. The images are organized into journeys—about 10-12 per journey—and the exhibit can be used in “cinema mode” (a movie-like sequence of images) or “explore mode” (which gives users a full set of controls and additional interpretive information). Depending on a visitor’s interest, they can navigate via a map interface, a thematic interface, or a “journey finfinder.” Visitors get to decide where they want to travel and what they want to know more about.

Above: Visitors can touch a map or use a “steering wheel” to select a journey.

Above: Destination Indiana also features a curved 8 x
22-foot screen that plays select journeys. With nearly
twice the resolution of an HD television, the extra-wide
show offers a stunning way to experience the images.
In fact, many of the 19th and early 20th century images
were photographed using large-format cameras and
have an astonishing level of detail.

NLP to Film at 75th Anniversary of AA
Thanks to the support of Hazelden, NLP will be filming this summer in San Antonio at the 2010 International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous, as thousands of people converge to celebrate the 75th anniversary of AA. We plan to use this footage as part of a full-length documentary which traces the history of AA from its founding to the present day.

Steampunk!

What was once just a burgeoning literary subgenre has extended its reaches to craft and invention, film and fashion, performance and popular culture. While the rest of the world may just be catching on, steampunkers insist that this is not a trend, but a lifestyle. NLP is working on a new project which will highlights this lifestyle, and we welcome your input. Send your Steampunk stories/opinions/thoughts to northernlightp@gmail.com.

The inspiration for the steampunk aesthetic is largely Victorian, and the setting for most steampunk literature is turn-of-the-century Great Britain. Most of steampunk culture seem to be Euro-centric, although the genre has been influenced by Japanese anime and design.

New Developments for Shoot The Messenger
NLP is currently in negotiations to create a 2-hour film entitled Shoot the Messenger. The film will tell the story of journalists who covered the Vietnam War in its earlier years, risking their lives and defying the message of their government to bring the realities of the war to the American people. It follows these journalists as they went through a transition: from war reporters with no preconceptions about America’s role in the conflict, to lightning rods for government accountability and public unrest about the war.
Ultimately, the story of these journalists, and the changing nature of the coverage of the war, defined the attitude of a generation towards war and government and left a lasting legacy about the relationship between the government and the contemporary press.

2010-05-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

May 2010

NLP Chosen to Produce Media for the Laogai Museum

Northern Light was recently chosen by the Laogai Museum to create all audiovisual elements for its new location in Washington DC. The museum is the first in the United States to directly address human rights issues in China.

The company will produce audiovisual programs documenting the atrocities committed within China’s forced-labor prison camps under the Communist regime. Since the 1950s, between 40 to 50 million people are estimated to have been subjected to arbitrary detention, unregulated mistreatment, and oftentimes death within these prisons.

Visit the following for updates and more information:

- www.laogaimuseum.org

- washington.bizjournals.com

- washingtoncitypaper.com

NLP to Co-Produce Film Examining Capitalism in Romania

Northern Light is pleased to be working with Romanian cinematographer Daniel Cojanu and American journalist and multi-media producer Elise Cojanu to Co-Produce The Stolen Revolution, a film that will examine capitalism in Romania 20 years after the fall of communism. Filmed in cinema verité style and shot in HD video with archival footage from the communist period, the documentary will examine the impact of the country’s fast train to globalization from several different perspectives – a young orphan, an urban couple, a middle-aged miner, and a revolutionary-turned-millionaire. Their stories highlight the variety of ways in which a capitalist system, especially in light of the recent financial crisis, actually affects Romanians today.

2010-04-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

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.

September/October 2009

2009-09-25T10:05:00.000-07:00

Its been a busy fall for NLP already.

Our new exhibit for the International Spy Museum, WEAPONS OF MASS DISRUPTION, about the evolving threat of cyber attack and the landscape of "cyber warfare," is opening this Friday, Oct. 2 in Washington, D.C.

Here's a preview of the opening:

(Taken from About.com: Washington DC)
International Spy Museum Opens New Exhibit "Weapons of Mass Disruption"

On October 2, 2009, the International Spy Museum will unveil "Weapons of Mass Disruption," a new gallery showing how a team of cyber spies, terrorists, or criminals, armed with weapons no more sophisticated than common laptops, can turn power lines into battle lines. The exhibit serves as a wake-up call about the importance of improving cyber security to protect America from a cyber attack.

The opening of "Weapons of Mass Disruption" which coincides with the beginning of the Department of Homeland Security's Cyber Security Awareness Month, depicts attacks that have taken place across the globe including in Australia, Korea, and Estonia, providing a glimpse into the vulnerabilities of international networks. Through the use of multi-media, the new exhibit imagines the potential devastating impact of a coordinated attack - blackouts, the breakdown of water and sewage treatment capabilities, the crippling of transport and communications systems (including those of the military), the uncontrollable spread of epidemic diseases, the near-total cessation of economic activity, and widespread civil unrest bordering on chaos.

We sure are intrigued by crime and devastation in this country. The International Spy Museum is one of the most popular attractions in Washington, DC. See Photos of the International Spy Museum.

Photo © International Spy Museum

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***UPCOMING DOCUMENTARY SCREENINGS

Below you will find details on upcoming screenings for "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison," "Killer Poet: The Double Life of Norman Porter" and "Scarred Justice." For more updates on what's happening at Northern Light Productions, be sure to become our friend on Facebook.

Killer Poet: The Double Life of Norman Porter

A free screening will be held by the Lowell Film Collaborative

Tuesday, Oct 6th @ 7:00pm
Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center, 246 Market St.

Q&A w/ Special Guests: Director Susan Gray and characters from the film

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison

The Focal-nominated documentary will be traveling internationally this Fall as it screens at more festivals in the US, Canada and Europe. The film also just sold to BBC4!

Recent Screenings:

Sept. 2-6, 2009 - Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA

Sept. 23, 2009 @ 7:10 p.m. - Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia

Sept. 27, 2009 @ 7:30 p.m. - Newburyport Documentary Film Festival in Newburyport, MA

Coming Up:

Oct. 16, 2009 - Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival in Starkville, MS

Oct. 23-24, 2009 - The 8th SF Doc Fest in San Fransisco, CA

Oct. 29-Nov. 8, 2009 - In-Edit International Music Documentary Film Festival in Barcelona, Spain

Nov. 7, 2009 - Memorimage Festival in Reus, Spain

Nov. 11-15, 2009 - Rokumentti Rock Film Festival in Joensuu, Finland

Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968

This 60-min documentary brings to light one of the bloodiest tragedies of the Civil Rights era after four decades of deliberate denial. Since our last post in June, Scarred Justice screened in Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston and at the 100th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION OF THE NAACP in New York City! Coming up next:

Indie Memphis Film Festival
Saturday, Oct. 10 @ 11:30 a.m.
Screened w/ "I Am A Man: From Memphis, A Lesson In Life" by Jonathan Epstein and "The Veiled Commodity" by Vinh Chung, Dickson Chow.

Harlem Stage on Screen
Friday, Oct. 16 @ 12
Post-screening conversation w/filmmaker Judy Richardson

June

2009-06-02T06:25:00.000-07:00

NLP in Central America

Northern Light Productions traveled to El Salvador and Guatemala recently to profile two programs addressing the debilitating aftereffects of war.

In Guatemala, NLP filmed Mayan leader Ana Caba as she ran workshops that help local communities better understand the legacy of war and extreme poverty, as well as the rights of indigenous citizens. More than 200,000 civilians were killed in Guatemala’s 36-year civil war; most were from indigenous Mayan communities.

In El Salvador, we followed Helia Rivera as she and other community members visited the site of her brother’s hidden grave on a remote mountainside, where he was killed during the civil war. The group, organized by El Centro Bartolomé de las Casas, will conduct an exhumation as part of a program that acknowledges massacre sites and collects survivors’ testimonies.

The footage will be used to produce a short film for the Martín-Baró Fund. The Fund honors the work of Ignacio Martín-Baró, a renowned social psychologist who focused on the effects of war. Martín-Baró, along with five other Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter, were killed in 1989 by a military death squad in El Salvador.

May

2009-05-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

NLP @ "His Majesty's Fort"

The ruins of Fort St. Frederic, "His Majesty's Fort of Crown Point," and surrounding lands were acquired by the State of New York in 1910. Guests can see the ruins of the original 18th-century structures and in the Visitor Center, view exhibits that interpret the French, British, and American chapters of Crown Point's history.

Norhtern Light Productions just completed an 8-minute program on Crown Point, NY, and its importance in the development of the key territories that surround the area. The film chronicles the events prior to and during the French and Indian War, beginning with Samuel de Champlain’s voyage to Canada and his relationship with the Native Americans there, leading into the eventual war between the French, British, and the Indians who inhabited the northeastern part of America at that time. The French and British, along with their Indian allies, fought extensively at the Fort at Crown Point in an attempt to gain it’s control.

April

2009-04-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison BOSTON PREMIERE
Fri Apr, 24th - Somerville Theater - 7:15pm

Independent Film Festival Boston 2009

In 1968, after he bottomed out on drugs and left his career in shambles, Johnny Cash’s idea to record a live album in a California penitentiary hardly seemed like a foolproof comeback plan. Nobody––save perhaps Cash himself––could have guessed that the resulting LP would become the crowning achievement of his career, a landmark testament that still reverberates 40 years later, brimming over with rebellion, gallows humor, and heartfelt empathy. Bestor Cram’s documentary digs deep into the Folsom Prison mythos, the Man in Black’s put-on persona, and all the troubles and travails that informed that legendary recording.

Interviewing inmates, bandmates, and longtime companions, Cram scores some surprising revelations, including an admission by one of the Tennessee Three that Cash’s signature song, “Folsom Prison Blues,” owes more than a little inspiration to a forgotten tunesmith named Gordon Jenkins. Most moving is the tale of Glenn Sherley, a gifted singer/songwriter/convict with whom Cash struck up a friendship, and whom he attempted to help battle the demons he knew so well. Sadly, there is no filmed footage of the seminal performance, but Cram allows the songs to play through regardless, using innovative computer manipulations of photographer Jim Marshall’s stark images and symbolism-freighted animated sequences. The portrait that emerges is like any Johnny Cash record: honest and unblinking, chronicling the tribulations of a deeply flawed man fumbling toward redemption and grace.

March

2009-03-03T13:16:00.000-08:00

SCARRED JUSTICE @ THE HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE

SCARRED JUSTICE: THE ORANGEBURG MASSACRE 1968

FREE SCREENING AT THE HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE IN CAMBRIDGE, MA SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 2009, AT 3PM
(Q&A TO FOLLOW)

On February 8, 1968, eight seconds of police gunfire left three young men dying and at least 27 wounded on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, S.C. All of the police were white, all of the students African-American. Almost all of the victims were shot from behind as they fled the gunfire that erupted without warning.

The Massacre happened after four days of student protests to desegregate the city's only bowling alley. It was the first time ever police opened fire on students on a U.S. campus. Two years later Kent State would shock the nation.

This powerful yet disturbing documentary film explores the eye-witness accounts of student protesters and police officer participants. Interviews with former Governor Robert McNair, the prize-winning journalists who covered the story, and many others, provide a compelling account of the price paid in America's struggle for racial justice. It raises questions about an event that has yet to be resolved.

Presented by Northern Light Productions In Association With
Color of Film Collaborative, INC and the Filmmakers Collaborative

WINNER

Carolina Film and Video Festival (Best Documentary)
Pan African Film Festival (Best Documentary, Short)

Producer/Director Bios

Bestor Cram is a director/producer/cinematographer. Following a tour of duty as a U.S. Marine Officer in Vietnam, he founded Northern Light Productions in 1982 and produced How Far Home, portraying the lives of Vietnam Veterans attending the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC. His TV and museum work focuses on issues of social justice and history. Among his many festival awards, his documentary Unfinished Symphony: Democracy and Dissent screened at Sundance Film
Festival and his Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison was just broadcast on PBS and released as a boxed CD/DVD set from SONY.

Judy Richardson began her film work with the Academy Award-nominated, 14-hour PBS series, Eyes on the Prize. As a Senior Producer with Northern Light Productions she produces African American historical documentaries for TV and museums. Recent productions include the 2-hour History Channel film, Slave Catchers, Slave Resisters and the National Park Service's Little Rock Nine Visitor Center. She was a staff worker with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the South
in the early 1960's and lectures and conducts teacher workshops on the relevance of the Civil Rights Movement.

Imaginaries Award

Congratulations to Bestor Cram, who was personally recognized at the annual Imagine Magazines’ New Years Gala. Imagine serves the motion picture community in the sixth state New England region of the USA.

The Award was presented for Creative Vision, Generosity & Commitment to Excellence.
Bestor was one of four recipients.

Bestor’s acceptance poem is reprinted below

“...But this is a year like none other. That’s why I like this gathering so much. It’s about renewal and new beginnings. So I’d like to conclude with a brief poem created for this occasion.
It’s called On Track With Barack.”

Tonight we gather for sharing. Oh, what a gala.
Knowing that our work often thrives on others drama.
But there’s hope now in this-- our state of the Brahma.
We have changed the law when it comes to marijuana.

My movie world began in a time of Cinerama.
When the screen was truly a magnificent panorama.
Today I shoot pictures with the rays of gamma.
Seen as easily here as in Yokahama.

Yet our work hasn’t really changed; it’s still about our Karma.
Telling a good story fused with empathy and drama.
Sure, we make pretty pictures of flora and fauna.
But the tension comes from the choices facing Pollyanna.

As documentarians, we still answer to our Mama.
Tell the truth, like there ain’t no manana.
But know that the truth is an elusive mantra
Scarred by stigma, it can be blinding to the retina.

I believe a new time has come to be what we wanna
To liberate the dogma, and embrace the new plasma
There is change in the air, the end of Kafka.
So I say Happy New Year, it’s the era of Obama.

February

2009-02-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

World premier of Scarred Justice
The Orangeburg Massacre 1968

"This documentary should be shown in every schoolroom in America. We might then create a new generation of activists, emulating the heroic young people of that time, moving this country towards new levels of equality and justice.”
Howard Zinn

"The truth-telling power of history is made manifest in this profoundly moving and healing documentary."
Darlene Clark Hine, Michigan State University

“This masterful film tells a story previously known by too few. Among its many lessons is the truth of the phrase 'no justice, no peace'. ”Julian Bond, NAACP Board Chairman

Cinequesting takes on
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison

Advanced buzz on this doc is very positive. And how could it not be? Johnny Cash was and always will be the man. One of the aspects that Walk the Line didn't cover in detail was the connection Cash had with the inmates of Folsom Prison. The trailer speaks for itself, really.

Triple duty for Killer Poet

Killer Poet Screens in February at the San Francisco Indie Fest (San Francisco, CA) Big Sky (Missoula, MT) and Cinequest (San Jose, CA)

January

2009-01-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

A Good Way to Celebrate MLK Day

Less than 50 years ago in Birmingham, Alabama, policemen used attack dogs and fire hoses on peaceful demonstrators. Today, visitors can encounter both bitter and inspiring stories of that time at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which “captures the spirit and courage of countless individuals who, in the 1950s and 1960s, dared to confront the bigotry and racial discrimination of American society.”

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Institute cut the ribbon on a $2.5 million renovation. Visitors snaked around the block as they waited to get a peek at the expanded, upgraded exhibit space, which includes a new gallery focusing on Human Rights. Northern Light Productions produced all new media for the renovation, working in conjunction with exhibit designers Amaze Design of Boston, MA.

Some of the exhibits draw on the Institute’s growing collection of oral history recordings. In a re-created barbershop environment, visitors can hear Birmingham citizens reminiscing about Fourth Avenue, the hub of the city’s historic black business district. One woman recalls James Brown and Sam Cooke coming to town, while a man talks about how it was “a mixing of people across the board…the shoe shine boy would go in and socialize with a pharmacist or the doctor, lawyer, or the businessman or woman.”

The mood grows darker as the exhibits get deeper into the Civil Rights struggle. An “interactive newspaper” invites visitors to explore news coverage, telegrams, photos, and reminiscences about the Children’s March, when thousands of young people were arrested for participating in demonstrations. As one woman states, “I was not accustomed to disobeying adults, especially a white male who had a stick in one hand [and] a pistol on his hip.”

The new Human Rights gallery traces the connection between the struggle in Birmingham and ongoing battles for rights across the world. The experience begins with “The Front Line,” a multi-screen program that weaves together a specially commissioned song by spoken word artist Sharrif Simmons with interviews from a spectrum of Birmingham residents talking about human rights. Some of these individuals were foot soldiers in the Civil Rights Movement, some fled repressive regimes to find greater freedom in America, and some are teenagers intent on creating a more just world. The “graphic novel” style visual treatment of the show reflects the aesthetic of the gallery.

Northern Light Productions produced a total of 10 unique programs for the Institute’s major renovation, including oral history compilations, animated projections, a music listening station, interactive voting stations, large projections, and multi-screen video.

December

2008-12-03T08:44:00.000-08:00

NLP & NTHP Revitalize RI Historic Home

The National Trust for Historic Preservation provides leadership, education, advocacy, and resources to save America's diverse historic places and revitalize our communities.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a private, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to saving historic places and revitalizing America's communities. Recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the Trust was founded in 1949 and provides leadership, education, advocacy, and resources to protect the irreplaceable places that tell America’s story. Staff at the Washington, DC, headquarters, six regional offices and 29 historic sites work with the Trust’s 270,000 members and thousands of preservation groups in all 50 states.

Northern Light Productions produced an 8-minute video highlighting the history and legacy of the Edward Everett Hale House in Matunuck, RI. The video was created as an educational tool to raise awareness and funds for the restoration of the historic property.

The need for the National Trust for Historic Preservation has increased since its founding in 1949. When historic buildings and neighborhoods are torn down or allowed to deteriorate, a part of our past disappears forever. When that happens, we lose history that helps us know who we are, and we lose opportunities to live and work in the kinds of interesting and attractive surroundings that older buildings can provide.

DESTINATION INDIANA

Northern Light Productions and Unified Field recently joined forces to create Destination IndianaTM, a major new exhibit for the Indiana Historical Society. The IHS has amazing collections that include more than 1.6 million photographs documenting that state’s past, and many visitors weren’t aware of them—but this exhibit changes all that.

The collaborative NLP / UFI team mixed high-resolution archival images and sophisticated audio-visual delivery systems to produce 51 prototype interactive journeys exploring the 150-year-old history of Monument Circle and the Indiana Statehouse.

A large screen attraction draws one into the exhibit space. Its 8-foot-tall by 23-foot-wide screen delivers a powerful montage of images, music and special effects, and provides an emotional connection to the historic photos. Smaller touchscreen pods invite users to “time travel” through image-based journeys, enabling them to explore at their own pace.

“This experience is as much about how you will see as it is about what you will see,” says Steve Haller, IHS Senior Director of Collections and Library, and leader of the project team.

November

2008-11-05T11:11:00.000-08:00

NLP helps honor TUSKEGEE AIRMEN with historic site in Ala.

NORTHERN LIGHT PRODUCTIONS recently produced all of the media for the new interpretive center at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. Located in a renovated hangar at historic Moton Field, the exhibits convey the challenges of training, the details that evoke daily life for the cadets and support staff during World War II, and the Airmen’s accomplishments in the face of pervasive discrimination.

TUSKEGEE, Ala. – Lt. Col. John Mulzac stood on the asphalt at Moton Field — the same grounds where he trained decades ago to become one of the country's first black military pilots — and wept.

Mulzac and hundreds of his fellow Tuskegee Airmen and their representatives reunited Friday where their World War II service eventually led to desegregation in the U.S. armed forces. The field was named a National Historic Site.

An interpretive center was also opened in a hangar at the site. In a surprise announcement, Gov. Bob Riley unveiled a huge green and white sign designating part of I-85 as the "Tuskegee Airmen Memorial Highway."

"When I think about what we went through, this just brings tears to my eyes," said Mulzac, 84.
Thousands of people from across the country attended the opening ceremony Friday afternoon, which launched a weekend of festivities celebrating the fruition of a dream turned reality.

"The Tuskegee Airmen had their beginning here at Moton Field and dared to make a difference," the Rev. William C. Lennard said. "They did it for God, for themselves and for every citizen of the United States of America. Their persistence, dedication and fortitude enabled them to overcome all manner of challenges."

The airmen fought Adolf Hitler overseas and Jim Crow on American soil, being degraded as second-class citizens and watching as German prisoners of war were treated better than them.
At first called the "Tuskegee Experiment," the first aviation cadet class began in July 1941 with 13 students at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, about 40 miles east of Montgomery. Black people weren't allowed to fly in the military at the time, and the "experiment" was to see whether they could pilot airplanes and handle heavy machinery.

The airmen went on more than 15,000 combat trips throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa. Nearly 1,000 pilots were trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field before it closed in 1946. After that, the all-black units were sent to an Ohio air base. President Truman's 1948 order to desegregate the country's armed forces eventually led to a military in which blacks served alongside their white counterparts.

Servicemen and women of all races and ages milled around the field Friday, taking in a taste of the airmen's' daily lives in the museum.

Lt. Cmdr. Eric Bush traveled from Pensacola, Fla., along with four fellow U.S. Navy pilots and one of their flight students "to see history and where it was made."

"Their legacy will be here for generations to come and for others to see," Bush said.

- By DESIREE HUNTER, Associated Press Writer Desiree Hunter, Associated Press Writer

ROLLINGSTONE Attends Exclusive Screening of Cash

Last night in a screening room lit by flickering candles at New York City’s exclusive Norwood Club, less than 40 people attended an intimate screening of Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison, the documentary about Cash’s seminal live album currently making the international festival rounds. Rosanne Cash, director Bestor Cram and writer Michael Streissguth were on hand to field questions in a living-room-sized room that felt more like a hangout session than a screening.

The film tells the story of Folsom Prison — the song, the album and the prison itself — through interviews with former inmates, insight from band members, quirky animation breaks, stock footage and some circa-2000 voice-overs from Cash. No footage of the actual concert exists, so Cram had to tell his story with the 18 rolls of iconic film shot by photographer Jim Marshall and curated animations that he said “enhanced the act of listening.” “I get very tired looking at concert footage,” said Cram. “I was delighted when I met Mike and he said, ‘How about a concert film with no footage?’”

This evening marked the first time Rosanne had seen the film: “[Cram] sent me a clip of it and it made me cry, so I thought, ‘Let’s watch it with 40 people.’” Rosanne, who was 12 when the original concert occurred, adds candid commentary to the film about her father’s myth vs. his human reality. She said she originally turned down the filmmakers’ request for an interview (”My dad doesn’t need me to make him more famous”). However, the day after, she heard a car simply blasting “Folsom Prison Blues” at 6 in the morning outside her window. “I called Mike and said, ‘I’ll do it.’”

With attendance at $250 a head, all proceeds from the event went to PAX, a non-profit working to end gun violence against children. Said Rosanne, who has been a board member for about seven years: “I thought that [Johnny] would love that. That something about Folsom Prison helped prevent gun violence.”

Need some CASH in Amsterdam?

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison will have its International Premiere this month at IDFA, the world renowned documentary film festival and market in Amsterdam.

21e international documentary film festival amsterdam

October

2008-09-30T07:29:00.000-07:00

JOHNNY CASH @ Folsom Prison
PREMIERES

LOS ANGELES - Fri, Oct 3rd, 7:00pm
HAMMER GALLERY

AUSTIN, TX Sat, Oct 18th 7:15pm & Mon, Oct 20th 9:45pm
AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL Bob Bullock Spirit Theater

NEW YORK Fri, Oct 24th Time TBD
CMJ Festival NEW YORK

NORTHAMPTON, MA Sat, Oct 25th Time TBD
Northampton Film Festival

The making of Cash’s landmark album is the narrative arc of this new documentary about a concert recorded in a prison cafeteria and captured by legendary rock photographer Jim Marshall. Two prisoners’ lives are also interwoven into the structure of this film that examines the transition of Cash’s character and his career. The presence of life in Folsom, the obstacles its prisoners faced and the struggles Cash encountered are brought to the surface. Original animation, interviews, and long lost archival material make this a compelling journey with one of America’s most celebrated icons revealing a complex unknown man in black. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison celebrates his music, the history of an unprecedented recording, and its significance in understanding a life forever defined by darkness and light.

President Bush Visits NLP's OCEANS Hall

President George W. Bush views a display in the new Sant Ocean Hall as he is escorted by Christian Samper, Director of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, right, Friday, Sept. 26, 2008, during his visit to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. White House photo by Eric Draper. Full Story

ARE YOU READY FOR PRIMAL FEAR?

Man’s primal fears spring from the depths of his darkest psyche, and history has taken on collective favoritesdown through the ages. This two-hour History Channel special will take an intimate look at our most primal fears and the periods in history in which they thrived.

From the fear of sharks, to the bogeyman, to death by drowning, fire, or being buried alive, you will be scared out of your wits while coming to understand that what many of us believe are our own private nightmares, aren’t so private after all, and that behind them lie deeper physical, psychological, social and historical contexts that have been keeping man on edge throughout history.

October 27th with an encore presentation on October 31st, Halloween

September

2008-09-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

KILLER POET closes the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival (Sept. 26-28)

It's like reality TV on overdrive: a whole festival devoted to documentary films. "Bleeding Green" looks at the Hartford Whalers Booster Club, a group that's still active - even though its beloved National Hockey League team left the city in 1997; "Killer Poet" is about the double life of Massachusetts fugitive Norman Porter; "Ladies of the Land" profiles four women who become farmers; and "Wiener Takes All" is about the professional dachshund racing circuit. Downtown Newburyport venues. http://www.northernlightsfilmfestival.com/

Stick around after the film for the Q&A and award following the film.

BUY TICKETS

OPEN OCEAN Hall @ the Smithsonian
National Museum of Natural History

WASHINGTON — The Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, which opens on Saturday, isn’t just about 71 percent of the Earth's surface. It is the largest renovation in the museum’s century-long history and a transformation of its largest exhibition space, making it as much about the museum’s future as about the ocean’s.
Yes, of course, water takes center stage. When you enter the new hall off the Beaux Arts rotunda, the dimmed, atmospheric lighting is meant to suggest the sea; an illuminated blue panel coaxes: “Dive in. Discover it with us.” And well above floor level are eight giant video screens showing schools of fish and sea creatures near Belize, the Galápagos Islands and other aquatic utopias pulsing with oceanic life. It is as if the entire 23,000-square-foot exhibition space were submerged in a giant natural aquarium.

But because of the ambition of this project — $80 million was raised from public and private sources, including $22 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — and because it opens as the troubled Smithsonian Institution’s administration is in transition, the hall draws attention not only to what it displays but also to what it represents. What it shows is considerable: nearly 700 of the museum’s 80 million marine specimens; a 24-foot-long squid found 1,300 feet below the ocean’s surface off the Spanish coast; extraordinary images of creatures that astonish landlocked imaginations. But the hall also codifies a major change in the evolution of the natural history museum.

The transformation has been going on for decades. And because this hall’s presentation is so strong (despite its flaws), it helps make that vision clear; with some modifications, it could serve as an example for future Smithsonian revisions.

For almost 100 years the same space, now used to show the diversity of the ocean’s creatures, sample its fossils or exhibit the life forms of the darkest realms of the deep, was focused on non-Western ethnography and the American Indian. Those exhibits, now retired, were an essential part of the mythological narrative of the 19th-century natural history museum, of which this institution was a late but imposing example.

That old model typically resembled a temple within which the citizen of the West would survey the natural world — dinosaurs, taxidermic animals, geologic marvels — along with the icons and totems of premodern and non-Western tribal cultures. Here is the world out of which modern man evolved, these institutions declared, inspiring appreciation for the wonders of nature and the strangeness of other cultures; of course, they also drew attention to the elevated perspective of the Western observer who was making sense of these objects.

Because today’s natural history collections were shaped under that influence, they still reflect it to some extent, even as they work out different interpretations. The Smithsonian certainly will not be getting rid of its valuable ethnographic material, nor should it. (Indeed, the ocean displays feature some examples, including whaling tools of the Alaskan Inupiat and a 26-foot Tlingit canoe commissioned for the hall.)

The nearby National Museum of the American Indian has put forward more radical ideas about what should be done, but the natural history museum is working on its own plan for new anthropology halls, which will not open for at least five years. The first floor’s three major halls are now devoted to the natural world: mammals, dinosaurs and now the ocean.

But as the portrayal of human cultures has changed, the Ocean Hall shows how the portrayal of the natural world has as well. First, the displays deliberately push humanity off center stage. They emphasize not what we have accomplished or have collected, but what is unknown or beyond our complete knowledge. Understanding is stymied by the immensity of the world being faced (a similar sentiment to the one inspired by a new model of planetarium embodied by the Rose in New York).

Thus the hall’s first section demonstrates that the ocean is more complex and diverse than we can easily grasp. There are translucent heteropods, small, gelatinous creatures with bulbous black eyes: predators deceptively housed in lovely white nautilus-shaped shells. And there is the Atlantic footballfish, a creature so grotesque, with its gaping mouth and gnome’s complexion, that its name could come from a desire to kick it.

The New York Times
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History,
10th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington; (202) 633-1000.

August 2008

2008-07-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

JOHNNY CASH AT
FOLSOM PRISON
Live PBS Pledge Special

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison remains one of the greatest live albums ever made, and the man himself one of America’s greatest troubadours - and less well known - advocates for prison reform. Forty years later, the album still resonates with a rawness and authenticity that few recordings have ever achieved.

Based on writer Michael Steissguth's acclaimed book Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece, this film will expose a lesser known “Man in Black” through an exciting, visually compelling examination of the event that defined an icon. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison the film weaves compelling interviews with archival photography to evoke the spirit of that momentous day on Jan. 13, 1968 when Johnny Cash appeared on stage at Folsom Prison. Participants include Rosanne Cash, band member Marty Stuart, former inmate Millard Dedman, and inmate/singer Glen Sherley, who famously wrote "Greystone Chapel" for Cash.

Thursday, Aug 21, 9pm
WGBH channels on Comcast Digital Cable
More about these channels

July 2008

2008-06-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

Mystic Seaport Lighthouse;
ready to emit light & awesomeness.

Mystic Seaport -- The Museum of America and the Sea -- is the nation's leading maritime museum. Explore American maritime history firsthand as you climb aboard historic tall ships, stroll through a re-created 19th-century coastal village or watch a working preservation shipyard in action. Founded in 1929, Mystic Seaport is open every day except December 24 and 25. More than 300,000 people visit Mystic Seaport annually.

This summer, visitors will be able to enter Mystic Seaport's replica of Nantucket's Brant Point Light for the very first time. Discover an exciting new multimedia exhibition which chronicles the history and diversity of lighthouses around the country. Highlighting the exhibit are two short films playing on a panorama of five LCD screens within the lighthouse which show stunning footage and images of these iconic structures.

Opening July 4, 2008, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

From the Revolutionary War era to the advent of GPS, American lighthouses were imperative to the safety and survival of an untold number of ships and sailors at sea. Come hear as first-hand accounts from keepers and their families relay some of these stories of survival, as well as the difficult, often monotonous and sometimes perilous duties of a lighthouse keeper.

THE REVOLUTION HITS
WEST NEWTON CINEMA

"Inspiring!... Gripping!... A story of how feelings became songs, songs became a national voice and voice became action!"
- Robert Abele, LA Times

Most people don’t think about singing when they think about revolution. But song was the weapon of choice when Estonians sought to free themselves from decades of Soviet occupation. "The Singing Revolution" is an inspiring account of one nation’s dramatic rebirth. It is the story of humankind’s irrepressible drive for freedom and self-determination.

"Imagine the scene in 'Casablanca' in which the French patrons sing 'La Marseillaise' in defiance of the Germans, then multiply its power by a factor of thousands, and you've only begun to imagine the force of 'The Singing Revolution'."- Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times

July 11, 2008 - July 17, 2008
West Newton Cinema
1296 Washington Street
West Newton, MA 02465
(617) 964-6060

KILLER POET
Wins best documentary @
The Boston International Film Festival.
Next stop Woods Hole.

KILLER POET is the story of Norman Porter, a convicted double murderer from Massachusetts who served 25 years in prison before escaping to Chicago. There he spent the next two decades living as a poet/intellectual by the name of JJ Jameson - an elaborately crafted false identity - until he was apprehended in 2005.

KILLER POET can next be caught at the 17th Woods Hole Film Festival. The Woods Hole Film Festival is dedicated to presenting the best independent film from emerging filmmakers. Once again, over 8 days, the Festival will present over 100 films from around the world in the quaint village of Woods Hole. Filmmakers and patrons alike come to Woods Hole from around the world to see great films, meet interesting filmmakers and bask in the best of summertime on Cape Cod.

7:00 PM Thursday, July 31st @ Old Fire Station

June 2008

2008-05-30T07:16:00.000-07:00

KILLER POET USA PREMIER
"When I look at JJ, it makes me believe in the possibility of redemption."
- Monika Bartyzel, http://www.cinematical.com/

Killer Poet, The double life of Norman Porter will have its U.S. premiere at the Boston International Film Festival on June 14th. The film tells the story of Norman Porter, a convicted double murderer from Massachusetts who served 26 years in prison before escaping to Chicago. There he spent the next two decades living as a poet/intellectual by the name of J.J. Jameson until he was apprehended in 2005. He had just been named Chicago's "Poet of the Month" when the law finally caught up with him.

The Norman Porter saga has been covered extensively over the last 45+ years, from the original murder at the Robert Hall Clothing Store in Saugus (1960), to his subsequent escape (1985), and ultimate recapture by the Massachusetts Violent Fugitives Apprehension Unit (2005). It is a local story that is universally compelling, and one that has generated profound debate about the U.S. prison system for decades. Producers Susan Gray, Bestor Cram, and Dominic Musacchio of Northern Light Productions, will be on hand at the screening, in addition to characters from the film.

Saturday, June 14th, 4:45 PM
(Running time: 77 minutes)
Loews AMC Boston Common Theatre
175 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02111

THE REVOLUTION
COMES TO BOSTON
"Inspiring!... Gripping!... A story of how feelings became songs, songs became a national voice and voice became action!"
- Robert Abele, LA Times

Most people don’t think about singing when they think about revolution. But song was the weapon of choice when Estonians sought to free themselves from decades of Soviet occupation. "The Singing Revolution" is an inspiring account of one nation’s dramatic rebirth. It is the story of humankind’s irrepressible drive for freedom and self-determination.

"Imagine the scene in 'Casablanca' in which the French patrons sing 'La Marseillaise' in defiance of the Germans, then multiply its power by a factor of thousands, and you've only begun to imagine the force of 'The Singing Revolution'."
- Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times

June 6, 2008 - June 12, 2008
(Running time: 96 minutes)
Kendall Square Cinema
One Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA 02139

Back to the Garden:
A Woodstock Museum
- Peter Applebome

A funny thing happened on the magic bus trip back to the tie-dyed land of peace, love and music.
Yes, there were Jimi and Janis and Joe Cocker twitching around in film clips from the famous concert 39 years ago on the rolling meadow that was Max Yasgur’s alfalfa field. There was a real-life hippie bus in psychedelic colors, and displays of a stars-and-stripes suede jacket and love beads next to a minidress and go-go boots ensemble, the latter getup presumably not worn at Woodstock.

John Sebastian and Richie Havens were there to reminisce. They played Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” by Bob Dylan.
But somehow “then” kept looping back to “now” at the unveiling Wednesday of the Museum at Bethel Woods, which will open to the public on Monday.
So there was Duke Devlin, famous as the hippie from the Texas Panhandle who came to Woodstock and never left, standing in the bright sun giving his spiel yet again for a German television crew as they waited for two squadrons of reporters in Peter Pan buses to descend on the field where the concert took place.

Stout and tattooed, with long gray hair and beard, Mr. Devlin is the embodiment of the transition of the Woodstock generation into the AARP generation. But he figures that if Woodstock is about nostalgia, it’s about more than nostalgia, too.
“Is it over yet?” he asked. “We’re still here talking. We’ve now got this wonderful museum, but I don’t call it a museum, I call it a time capsule. And without me getting too political, a lot of the same ingredients are still the same — we’ve got a war, we have civil rights, we have women’s issues. Back then, we got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I don’t know if this can be recreated, but something like it can happen again. We’re back in the ’50s, man. The reason we’re all here is because we’re not all there.”

Which is not to say that the museum, housed in a lovely laminated wood structure built by a company that long ago built Mr. Yasgur’s silos, tries to be the personification of the Woodstock ethos, whatever that was. Centered on a 6,728-square-foot permanent gallery, it’s part of Alan Gerry’s re-creation of Woodstock not as a vehicle for peace and love but as a vehicle for Sullivan County’s economic development. The site has become a $100 million arts center with a 15,000-seat outdoor performance space.

And along with voices marveling about how much fun they had in the mud or how Woodstock changed the world, we get to hear old Nixon-era stalwarts lambasting all that Woodstock has come to stand for. “The ’60s were just a terrible time for the country,” says former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, the biggest downer in a chorus of voices, yea and nay, that museumgoers hear after a 21-minute film of music from the concert. “It was the age of selfishness. It was the age of self-indulgence. It was the age of anti-authority, an age in which people did all kind of wrong things. That was the start, really, of the drug problem in the United States.”

But yea or nay, and it’s mostly yea, the most striking thing about the museum is the way that in the end, it’s less about the famous concert and yoga in the mud than about the era that the concert has come to represent.

“When I came to this project, there was this idea to memorialize the concert, which was about as far as it had gone,” said Patrick Gallagher, president of the firm that designed the museum. “And I said, ‘If it’s just a celebration of a celebration, what’s the purpose?’ And the more we peeled back the onion the more it was clear that the idea wanted to be Woodstock as the culminating moment, the capstone of the 1960s. We had to look back to look forward.”
So about 60 percent of the museum is about the politics and culture and music of the ’60s: pillbox hats, Elvis, the Bay of Pigs, the Beatles, civil rights, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. And the rest is a quite vivid re-creation of the chaotic and unlikely process that led to 500,000 people shouting, “No rain, no rain, no rain,” during the summer downpours, Jimi Hendrix’s legendary performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and all the rest.

Continued at... http://www.newyorktimes.com/

May 2008

2008-05-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

DHAMMA BROTHERS
film comes home for a run @

The Coolidge Corner Theatre
Starts, Fri May 16

The West Newton Cinema
Starts, Fri May 23

Donaldson Correctional Facility, situated in the Alabama countryside southwest of Birmingham, holds 1500 of the state's most dangerous criminals. Behind high security towers and a double row of barbed wire and electrical fence, dwells a host of convicts who will never see the light of day. But for some of these men, a spark was ignited. In January 2002, Donaldson Correctional Facility became the first maximum security prison in North America to hold an extended Vipassana retreat, an emotionally and physically demanding course of silent meditation lasting 10 days.

Los Angeles: May 9LAEMMLE’S SUNSET 58000 SUNSET BLVD.WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA (323) 848-3500

Seattle: May 9-14THE GRAND ILLUSION CINEMA1403 NE 50TH STREETSEATTLE WA (503) 523-3935

Portland OR: May 17-18 and May 24-25HOLLYWOOD THEATRE4122 NE SANDY BLVDPORTLAND, OR (503) 281-4215

THE DHAMMA BROTHERS tells a dramatic tale of human potential and transformation as it closely follows and documents the stories of 36 prison inmates who enter into this arduous and intensive program. It challenges assumptions about the nature of prisons as places of punishment rather than rehabilitation and raises the question: is it possible for these men, some of whom have committed horrendous crimes, to change?
dirs. Jenny Phillips, Anne Marie Stein and Andrew Kukura, documentary, 1h16m

Tickets
Official Site

Meditation for murderers
Prisoners at Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Ala.
― Andrew O'Hehir

Donaldson Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Bessemer, Ala., that houses the worst offenders in America's direst state prison system, does not seem a likely venue for a Buddhist meditation retreat. It's a dank-looking brick structure right out of "The Shawshank Redemption," wrapped in barbed wire and electrical fencing and set in the pine woods along the red-clay banks of the Black Warrior River. Many of its inmates will never see the outside world again. Maybe the point of Jenny Phillips, Andy Kukura and Anne Marie Stein's documentary "The Dhamma Brothers" is to argue that there could be no place where 10 days of solitary and silent introspection are so valuable and so necessary. ("Dhamma," as many readers will recognize, is the Pali word equivalent to the more familiar Sanskrit term "dharma," meaning both the body of Buddhist teachings and the operations of natural law.)

As someone with a strong constitutional allergy to New Age-flavored self-actualization rhetoric (a residue of my 1970s childhood in Berkeley, Calif.), I approached "The Dhamma Brothers" with considerable skepticism. Any real Buddhist would say that's as it should be. But listen: Whether this movie is channeling Siddhartha Gautama himself or just a potent form of the placebo effect, it takes you on a thrilling and hopeful voyage through a very dark place. Furthermore, it does not require the suspension of disbelief in anything specific, beyond, I guess, the possibility of seeing oneself clearly. Mind you, that's no small thing to believe in.

Continued at... http://www.salon.com/

KILLER POET review following
world premier @ Hot Docs
"When I look at JJ, it makes me believe in the possibility of redemption."
- Monika Bartyzel

Redemption. Reversals. Grey area. These are the things that make the idea of a binary, black and white life so very flawed. There is a certain comfort in the thought of a world that is cut and dry and free from confusion, but it is something we can never achieve. In between each yes and no, in between each bit of good and bad, there is grey area and the possibility for change. But unless we are faced with the wonderful shades of life that lie between, it's easy to dismiss them. However, it wasn't so easy for the pro-death penalty man who uttered the phrase above, and the many others in Chicago who were shocked to discover that their beloved poet and church member JJ Jameson was also Norman Porter -- a man convicted of two murders who had escaped from prison twenty years earlier.

Susan Gray's Killer Poet dips into Norman Porter's life, from the crimes and murder in Boston that landed him in jail, through his intellectual growth within the system, his next life as a poet and handyman in Chicago, and finally, his trip back to jail. It all started in 1960, during a robbery gone bad that resulted in the death of clothing store clerk John Pigott. He was ! arrested and convicted of Pigott's murder, and later in jail, found himself in another altercation that resulted in the death of head jailer David S. Robinson. Porter was not the one who pulled the trigger and shot Robinson, but the responsibility fell on Norman when his accomplice died.

After his convictions, he was a model prisoner. He got an undergraduate degree from Boston University, wrote poetry, and became involved within the prison community -- starting a radio station and newspaper. His first sentence was commuted by then-governor Michael Dukakis, but when he tried to get his second commuted as well, the families of the victims showed up, and the request was denied. He lasted almost ten years before something snapped. He signed out of Norfolk Pre-Release Center for a walk, and wasn't seen again until police apprehended him in Chicago many years later.In Chicago, he got heavily involved in the community, writing and performing poetry, and creating a day care center at his church. But just like his life isn't black and white with his good and bad actions, his life in Chicago wasn't without its problems. He was known for his drinking, and grabbed a few minor arrests under his new name. It was the fingerprinting for these offenses that finally led to his capture.

Continued at... http://www.cinematical.com/

Killer Poet gearing up for world premier; APRIL 24TH @ HOTDOCS

2008-04-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

Killer Poet the 77 minute Northern Light Film was selected to be one of the 173 films shown this year at HOTDOCS in Toronto, Canada. Check out the WORLD PREMIER Thursday April 24th.

Norman Porter, a convicted double murderer, who served 25 years in prison as an exemplary inmate, only to escape after being denied a commutation. For two decades Porter eluded police. The case went cold until a Google search led cops to Chicago, where Porter had reinvented himself as J.J. Jameson: churchgoer, handyman, published poet and member of the coffeehouse intelligentsia. Right after he was named Chicago's "poet of the month," the long arm of the law finally caught up with him. Killer Poet details the life of the mind despite the confines of prison. Porter's poems offer vivid proof that prison provides fertile ground for creative expression, if permitted, following the grand tradition of Robert E. Burns and Jean Genet. Porter is now back behind bars. Is this evidence of the U.S. justice system doing its job? Are prisons meant to serve as sites of punishment or rehabilitation?

-Angie Driscoll
http://www.hotdocs.ca/index.php/audience/

ORANGEBURG film gets some DAP from the New York Times

2008-04-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

FILMS REVISIT OVERLOOKED SHOOTINGS ON A BLACK CAMPUS

Shootings by state troopers that killed three at South Carolina State College in 1968, above, are receiving attention in two TV films.By TIM ARANGO

Published: April 16, 2008

Two years before the deadly Kent State shootings, state troopers opened fire on a student protest on the campus of South Carolina State College. Three people died, and 28 were wounded. The incident, which became known as “the Orangeburg Massacre,” never pierced the nation’s collective memory of the 1960s, and academics and survivors say that one reason was shoddy, racially biased press coverage: those killed were black.

But new media coverage may give the shootings their historical due, and some scholars and survivors hope it might also nudge South Carolina legislators to open a state investigation of the 40-year-old tragedy, which never received such scrutiny. Dan Klores, a New York filmmaker and former public relations executive, has been thinking about Orangeburg and its obscurity in the historical memory for decades, since he was a student at the time at the nearby University of South Carolina in Columbia. He said he hoped his latest film, “Black Magic,” about basketball players at historically black colleges, will open people’s eyes to Orangeburg. (The film made its debut on ESPN on March 16.)

Mr. Klores said that Orangeburg was only obliquely related to the topic of “Black Magic,” but that he was looking for any reason to delve into the incident. During his research for the film he discovered that one of the Orangeburg fatalities was a star high school basketball player who was on campus because his mother worked at the college as a maid. “That gave me the excuse,” Mr. Klores said. “That’s all it was. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I said, ‘That’s fine, it’s my film.’ ”

Another film, a documentary produced by two Boston moviemakers, Bestor Cram and Judy Richardson, was in the research phase for nearly 10 years before the pair finally received financing last year. Titled “Orangeburg,” it is scheduled for broadcast this fall on PBS. “We were up against two problems,” said Mr. Cram, a principal at Northern Light Productions in Boston, explaining why it took so long to finance the film. “People actually wondered why they hadn’t heard of it. Number two, everyone thinks the civil rights story has been told.”

Mr. Cram and his co-producer, Ms. Richardson, were activists in the 1960s and had long wanted to tell this story. “We’re combining our activist sensibilities with our longstanding filmmaking sensibilities,” Mr. Cram said. “I promise you this is not a polemic. It’s about people’s lives that were profoundly changed by a tragedy.” Ms. Richardson said that beyond the conventional interpretation of the role race played in Orangeburg’s not being as well known as Kent State, other circumstances also contributed to the event’s obscurity. For one, the shootings were at night, and there was no television coverage because, according to Ms. Richardson, “no one anticipated the event turning out the way it did.” Second, many of the still photographs taken by a photographer for the local paper, The Times and Democrat, were later destroyed in a fire. “There are only a few images, like a half-dozen,” Ms. Richardson said.

The killings occurred on Feb. 8, 1968, when white state troopers fired on a group of more than 100 students. The shootings came after three days of rising tension following what began as a protest calling for the integration of an all-white bowling alley in Orangeburg, home to the predominantly black South Carolina State College. (It is now a university.)

Continued at....
http://www.nytimes.com/