Documentary Educational Resources - Filmmaker / Brown, James / All Films

How the Myth Was Made

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:27:00 GMT

How the Myth Was Made
Buy Now: $320.00

George Stoney says he has dumb luck. His grandfather was the doctor on the island in Ireland where the legendary maker of documentary film, Robert Flaherty, shot his film Man of Aran. So Stoney's film, exploring the effects Flaherty's film had on the island and its people, is digging into his own roots as an individual while simultaneously studying the work of his intellectual mentor as a producer of nonfiction films.

Robert Flaherty's 1934 classic Man of Aran chronicled fishermen's struggle for existence on Ireland's bleak Aran Islands. Stoney revisits the islands and interviews surviving locals about their memories of the original film - and their reactions to making this one. It includes excerpts from the original documentary. Stoney says, "How the Myth Was Made illustrates what I believe to be a common truth: the filmmaker always leaves his mark on the places and the people he films."

Visit Brown, James to see additional products in this category.

Hudson Shad

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:27:00 GMT

Hudson Shad
Buy Now: $295.00

Folk music legend and environmental activist Pete Seeger, in despair over the pollution of his beloved Hudson River, launched a project to clean it up in the sixties. In Hudson Shad, Seeger and others in the "River Keepers," make a statement about our responsibility for keeping the waters of the river clean enough for the shad to thrive.

Co-director James Brown, who grew up near the banks of the river, felt a responsibility for sharing through this film a general concern for the relationship between contamination of the river and the survival of its natural inhabitants. Showing the film to people concerned with the Hudson River helped them garner colleagues and supporters towards the cause. Seeger has continued the work, with the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater.

Hudson Shad has been restored with a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Also included on the DVD: Planning for Floods (color, 29 min, 1974)

A documentary commissioned for distribution and use by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an organization founded by Dennis Puleston and others, to raise awareness around conservation issues and promote public environmental responsibility. Though focused on the immediate community of the Mississippi River, the film's message applies well beyond that region, also anticipating by more than 30 years present-day concerns about global warming. Significantly, it suggests positive action rather than just "ain't it awful."Today this film is applicable to our environmental concerns especially if it is used to promote public action, legislation and education. Planning for Floods is used courtesy of EDF.

This DVD is part of the George C. Stoney Collection

Visit Brown, James to see additional products in this category.

The Shepherd of the Night Flock

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:47:00 GMT

The Shepherd of the Night Flock
Buy Now: $320.00

The Shepherd of the Night Flock is a documentary about a jazz ministry at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan which was led by Father John Garcia Gensel.

Gensel formed the Jazz Vespers for those musicians of his growing night ministry who couldn't make it to Sunday morning service after playing late Saturday night gigs. The ministry became the church home for many musicians, including Zoot Sims, Billy Strayhorn and Billy Taylor, and even the legendary jazz great Duke Ellington. Ellington called Pastor Gensel "the shepherd who watches over the night flock," eventually inspiring the title for this film.

The church's community and programming were incredibly varied, often creating a divide among parishioners. While elderly German church members ran a traditional morning service, the Jazz Vespers sang and worshipped in the evening. More traditional church-goers perceived the Jazz Vespers as a group starkly different from them, far disconnected from what their idea of what a congregation should be. Thus, The Shepherd of the Night Flock evolved into a tool to introduce different parts of the congregation to each other.

Stoney quickly realized the unifying potential of the film: "And so, we started making stuff about the Jazz Vespers, and then combining 10 minutes of the morning service and 10 minutes of the Jazz Vespers. And we found that the morning people didn't realize that the Jazz Vespers was actually a religious experience, and the Jazz Vespers people saw that the morning service people really cared about the traditions of the church. And it began to pull the congregation together."

Visit Brown, James to see additional products in this category.