Explore the work of renowned documentary filmmaker, George Stoney, through our series of free, pre-festival film screenings starting Thursday, June 24 at 7:30 PM at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.. Stoney will be the keynote speaker at the Alternative Media Festival on July 31 at the University of Indianapolis, where he will premiere his new film, GETTING OUT.
THE SHEPHERD OF THE NIGHT FLOCK and HOW ONE PAINTER SEES
June 24, 7:30 PM Indianapolis Museum of Art 4000 Michigan Road
July 11, 3 PM Lecture Hall, IUPUI 325 University Blvd
The Shepherd of the Night Flock (with James Brown) (1978)Portrait of Pastor John Garcia Gensel of New York City's St. Peter's Lutheran Church, who has a long history of befriending and ministering to many jazz musicians including Duke Ellington, Jim Hall, Billy Taylor, Zoot Simms, Ruth Brisbane, Howard McGee and Frank Foster. This film received the blue ribbon at the American Film Festival. (58 min)
How One Painter Sees and Coping with Difficulty In 1984 when Lloyd Burlingame, the celebrated theatrical designer and founder of NYU's Department of Costume and Scenic Design, found his progressing macular degeneration was forcing him to abandon his profession, he began redefining himself as a "touchable artist". It was, he explained, "a spiritual quest as well as an artistic one" and asked Stoney and his son to record the journey with him, which they did for 14 months in HOW ONE PAINTER SEES.
COPING WITH DIFFICULTY is a 10-minute portrait of the same man 15 years later as he learns to use voice computers, Braille and a seeing eye dog to maintain his independence. (20 minutes)
HOW THE MYTH WAS MADE and VTR ST. JACQUES
June 29, 6 PM Fountain Square Library 1066 Virginia Avenue
July 17, 7 PM Lecture Hall, IUPUI 325 University Blvd
HOW THE MYTH WAS MADE (1978) was made for Stoney's class at NYU in the Documentary Tradition in which Robert Flaherty's classic MAN OF ARAN was featured. It's twin purposes were to help students understand how documentary evolved from concepts very different from the cinema verité or "fly on the wall" approach that has been dominant since changes in technology made the new approach possible from the early 1960's. It also serves as a reminder of the filmmaker's own impact on the places and people filmed and the responsibility the maker has to those filmed as well as to his audience.
VTR ST. JACQUES was made through the Challenge for Change program at the National Film Board of Canada during Stoney's tenure as guest Executive Producer (1968-1970). Shot on 16mm, it chronicles the first use of ˝ inch consumer grade black and white video as a tool for community building and people empowerment.
THE UPRISING OF '34
July 8 , 6 PM Irvington Library 5625 East Washington St.
July 18, 3 PM Lecture Hall, IUPUI 325 University Blvd
The Uprising of '34 (1995) tells the story of the General Strike of 1934, a massive but little-known strike by hundreds of thousands of Southern cotton mill workers during the Great Depression. The mill workers' defiant stance - and the remarkable grassroots organizing that led up to it - challenged a system of mill owner control that had shaped life in cotton mill communities for decades. (87 minutes)
"An inspired portrayal... shows the intimate relationship between people's lives, social movements, social change and the law." - June Starr, Associate Professor, Indiana University School of Law
Awards: ** 1996 Joady Award Winner, Film Arts Foundation ** Gold Apple Winner, 1995 National Educational Film and Video ** Outstanding Use of Oral History in a Nonprint Format, 1995 ** Gold Hugo Winner, 1995 Chicago International Film Festival ** Best of Festival, 1995 Big Muddy Film Festival ** Jurors' Choice Award Winner, 1995 Charlotte (NC) Film Festival
ALL MY BABIES and THE MASK
July 10, 7 PM Lecture Hall, IUPUI 325 University Blvd
July 21, 6 PM Wayne Library 198 South Girls School Rd
ALL MY BABIES (1953) was made on assignment from the Georgia State Department of Health as a training film for the so called "granny midwives"—almost exclusively Black and illiterate - who were at the time delivering a majority of Black babies in the South. Later, it was used widely for midwife training world wide via UNESCO and the World Health Organization.
In 2002, the Library of Congress selected this "landmark educational film" for preservation in the National Film Registry.
THE MASK , 1965, was one of six training films made through the Louisiana Mental Health Association for the International Association of Chiefs of Police designed to influence police attitudes toward the mentally ill.
WE SHALL OVERCOME
July 28, 6 PM College Ave. Library 4180 N. College Ave.
We Shall Overcome (1989) (54 min) became the anthem that set America marching towards racial equality. By tracing the history of this song, this path-breaking film uncovers the diverse strands of social history that flowed together to form the Civil Rights movement.
Narrated by Harry Belafonte, We Shall Overcome begins in an isolated wood frame church deep in the Sea Islands of South Carolina where spirituals like "I Will Overcome" helped blacks endure the long and brutal years of slavery. Veterans of a 1945 tobacco strike in nearby Charleston explain how it seemed natural to make "We Will Overcome" their rallying cry.
At Myles Horton's Highlander Center in Tennessee, white folk singers like Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan first encountered the song from the strikers and changed the lyrics to "We Shall Overcome." Over historical footage of themselves during the Sixties, the SNCC Freedom Singers, Julian Bond and Andrew Young reminisce about what this song meant during the sit-ins, voter registration drives and protest marches of those heroic years. We hear popular folk singers Peter, Paul and Mary introduce the song to audiences across the country and Joan Baez sing it at the 1963 March on Washington. (58 minutes)
Additional Information:
For additional information contact Public Access of Indianapolis at or 317-335-5272.
Discounted, early-bird registration for the Alternative Media Festival on July 31 ends on July 2, 2004.
The Alternative Media Festival is produced by Public Access of Indianapolis and co-sponsored by the University of Indianapolis and NUVO.
