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Works in Progress
In Production
Custer's Last Stand - A new film for the American Experience series on PBS.
Custer’s Last Stand, a 90-minute documentary film for PBS broadcast, will take a probing look at the extraordinary life and mythic afterlife of one of the most controversial figures in American history – George Armstrong Custer.
Made famous by his last stand at the battle of the Little Bighorn in the summer of 1876, Custer has long been one of the most celebrated, and vilified, figures in American history. From his storied and charismatic Civil War career, that made him the youngest brigadier General in the Union army, to his reinvention as a Western hero, a renowned Indian fighter and avatar of Manifest Destiny, to his final martyrdom at the hands of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors on the banks of the Little Bighorn, Custer has exerted a powerful pull on our minds and our hearts.
Underneath the stereotypical images of Custer however, lies another less well-known saga, of a man whose astonishing early success would result in a perpetual drive for continuing fame and notoriety, a restless striving to recapture the glory of his first youthful military adventures. Along the way, Custer would be a man whose career would often careen from crisis to triumph to crisis again, as his profoundly human flaws would often sabotage his almost superhuman talents. His would be a story of often tortured personal relationships and violently clashing attitudes, of fateful decisions and missed opportunities, of strategic blunders, and fatal miscommunication.
Ultimately, it would be Custer’s wife Libbie who would help to promote and enshrine the Custer myth in America’s consciousness, making her slain husband into both a mythic hero and an ideal lens through which to see and understand the contradictions and casualties of America’s drive to become a continental nation.
The Diplomats
The Diplomats [w.t.], a feature-length documentary film, follows a select group of high school students as they undergo the rigorous and mind-altering process of preparing for and then participating in the Model United Nations World Championship, an annual three-day summit meeting held at the iconic U.N. headquarters in New York City. Featuring kids who hail from wildly different backgrounds and take wildly different approaches to the project of (mock) diplomacy, The Diplomats offers an engaging, often humorous look at the challenges of cross-cultural communication and cooperation, and a surprising, thought-provoking meditation on the real obstacles to peace.
In Development
The Constitution
A 4-hour television event-and the heart of an ambitious multi-platform initiative produced in association with Twin Cities Public Television and PBS-The Constitution explores the meaning of America's foundational text and its role in our nation's story-from its creation in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, to the crises that challenged its fundamental premises, to the debates over interpretation that continually shape and reshape the contours of American society. With each episode organized around an overarching theme, the series takes an inventive and somewhat irreverent approach-combining lively verité scenes, vox populi sequences, and stylish animation to explore (and in some ways, deconstruct) both the Constitution's past and its ever-evolving present. Hosted by Peter Sagal, of NPR's immensely popular Wait, Wait. . . Don't Tell Me, and featuring interviews with a host of luminary experts such as Sandra Day O'Connor and Bill Clinton, The Constitution turns the universally-dreaded civic lesson on its head to create an entertaining, illuminating, and thought-provoking journey through the 4,418 words that made America.
American Farmer
Inspired by the work of acclaimed photographer Paul Mobley and his extraordinary volume American Farmer: The Heart of Our Country, this feature-length documentary goes deep into our nation's agricultural heartland to tell the personal stories of the indomitable men and women who literally sustain us all. Shot in a verité style during the all-important harvest season, the film captures the rhythms of life on dozens of family farms and ranches across the United States, weaving them into an inspiring and moving mosaic portrait of a typical day on the land-from long before sunup to well past sundown. Along the way, through the voices of the farmers of themselves, the film offers an intimate look at a rapidly disappearing world-a world where tradition, commitment and tenacity matter as much or more than commerce, and where the values that have always defined our nation still endure. American Farmer is intended for theatrical release, followed by a national PBS broadcast.
Retro Report
What ever happened to Chandra Levy? And how about that scare over power lines and cancer? And remember colony collapse disorder? Where did the scientific community finally come down on that? In this dynamic, innovative on-line news program, we answer those questions and many, many more. Featuring eight-minute video segments that reexamine sensational news stories which dominated the headlines and then faded quickly from our national consciousness, Retro Report brings the benefit of hindsight to the frenetic news cycle and uses the passage of time to hold people accountable. As we explore the denouement of a story-and simultaneously assess the coverage of it-each segment offers a lively, revealing corrective to the American media's short attention span, as well as fresh and often surprising perspective on the dynamics of news gathering itself. The core of an interactive website designed to encourage engagement with both current events and the media, the Retro Report video segments are a timely counterweight to today's 24-hour news cycle and an essential tool for understanding our nation's history.
The South
The South, an eight-part documentary series (and the heart of a landmark multi-media initiative), will explore the vibrant, unique and wholly American history of the South – capturing the extraordinary stories that have given the region its particular color and flair, and creating an unprecedented archival legacy for future generations. Produced in partnership with Alexandria Productions and Intelligent Television, The South Project has received development funds from PBS, Stephens, Inc., the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew H. Mellon Foundation, and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
The Seventies: Scenes from the Revolution
The Seventies: Scenes from the Revolution, a six-part historical documentary series, will tell the dynamic, compelling and often surprising story of what was arguably the most disruptive and profoundly transformative decade in American history – from the tragedy at Kent State to the highly-publicized tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs known as “The Battle of the Sexes”; from the heated and often violent struggles over busing in Boston (as depicted in Anthony Lukas’ Pulitzer prize-winning Common Ground) to the religious revival Tom Wolfe dubbed “the Third Great Awakening” to the energy crisis that effectively (and finally) toppled the Carter presidency. The series has received R&D funding from PBS.
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