What's Up? Docs....

My three recent PBS films will all be screened this week at a NYC-area festival, but you can watch two of them now.

Just a quick post here to relate that the three short films that I’ve written and directed since 2021 will be screened at this week’s film festival at the new and ambitious Barrymore Center in Fort Lee, N.J. just across the GWB from NYC. The classy center, which opened just last year and boasts a 250-seat theater, shows classic films all year and displays gallery exhibits marking Fort Lee as the birth place of the movie industry in America, more than a century ago, before the pivotal move to Hollywood.

The three films are each 27 to 30 minutes long. Here’s a link to the Barrymore festival site for this week’s schedule and ticket offerings, but a preview below.

Last year, my first film “Atomic Cover-up,” on U.S. suppression of the most important film footage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki—which had already won three awards and screened at 20 festivals around the world—took first prize at the Barrymore in the doc category. Because of Covid concerns, the films were only shown online but tomorrow night (Wed.) all of the prize winners will be shown on the big screen after an opening night reception.

My film was produced by Suzanne Mitchell (no relation that we know of) and is coming to PBS stations next month. It’s now available for free via Kanopy if you have a library card, or can be purchased or rented for community or school airings from the Video Project (it also comes in a 52-minute version). Our web site and reviews here and trailer below. My companion book of the same title here and don’t forget my Substack that launched in response to “Oppenheimer” and now explores various nuclear angles.

On Friday night, half of the shorts selected for this year’s festival will be shown, including my film from last year, “The First Attack Ads: Hollywood vs. Upton Sinclair.” This film, produced by Lyn Goldfarb, was derived from my award-winning book, “The Campaign of the Century,” on radical muckraker Sinclair’s amazing race for governor of California in 1934, leading the grassroots movement EPIC (End Poverty in California). He would have won if not for the fake movie shorts ordered by MGM legend Irving Thalberg and other dirty tricks.

Our film was aired over hundreds of PBS stations last year. Web site and reviews here, trailer below.

Finally (or maybe not), on Saturday night, the Barrymore will screen my latest film, also produced by Lyn Goldfarb, “Memorial Day Massacre: Worked Die, Film Buried.” It explores the 1937 tragedy in Chicago when police shot (mainly in the back) and killed ten labor activists marching in favor of a regional steel workers strike. The media portrayed this as a reasonable response to “rioting” workers but the key evidence—newsreel footage shot for Paramount News—was suppressed. Until an investigative reporter and Senate subcommitee forced its release.

Our film was aired over PBS earlier this year and is still up on their web site for all to view for free. Narrated by good guy Josh Charles. Companion book here. Our web site here with raves from many notables, and trailer below.

If one of our two films wins another award this year, it will be screened again on Sunday afternoon with all of the other winners.

Needless to say, none of this was in my imagination, as book author and magazine editor, just a few years ago, let alone back in 1970 when I moved to Manhattan out of college for my first job.