Ann Seidl made her noble effort, and now the world can judge her film about the Hollywood image of librarians.

LisNews.com had a nice little story on the premiere here.

Washington Post review - weblink here…

Library Journal review  - weblink here ….

 Norman Oder, the writer, once worked for the Charleston Gazette.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  June 25, 2007 DIRECT INQUIRIES TO:
John Witek — (304) 697-0681
Jcwitek@aol.com Deborah Novak — (304) 697-0681
Novak1@marshall.edu

620 entries, representing the work of more than 70 organizations yielded 253 nominations.  A complete list of Emmy recipients may be found at www.ohiovalleyemmy.org

The result of three years of research and production, CAM HENDERSON is the story of West Virginia’s greatest coach, who invented basketball’s zone defense and fast break.

Multiple Emmy-Award winners Deborah Novak and John Witek have produced and directed a number of highly acclaimed television documentaries in addition to CAM HENDERSON. These include ASHES TO GLORY: THE TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH OF MARSHALL UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL, HEARTS OF GLASS, BLENKO HANDCRAFT, BLENKO RETRO, and NEW MUSIC.

CAM HENDERSON has also been honored with the prestigious First Place Platinum Award from Houston’s international film festival, Worldfest-Houston.

A DVD of the program with four bonus features is available at Huntington-area bookstores.

Wayne Ewing flew in from Colorado to judge the 2007 student film entries at the WV Intl. Film Festival. I met with him for 45 minutes before he went over to introduce the winners on Sunday, talking about his two great WV documentaries, “If Elected” and more recently, “The Last Campaign.” He told me about his great new project - a  YouTube-style political documentary  for the 2008 presidential campaign.

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Angelina Jolie has received a lot of press for refusing to talk to the press except about her new film. I understand completely. I saw the film at the Marquee Cinema on Corridor G yesterday, and loved it. I loved it even more because the true “mighty heart” was from West Virginia - Asra Nomani, who owned the house with Daniel and Marianne Pearl. Nomani grew up in Morgantown, and has written her own amazing book, “Standing Alone in Mecca.”

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Robert Tinnell, a native of outside Fairmont, has written a very interesting and short essay about his son who has autism - and how he has been margalized. Check it out here….

Ken Hechler, who is presently working on a new book he calls “Faith, Hope and Parody” will include many of the musical parodies he has written since he began his life as a West Virginia politician in 1958. He began by getting four young coeds from Marshall to sing his own version of a popular song by the McGuire Sisters, “Sugar Time.” They had won a Marshall song contest by singing it. The new version went, “Hechler in the morning, Hechler in the evening, Hechler at election time….” Ken was a high school clarinet player, actually playing for guest conductor John Philip Sousa in person in 1930.  During high school he played in the American Legion band for $ 7/night. In his sophomore year at Swarthmore College, discovering there was no band, wrote personal handwritten letters to all the incoming freshmen men and the returning upperclassmen which led to the creation of its college band. Ken told me, “Music can get into a person’s soul a lot quicker than a lot of political palaver.” (more…)

Laura Albert, aka “J.T. Leroy”, was sued by the production company that planned on making a film based on her supposedly true autobiographical novel, “Sarah.” The NY Times has printed several recent stories plus some of the original stories a few years ago revealing the hoax.

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Beth Yoke worked at Fairmont State University and lead the school libraries division of the WV Library Association, waging a war to save school librarians being fired all over the state. She is now working in Chicago for the American Library Association as the executive director of the Young Adult Libraries Services Assn.

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Jason Brown is now living in Greensboro, N.C. but he is still very active in the WV film scene, serving as secretary of the WV Filmmakers Guild. He recently received notice that he would get $1,500 to finish his great new documentary on the making and meaning of John Sayles 1987 labor epic, “Matewan,” called “Them That Work.”

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Patchwork Films Releases Third Printing of Mountaintop Removal DVD

[Lewisburg, WV, June 19, 2007] Patchwork Films and Christians for the Mountains have released the third press run of their DVD “The Mountain Mourning Collection.” The collection contains three films, “Mountain Mourning,” “Look What They’ve Done,” and “Keeper of the Mountains,” that focus on the issue of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining and its negative impact on the people and environment of Appalachia. (more…)