Writer Louise Bernikow uncovers the long Suffrage Campaign in New York City, a place she says “where the urban landscape became a prop for incomparable political spectacle. The Statue of Liberty, the transit system, Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, parks and streetcorners– all became venues for a complicated, shifting alliance across lines of race and class, ending in a historic victory in 1917.” [Read more…] about NY Suffrage Writer Hits PBS in September
Documentary
State Capitol Fire of 1911 Commemoration
In the early morning hours of March 29, 1911, a fire broke out in the New York State Capitol at Albany. By sunset, the vast collection of the New York State Library, then housed in the Capitol, had been reduced to ashes.
To commemorate the centennial of the fire, coauthors Paul Mercer and Vicki Weiss, both of the New York State Library, have published The New York State Capitol and the Great Fire of 1911 (Arcadia Press, 2011) including rare images and documents from the special collections of the modern library, which arose from the ruins of the 1911 fire.
The public is invited join Executive Deputy Chief Warren Abriel of the Albany Fire Department to mark the 100th Anniversary of this historic event on Tuesday, March 29, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the University Club of Albany. The reception will feature light fare and cash bar, and authors Mercer and Weiss will discuss and sign the book. Royalties from book sales benefit the Friends of the New York State Library.
The event will also feature a preview of a documentary set to air on March 31 on WMHT, The New York Capitol Fire. Robert Altman, President and CEO of WMHT Educational Communications, will introduce a clip of the video, which draws on interviews, archival materials and reenactments. This WMHT documentary was created in collaboration with the New York State Museum, the New York State Archives, the Albany Institute, the New York State Library, the City of Albany and the Commission on the Restoration of the Capitol.
The cost for the reception, book signing and video preview is $20 per person. Reservations are required and may be made by calling the University Club at (518) 463-1151.
A portion of the proceeds from this event benefit the University Club Foundation, formed to recognize and maintain the unique historic and architectural significance of the University Club building and property, its historic neighborhood and the city of Albany, where it has been located since its inception in 1901.
Support for educational programming presented by the University Club of Albany Foundation, Inc. is provided by AT&T.
Photo: Fire-destroyed reading room in State Capitol, Albany, NY, 1911. Courtesy New York State Archives.
Cayuga Museum Film Fest Seeks Entrants
The 2011 Theodore Case Film Festival seeks entrants. Auburn’s only home-grown film festival honors the work of sound film pioneer Theodore Case and his Case Research Laboratory. Its mission is to further the experimental legacy of the Case Lab by promoting original visual media in Central New York. Festival organizers are actively seeking entries, spreading the word in movie houses, colleges, high schools and middle schools throughout Central New York. The work of area student and adult filmmakers will be screened at the Auburn Public Theater on June 10 and 11. The theater is on Genesee Street in downtown Auburn, the city which is proud to proclaim itself “The Birthplace of Talking Movies.”
Central New York residents are invited to submit their recent work (post January 2009) of thirty minutes or less. Entries should be on DVD. Entry forms may be picked up at the Cayuga Museum, 203 Genesee St., in Auburn, or downloaded from either the Theodore Case Film Festival’s website or the Museum’s website. Work in all genres is welcome and there is no entry fee. Deadline for entries is May 2, 2011.
Two Short Films Celebrate IBM’s Centennial
The international corporation IBM, based in Armonk, Westchester County, is celebrating it’s 100th Anniversary this year. The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, following a merger of the Computer Scale Company of America and the International Time Recording Company with the Tabulating Machine Company. The conglomerate adopted the name International Business Machines in 1924, a name the company had used in Canada.
A recently produced video to celebrate their centennial anniversary, 100×100, tells IBM’s history through the eyes of 100 different individuals beginning with a 100-year-old and ending with a newborn baby. The video has been posted to YouTube.
A second IBM film was directed by famed documentation Errol Morris. The 30-minute documentary, They Were There was scored by Philip Glass and chronicles many of the influential people involved at IBM throughout its history.
Illustration: The original IBM Logo. Courtesy Wikipedia.
Broadcast Marks 100th Anniversary of Triangle Factory Fire
On March 25th, 1911, a deadly fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York’s Greenwich Village. The blaze ripped through the congested loft as petrified workers — mostly young immigrant women — desperately tried to make their way downstairs. One door was blocked by fire and the other had been locked by the factory owners to prevent theft.
Some workers managed to cram onto the elevator while others ran down an inadequate fire escape which soon pulled away from the masonry and sent them to their deaths. Hundreds of horrified onlookers arrived just in time to see young men and women jumping from the windows, framed by flames. By the time the fire burned itself out, 146 people were dead. All but 23 of the dead were women and nearly half were teenagers.
The harrowing story of an event that changed labor laws forever, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Triangle Fire is directed and produced by Jamila Wignot (Walt Whitman, The Rehnquist Revolution) and will premiere on Monday, February 28, 2011 at 9:00 PM (check local listings.)
PBS Documentary Coming to NYS Museum
The New York State Museum will present a PBS documentary December 11 about the Scotia-based New York Air National Guard Wing’s journey to Greenland with a team of international scientists investigating global warming.
“Arctic Air: A Greenlandic Journey with the 109th” will be shown free-of-charge at 2 p.m. in the Museum’s Huxley Theater. Following the film there will be a question-and-answer session with Amy Manley, the film’s producer and Lt Col Kurt Bedore, a navigator from the 109th Airlift Wing.
The documentary was produced by WCNY, a PBS television station in Syracuse, which traveled alongside American and international teams of scientists as they were transported to Greenland by the 109th Airlift Wing in the summer of 2009.
Flying the United States Air Force’s only ski-equipped C-130 Hercules cargo planes, the Wing provides vital support for polar researchers working in the Arctic and Antarctica. “Arctic Air” captures the Wing members’ commitment as they face many challenges in a frozen land that is both beautiful and dangerous. The skilled pilots and their crews transport supplies, cargo and staff to and from Greenland in temperatures that threaten to freeze their planes’ fuel and hydraulic fluid.
The film shows the camps where American and international teams of scientists seek to unlock mysteries of the past buried deep within the polar ice cap to help provide answers to some of today’s most important questions about climate change and global warning. Lack of pollution, unique topography and untouched flows of glacial ice have made the Greenland ice sheet an ideal laboratory for this research. The 109th Airlift Wing missions have made it possible for scientists from around the world to gather the critical data that is now shaping political, environmental and economic policies on climate change.
WCNY is also providing an online teachers’ guide to the documentary with grade-appropriate activities and links to educational resources for classroom and student research use. The suggested activities focus on the topics introduced in the film including scientific Arctic exploration, Arctic aviation, climate control, global warming, life in Greenland, and unique career opportunities for students to explore.
More information on the documentary and the teachers’ guide is available at www.wcny.org/arcticair.
Information about Museum programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.
Photo: LC-130H (Skier 96) taking off with jet assisted rockets taken April 2003 on
the Greenland Ice Cap by Todd Valentic, Senior Research Engineer, Center for
GeoSpace Studies.
Travel Channel to Feature Ellis Island Museum
Travel Channel’s new series, Mysteries at the Museum, will be featuring New York tonight at 9 EST. The show will be highlighting the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.
The episode will feature literacy tests given to all new arrivals at Ellis Island. In theory the test should have prevented thousands of poor, illiterate immigrants from gaining entry into the U.S., but what many immigrants lacked in literacy, they made up for in cunning and guile. How could they possibly have beat the test that was designed to keep them out of America?
Champlain History Project Wins Prestigious Award
A partnership of state and non-profit entities has won an important award for its project to educate Vermonters about the history and archeology of the Lake Champlain area as part of the Lake Champlain Quadricentennial.
At its recent annual conference, the American Association for State and Local History awarded the Lake Champlain Voyages of Discovery project a 2010 Leadership in History Award of Merit. [Read more…] about Champlain History Project Wins Prestigious Award
‘Baghdad ER’ Doc Coming to NYS Museum
On July 1, the New York State Museum will present the Emmy award-winning HBO documentary “Baghdad ER,” followed by a reunion and discussion between the producer and the first wounded soldier to appear in the film.
Following the 6:30 p.m. film presentation, producer/director Matthew O’Neill will be reunited with Staff Sgt. Craig Macy from Buffalo, a New York National Guard Soldier who was wounded in Iraq in 2005. Macy will speak about his experiences as a wounded veteran, appearing in the documentary and his continuing membership in the National Guard.
The program is being held in conjunction with the new Museum exhibition “Citizen Soldier: New York’s National Guard in the American Century,” open in Exhibition Hall through March 2011.
When it was released in 2006, “Baghdad ER” was the most honored documentary of the year, winning four Emmy Awards for its “unflinching” look at the cost of war. It also won a Peabody Award, the Overseas Press Club Award and the Alfred I. duPont Columbia Award. The groundbreaking documentary chronicles the day-to-day lives of doctors, nurses, medics, soldiers and chaplains in the Army’s premier medical facility in the combat zone. O’Neill and producer Jon Alpert were given unprecedented access to the Army’s 86th Combat Support Hospital during a two-month period in 2005.
The film captures the experiences of the military medical professionals as they work to save lives from their trauma center in the middle of war-ravaged Iraq. The film is not suitable for children. It includes graphic scenes that are at times disturbing and when the film first came out, the Army was concerned about the emotional impact it might have on troops and military families. Instead, the film became almost required viewing for all members of the military medical community and went on to receive critical acclaim from both inside and outside the U.S. military.
Macy was serving with the National Guard’s 1st Battalion 69th Infantry in Iraq in 2005 when he was struck by a sniper as he was handing out candy to Iraqi children. Thanks to his comrades who rushed to his aid, and the expert medical care he received at the trauma center, Macy survived his ordeal, recovered and returned to duty with the National Guard. He volunteered for a deployment to Afghanistan in 2008 with nearly 1700 New York National Guard troops. While still a member of the National Guard, Macy is now a police officer with the City of Buffalo. He recently became a new father and has named his son after one of the soldiers who pulled him to safety in 2005.
This program is the first in a series of special programs that the State Museum is hosting in conjunction with the “Citizen Soldier” exhibition. The exhibition recounts the history of the New York National Guard and those who carried out its mission through wars and battles, natural disasters and national emergencies. The National Guard is based on a tradition dating back to colonial times in a state that has always been guided by the principle that its defense lies in the hands of its citizenry. Citizen soldiers are everyday people who put their lives on hold to defend, aid and protect their communities and their country.
Iroquois Indian Museum Offers Early Technology Day
The Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, NY kicks off a celebration of our 30th Anniversary on Saturday, April 10 with the 1st Annual Early Technology Day, their annual Spring Party and a special screening of a new documentary on the museum’s history. [Read more…] about Iroquois Indian Museum Offers Early Technology Day