History, Natural History & the Arts
Daniel Talbot did not simply show movies. He helped teach America how to watch them.
My father was born in the Bronx in 1926 to Polish Jewish immigrants. He came of age during the Depression and World War II, part of a generation that understood culture not as decoration, but as a way of thinking about the world.
He was tough, funny, exacting, deeply humanistic, and unmistakably New York. [Read more…] about Daniel Talbot, New Yorker Films, and the Art of Cultural Courage
The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, located in Peterboro, in Madison County, NY, has announced their 2026 Black History Matters video series, which this year focuses on Abolition.
Beginning February 1st, ten videos will address the Abolition movement in the United States and globally, including the role of women, the development of the Underground Railroad, the role of religion in Abolition, and the afterlives of slavery that exist today. [Read more…] about The Black History Matters Video Series for 2026
A new documentary film unveils a rare and haunting glimpse into “Old Main,” one of America’s oldest asylums, located in Utica, NY. Established in 1843, this facility was the first in New York State devoted to the care of the mentally ill during a time when understanding mental health was still in its infancy.
The imposing structure still stands as a silent witness to the countless inhabitants who lived there until its doors closed for good in 1978. [Read more…] about New Documentary on Utica’s ‘Old Main’ Asylum
Location scouting is a part of the pre-production process of making a film or television show. Before digital files and location-scouting apps transformed the business of film location scouting, New York’s production world ran on hard copies — real photographs, taped into real folders, stored in real boxes. [Read more…] about New York City Location Scout Photo Collections
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress to steward the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting, announced Monday that its Board of Directors has voted to dissolve the organization after 58 years, rather than be “vulnerable to future political manipulation or misuse.”
The decision follows Congress’s rescission of all of CPB’s federal funding and comes after sustained political attacks by the Trump regime and Republican Party that made it impossible for CPB to continue operating as the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 intended. [Read more…] about Once A Educational Powerhouse, CPB is No More
There are few things considered more critical to New York City’s economy than the creative sector, the mix of industries that range from performing and visual arts to ad agencies and design firms.
But a new Creative New York report by The Center for an Urban Future (CUF) shows that the city’s creative sector is facing serious new threats, in large part due to an affordability crisis that is hitting artists and creative workers especially hard. [Read more…] about New Report: Affordability Threatens NYC’s Creative Sector
What does it take to bring the American Revolution to life? How can an event that took place 250 years ago be conveyed to us through modern-day film?
Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt and their production team worked to answer these questions in their new, epic six-part documentary, The American Revolution.
Their work promises to deepen, complicate, and transform our understanding of the Revolution over 12 hours of film. [Read more…] about Making Ken Burns’ ‘The American Revolution’
When I decided to attend Skidmore College in April 2021, I had no idea that I was about to step into one of the deepest historical ravines in the country.
Saratoga County and its surroundings witnessed history from the birth of the Iroquois Confederacy, to the tumultuous Battles of Saratoga, which helped secure American Independence. In some ways, New York’s Capital Region is the Cradle of the Nation. [Read more…] about Behind The Scenes: American Revolution & WMHT Film Production
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has announced it will shut down. The move follows the Republican Party’s cutting of all the nonprofit’s funding. 89 NPR and PBS station transmitters in New York will be affected.
CPB, a private, nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting. It’s support for more than 1,500 locally managed and operated public television and radio stations nationwide will end in September the organization said. [Read more…] about Trump Regime Kills Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)
Narrated by Julien Icher, historian and founder of the “Follow the Frenchman” YouTube series, the new PBS documentary Lafayette: A Hero’s Return explores Lafayette’s enduring legacy in both New York and American history. [Read more…] about ‘Lafayette: A Hero’s Return’ PBS Documentary Premieres June 9th
A new trailer for an in-production feature-length documentary film about the Burned-Over District of 19th-century New York State has just been released. Burned Over focuses on Spiritualism, the belief that the living can communicate with the dead, and the Oneida Community, a free love commune.
Both began in 1848 in the Burned-Over District, an area famous as an incubator of radical religious practice and progressive politics, inspired in part by the Second Great Awakening. [Read more…] about Burned-Over District Documentary Being Produced
We are approaching the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. What should we commemorate? For instance, should we emphasize great battles and glorious victories? Or should we recall more numerous, harsh and sometimes inconclusive encounters between patriot and British forces? [Read more…] about The Other Side of Victory: Harsh Realities of the American Revolution
Reviving the Legend is a ski film by Ian McGrew that tells the story of what Hickory Ski Center in Warren County, NY, experienced during the 2023-2024 ski season. It highlights how the skiing community came together to save a small mountain and the people from around the globe who generously opened their wallets and hearts to revive a cherished local ski hill. [Read more…] about Reviving the Legend: Hickory Mountain Ski Film Premiering
At the end of World War II, Nathan Hilu, the son of Syrian Jewish immigrants to New York City, received a life-changing assignment from the U.S. Army: to guard the top Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials.
This experience fueled a lifetime of artistic inspiration for Nathan, a virtually unknown “outsider artist,” who spent the next 70 years obsessively creating a visual narrative from his memories. But what happens when those memories take on a life of their own? [Read more…] about New Documentary on Nuremberg Guard & Artist Nathan Hilu
Utica resident John Zogby is the son of an undocumented immigrant from Lebanon and a politically astute Lebanese mother.
A new documentary film follows his upbringing in East Utica and his journey to becoming a globally renowned political pollster. [Read more…] about Utica Pollster John Zogby Subject of New Documentary
Russell Banks, the chronicler of hard luck Americans, is the subject of a documentary film currently being introduced on Thursday, August 8th, at 7 pm at the Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown, Essex County, NY. [Read more…] about A New Russell Banks Documentary
“For more than half a century, motion picture film was made from a substance once touted as an explosive. When plant cellulose — typically from cotton — is treated with nitric and sulfuric acids, it becomes cellulose nitrate, which is also known as guncotton,” writes Matthew Wills in JSTOR Daily. “With six times the bang of standard gunpowder, guncotton was eyed as a replacement for gunpowder. But guncotton turned out to have too much bang: it was unstable, unpredictable, and extraordinarily inflammable.” [Read more…] about Nitrate Film: Preserving Combustible Cinema
The Cayuga Museum’s Carriage House Theater will screen a new documentary from Wheelhouse Creative, “Deciding Vote”, which explores the story of former New York State Assemblyman George Michaels, a prominent member of Auburn, NY’s Jewish community and a veteran of World War Two.
Michaels entered politics in the tumultuous era of the 1960s, and became a central figure in paving the way for abortion rights in the US when his switched vote barely passed New York’s law legalizing abortion in 1970. [Read more…] about Deciding Vote: Film Tells Story of George Michaels Deciding NYS Abortion Vote
Reframing an Empire, a new series on Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole‘s profound influence on American history is now airing on PBS. [Read more…] about Hudson River School Artist Thomas Cole Subject of Documentary Series
Berlin, May 1915. Three feminists on an historical mission — Jane Addams and New York native Alice Hamilton from the United States, and Aletta Jacobs from the Netherlands — meet Wilbur H. Durborough. The American photographer and filmmaker had traveled to Berlin with his cameraman, Irving G. Ries, to shoot footage for his war documentary On the Firing Line with the Germans (1915). [Read more…] about Jane Addams, Alice Hamilton & The Hague Women’s Congress
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