Where Is Calumet?

It’s uncanny how this notice from a 1913 newspaper anticipates the opening scene of 1913 Massacre: “Where is Calumet?” That is a simple question, apparently. Almost anybody will say it is a thriving city up in the country where they blow open the earth with dynamite and wrest copper there…

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Murder, Mother Jones and the Militia

By August of 1913, things in the Copper Country were really starting to heat up. The miners had been on strike since the end of July, and the strike was “gradually drifting,” in the words of the Calumet News, “towards its second stage, a period of guerilla warfare.” The Michigan National…

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STRIKE!

100 years ago today, the Finnish language newspaper Työmies or The Worker announced: This morning in Michigan’s Copper region, a miner’s strike broke out which, according to information received from various locations up to this point, has stopped work in all of the mines with few exceptions. The strike that began…

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Toshi Seeger, 1922-2013

Yesterday evening we read the news that Toshi-Aline Ohta Seeger, Pete Seeger’s wise, talented, strong and beautiful wife, passed away at the age of 91.  You can read about Toshi’s life and her work as a filmmaker, a mother, an activist and an organizer over at Sing Out!, where Mark…

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Juhannus: Summer is Here

Juhannus, a midsummer celebration held near Misery Bay on the Keweenaw Peninsula, was one of the highlights of our recent screening tour of the UP. We ran into old friends and made some new ones. Accompanied by percussionist Randy Seppala, who plays bones and spoons with Johnny Perona in our…

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Public Television and Public Life — A Note from the Road

We’ve just completed a short tour of the Upper Peninsula, taking 1913 Massacre from Houghton to Ontonagon to Marquette. After each screening of the film, we take questions and comments from the audience. All sorts of things come up in those conversations. People see themselves or their own town in…

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Moses Called The First Strike

People from all parts of Europe made their way to Calumet at the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth centuries. The copper-mining town attracted so many immigrants — Germans, Italians, Croatians, Slovenians, Cornish, Irish, Swedes, Norwegians — that it’s sometimes jokingly referred to as “the smelting…

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Roy Stafford Reviews 1913 Massacre

Roy Stafford has written a lengthy review of 1913 Massacre — which screened today at the Bradford International Film Festival in the UK — on The Case for Global Film. His thoughtful review touches on a number of themes and questions the film raises, and draws parallels with other films…

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People’s History is Alive

I love this tweet: People’s history alive and well: 1913 Massacre, doc film by Ken Ross & @lvgaldieri inspired by Woody Guthrie’s song ow.ly/jkO4k — Voices (@vph) March 22, 2013 This is from the Twitter account of Voices of a People’s History. I suspect it was posted partly in response…

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For International Women’s Day – A Sketch from the Cutting Room Floor

This is an early sketch of a scene in 1913 Massacre that ended up on the cutting room floor. It features some excerpts from an interview with Helen Winter. At the time we interviewed her, Helen was in her 90s and, as she herself told us, she felt her life…

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