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…
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…
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…
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…
Frank Christian, 1952-2012
We were shocked and saddened to learn that Frank Christian, who wrote and played music for our film, passed away on Christmas Eve. We came to Frank through a friend who was taking guitar lessons from him. We needed someone to play some riffs on “1913 Massacre,” which Frank did,…
It’s 1913 Again In Michigan
I’ve run across a few people drawing connections between the Italian Hall disaster and the school shooting yesterday in Newtown, Connecticut (e.g., here). Maybe listening to Woody’s song helps people register Newtown’s loss, or the horror of Newtown helps us understand a little better what it must have been like…
Q & A at Rivertown Film Society
Here is the Q & A we did with Nora Guthrie at Rivertown Film Society in Nyack, NY on October 3rd, 2012. The discussion was moderated by Daniel Wolff. Many thanks to Matthew Seig and everybody at Rivertown Film for hosting the event. Directors Louis Galdieri & Ken Ross with…
The Circle is Complete
A quick update before we leave town this morning. We showed the film again yesterday afternoon and evening at the Calumet Theatre. The Saturday matinee crowd may have been the biggest of the three. About 1500 people came to see 1913 Massacre over the course of the weekend. As Ken…
A Standing Ovation in Calumet
After last night’s screening of 1913 Massacre at the Calumet Theatre, Davey Holmbo, the Theatre’s artistic director, told me that he thought the audience appreciated that we didn’t “do the whole Yooper thing” in our film. If you’ve never been to the UP or never heard of a Yooper, you…
Bringing 1913 Massacre Back to Calumet
I still haven’t managed to find out exactly what George Stoney said about bringing a documentary film back to the place where it was shot, but Deanna Kamiel was kind enough to share her notes on remarks Stoney made on the topic at the “Tribute to George Stoney” in October…