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Hugh Logan Edwards, who from 1959 until his retirement in 1970 was the curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, was born in Kentucky in 1903. His great-grandfather came from Ireland...

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In the summer of 1962, Danny Lyon packed a Nikon Reflex and an old Leica in an army bag and hitchhiked south. Within a week he was in jail in Albany, Georgia, looking through the bars at another prisoner, Martin Luther King, Jr. Lyon soon became the first staff photographer for the Atlanta-based Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which already had a reputation as one of the most committed and confrontational groups fighting for civil rights.

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SHADOWMAN, Bleakbeauty video #5

22 mins DVD. $20.00

“I left the cave to find reality”

Lyon’s existential look at himself, filmmaking, the irony of digital, the death of film, and the meaning, if any, of documentary work. Shot in the Bernalillo graveyard (Lyon’s fifth major scene shot in this spot), the New Mexico desert, the streets and garages of Manhattan, and the Maine woods.

On the last days of August, 2004 and the first days of September, New York City experienced the largest non-violent demonstrations directed against a political convention in American history. NYPD listed 120 separate protests. 1821 people were arrested. On a single day, half a million persons marched up Eighth Avenue towards the Republican National Convention in Madison Square Garden. Almost none of these protests reached the American people or the world via television.

FIVE DAYS is a documentary shot on DV by photographer Danny Lyon assisted by his twenty year old daughter Rebecca Lyon and edited by Anne Barliant, with audio mix by Jason Martin, in Kingston, New York.The 60 minute documentary, was filmed, and edited in twenty one days, and was broadcast on FreeSpeech-TV Net Work, where it had the potential to reach eight million viewers on Monday Nov. 1st the day before the election and on Tuesday, Nov. 2nd., Election Day. For a work of cinematic art and history, to be created and reach the public in a matter of weeks, is an event in itself. It is also another example of individuals, and small groups of people, working on their own and without corporate funding, or any funding for that matter, replacing the traditional media as a source of truth and news.

Five Days is full of music and features the dramatic appearance of the Infernal Noise Brigade from Seattle at the historic Fox New Protest on 6th Avenue. Later the entire band was arrested. Five Days is a testament to real democracy in action and an homage to New York City.

For Individuals: $20.00 USA

(Includes Universities, Museums, classroom and in-house broadcast use.)

PURCHASE FROM BLEAK BEAUTY

Born to Film, 1982 and Two Fathers, 2005 available together as a two DVD set. Born to Film is, among other things, intimately auto- biographical, interspersing footage of Lyon's own young son with film shot in the 1930's by Lyon's father, a doctor who immigrated from Germany. Two Fathers, the child star of Born To Film, Raphael, is now a twenty-seven year old who returns to his father’s farm to plant corn and “experience fatherhood”. A filmic meditation on life, age, family and death.

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