Collecting area: Film & video

Steve Alves is a western Massachusetts-based documentary filmmaker who, through his company Hometown Productions, later Home Planet Pictures, has written, produced, and directed several documentaries that examine New England’s natural and cultural history. Alves’ films, Beneath the River (1999), A Sweet Tradition (1999), Together in Time (2001), Everyone’s Business (1997), Life After High School (1990) and Talking to the Wall (2003) look at inter-generational ties and the role of community in American life and the tensions between tradition and modern capitalism at the dawn of the 21st century. His films examine a range of topics including local business, sprawl development, work, the Connecticut river, contra dance, and maple syrup and incorporate an array of storytelling techniques including animation, film clips, and dramatic vignettes. His 2014 film, Food for Change focuses on food co-ops as a force for dynamic social and economic change in American culture. His films have won numerous awards and honors from a host of entities including the Chicago International Film Festival, International Family Film Festival, the United Nations, and more.

Alves began his career as a filmmaker in the early 1970s as a student at the University of Southern California Film School where he made several documentary and experimental student films on 8 and 16mm in and around Los Angeles. Following graduation, he worked in Hollywood and New York City as a film editor on such films as Dancing’s All of You (1980), Sacred Hearts (1981), Ski New Hampshire (1981), The Garden of Eden (1984 Academy Award® nominee), Niagara Falls (1984), and The Adirondacks (1987). He moved to western Massachusetts in 1988 and formed his own film company, Home Planet Pictures. He has also produced several educational films and award-winning television commercials.

Alves’ collection documents the 50 year career of a working independent filmmaker. It includes all of the elements for most of his films which include outtakes, b-roll, and full interviews for all of his documentary films; from his earliest film Life After High School to Food for Change, his most recent. The collection covers a wide range of film and video formats including ¾” U-Matic, Betacam SP, S-VHS, Mini-DV, DVD, Super 8mm and 16mm. Also included are screenplays, correspondence, transcripts, interview releases, funding proposals, financial records, production documents, posters, and photographs related to the filming, production, release, and screening of all of his films. An inventory of the collection is available upon request.

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

Begun in 1978 by the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, The Independent is a leading source of information for independent, grassroots, and activist media-makers. Published monthly, The Independent carries articles and criticism on documentary and independent films and fulfills an important role in providing inspiration and connections for the independent media community. Although the AIVF shut its doors in July 2006, suspending print publication of The Independent, Independent Media Publications acquired the rights to the publications and archives of The Independent Film & Video Monthly in 2007 and will continue the journal online.

In addition to a nearly complete run of The Independent, now fully digitized, the collection contains the surviving editorial and production records for the journal.

View the Indendent online

Ken Brown, born March 12, 1944 in Dayton, Ohio, is a filmmaker, photographer, cartoonist, designer and collector. He was raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he briefly attended UMass Amherst, before moving to Cambridge where he also attended Boston University. In the late 1960s he joined the thriving arts scene in Boston, where his most notable contribution was his film work, now known as Psychedelic Cinema. This live music project was projected onstage at the Boston Tea Party while musical acts like the Velvet Underground and Jimi Hendrix played. Brown made experimental films, using tricks like double exposure and stop motion, with a Super 8mm camera. He also worked as a film teacher in the early 1970s.  

In 1975 his career took a fortuitous turn when he started to sell postcards featuring his own drawings. This venture was so successful that he expanded the postcard line to include photographs and collages, mining his own collections, which are characterized by kitsch. From there he expanded the business further to include rubber stamps, eventually adding t-shirts, coffee mugs, tea towels, and wrapping paper to the line; he worked with local businesses to put his art and designs on the products. His unconventional business model attracted the attention of the Harvard Business School, which conducted and published a study of his work. He also continued to make films, which have been featured on MTV and Sesame Street. Since 1985 he has lived in New York City with his wife and frequent collaborator, artist and filmmaker Lisa Crafts. He continues to take photographs and make films about life in the city. 

The collection comprises a wide variety of the products Brown has produced and marketed throughout his career. It includes near-complete runs of his postcards, rubber stamps, and wrapping paper; a selection of t-shirts, tea towels, placemats and magnets; published books; and a variety of editioned screen prints made from his cartoons and drawings. The collection also contains ephemera documenting Brown’s career and early artwork in an anti-nuclear publication. The collection is expected to grow over time to include drawings, films, and recent digital photographs.

Kerry W. Buckley is an American History writer and artist. He graduated from Samford University in 1969 but continued his studies at the University of Georgia to get his Masters in 1971 and then completed his Ph.D. in American Social and Intellectual History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Buckley wrote and edited several books and articles, including “Mechanical Man”, a biography of the psychologist, John Broadus Watson. He’s a veteran from the Vietnam era and has taught and lectured at many different colleges and universities. Buckley became fascinated by Du Bois after writing a research paper, and eventually his thesis, on him. Throughout his life, he worked on a few projects centered around Du Bois, including a biographical travelling exhibit that contained some of Du Bois’s pictures and selected writings. Buckley also worked in the University of Massachusetts Archives to help process and create a guide for the W.E.B.Du Bois Papers.

The collection contains drafts, letters, publications and documents that focus on the creation of the Du Bois traveling exhibit , the production of the published guide to the papers, and the effort to create a Du Bois documentary by Black Flame Productions.

The graphic artist Siegfried Ebert had an important influence on the visual language of East German television and animated motion pictures. Born in Eibau on July 20, 1926, Ebert was drafted into the Luftwaffe in 1943, but shortly after going on active duty, he was severely wounded and taken prisoner by the English. After his release, Ebert shifted course in life, studying commercial art at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zittau and film at the Hochschule für bildende und angewandte Kunst in Wiessensee. He became one of the earliest artists to specialize in the new medium of television, working for Deutscher Fernsehfunk, doing graphic design and animation. A member of the Verband Bildender Künstler Deutschlands, he later worked on animated films for the DEFA studios. Suffering from ill health for the last several years of his life, Ebert suffered a heart attack in November 1985, and died at home shortly after his sixtieth birthday in 1986.

The Ebert Collection includes a small assortment of correspondence, awards, and biographical materials, along with examples of his graphic work for television and film. Among other unusual items in the collection are attractive handbills (small posters) for Progress and DEFA films, some original sketches, photographs and mockups of his artwork for television, and an assortment of personal and professional ephemera.

An East German actor, writer, and film director, and an insightful analyst of German culture and film history, Jörg Foth was born in Berlin on Oct. 31, 1949. After completing military service and working briefly in television, Foth entered the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen „Konrad Wolf“ in Postdam, graduating in 1977. During his long ascent through the East German film system, he worked as an assistant director at the DEFA Studio and in GDR television and collaborated with Ulrich Weiss and others. His directorial debut came in 1984 with the children’s film Das Eismeer Ruft, however it was another six years before he was permitted to direct his second film, Biologie!, the only DEFA feature ever to deal with environmental issues. A few months after he was promoted to Director, the East German political system collapsed and the DEFA studios were closed. Foth has since worked as a freelance director and writer for both film and television.

The Foth collection provides unique insight into East German cinema; the diverse career of a noted writer, director, and actor; and more generally, the shifting artistic environment during the last years of the DDR. Along with writing and research materials from many of Foth’s films, the collection includes a range of writing, ephemera, and on topics ranging from film theory, the theater, and literature to Marx, Stalin, and Lenin.

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

In the early 1970s, the documentary filmmaker Bruce Geisler dropped out of Pomona College one semester short of graduation, drove across country, and joined the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune, then the largest commune in the eastern United States. During his four years living with the Brotherhood, later renamed the Renaissance Community, Geisler learned the craft of filmmaking, before returning west to earn an MFA at the film school of the University of Southern California. Geisler has received a number of awards as a screenwriter and filmmaker including the Grand Prize for Best Screenplay from Worldfest Houston and the Dominique Dunne Memorial Prize for Filmmaking, and, in 2007, he released his feature-length documentary, Free Spirits, about the Brotherhood of the Spirit/Renaissance Community and its ill-fated founder, Michael Metelica Rapunzel. Geisler is currently a Senior Lecturer in the UMass Amherst Department of Communication.

Documenting everyday life in a Massachusetts commune and performances by the commune bands (Spirit in Flesh and Rapunzel), the Geisler collection was assembled in conjunction with the making of the film Free Spirits. In addition to many hours of both raw and edited film footage taken by members of the Brotherhood of the Brotherhood of the Spirit and Renaissance Community, the collection includes a rich assemblage of still photographs, ephemera, and newspaper clippings relating to the commune.

A pioneer in television commercials and the use of special effects in the advertising film industry, Solomon Goodnoff was born in New York in 1923. After service in the Pacific during the Second World War, Goodnoff established a career as a film producer and director that resulted in international recognition for his television commercial work. Between the late 1940s and 1980s, he produced memorable spots that included the Maxwell House singing percolator, the Purina Cat Chow dancing cat, and the Budweiser Clydesdales. He was equally creative in developing specialized tools for the television industry, including a master antenna television system in the 1950. A Clio Award winner, he was also recognized with awards from the Directors Guild of America and film festivals at Cannes, Chicago, and New York. After moving to the Bekshires in the 1970s, Goodnoff continued to commute to Manhattan to work on special projects for Tulchin Studios, but he became known locally for his horticultural activities, serving as a trustee of the Berkshire Botanical Gardens and hosting a local radio program on gardening. He died in his home in Plainfield, Mass., in 2003, aged 80.

The collection contains videotape copies of many of Sol Goodnoff’s best known commercials, along with story boards, selected examples of his awards, and examples of specialized equipment used in producing spots for his clients.

Co-founded by Charles Light and Daniel Keller, Green Mountain Post Films has produced and distributed films for more than twenty-five years. Their first documentary film released in 1975, Lovejoy’s Nuclear War, was one of the first films to question the nuclear energy policy of the United States. Since then GMP Films has continued to produce movies that explore social issues, and their films have been used as educational and organizational tools for activists working on peace, veteran, nuclear, environmental and other related issues.

The collection contains hundreds of film and video elements (masters, release prints, negatives, dailies, work prints, outtakes, mag tracks, audio) of several GMP projects. In addition there are several boxes of administrative files consisting of research files, correspondence, and proposals relating to film projects either produced or under consideration. There is also an assortment of alternative press publications from the 1960s-1970s.

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

An actor and motion picture assistant director and producer, Michael Haley was born in Pittsfield, Mass., in 1942. While an undergraduate student at UMass Amherst, Haley became involved in theater, joining the avant garde Buffalo Meat Company that performed original works in Massachusetts and New York City. Following a chance call from a producer looking for local help in 1969, Haley worked on his first film, the low-budget crime drama Honeymoon Killers. After work on several other film and television productions, Haley was among ten people selected for the Directors Guild of America’s Assistant Directors Training Program. During his forty year career, Haley’s credits have included work with a number of noted directors, including Sidney Lumet, Barry Levinson, and Penny Marshall, and he has enjoyed a particularly long and productive association with Mike Nichols. His films have included The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Stepford Wives, Biloxi Blues, True Colors, A League of Their Own, Groundhog Day, Primary Colors, and Closer. He was the recipient of two Humanitas Prizes (for Wit and Angels in America), and among others awards, the Christopher Award (for Wit), the Directors Guild of America award, Producers Guild of America award, and an Emmy (for Angels in America), a Directors Guild of America plaque (Working Girl), and the Berkshire International Film Festival Life-Time Achievement Award. He was named Artist of the Year at UMass and has been selected for a Bateman Fellowship.

Reflecting a diverse career in film, the Haley collection consists of scripts, photographs, memorabilia, and diaries, with a small quantity of notes and correspondence. The scripts, approximately 110 of them, are from films ranging from The Godfather Part II to Charlie Wilson’s War and Angels in America, may include several drafts. The photographs are both numerous and particularly rich, including some particularly interesting candid shots taken on film sets, as well as official shots taken by photographers such as Mary Ellen Mark.