Leonard Peltier Documentary
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,420
Just ran across this interesting article about the young film maker Preston Randolph who is a strong advocate for the freedom of political prisoner Leonard Peltier.
http://trib.com/lifestyles/home-and-gar ... e0094.html
Behind his lens
Everything had been going wrong.
The Cody filmmaker had a story in mind, but schedules didn’t line up for the shoot. The deadline loomed.
So one week before the short film was due, Preston Randolph ditched his idea and talked to an old friend.
Bob Taylor had been a teacher’s aide in one of Randolph’s high school literature classes. Decades ago Taylor built a cabin by hand on Meeteetse Creek, along with a baseball field called Outland Field, where tournaments are held each Memorial Day. Randolph asked if he could tell Taylor’s life story.
Shooting took four days, editing a little less than three. It was just Randolph and his younger brother. They followed Taylor through his daily life and shot scenes of scrapbooks and baseballs, open fields and sky, water coursing through the creek.
“With Bob’s (film), everything went right,” Randolph said.
Randolph worked 20-hour days. He barely made the due date, uploading the film just hours before deadline. But this spring Randolph’s “The Summer of ‘81” took top prize in the Wyoming Film Office’s fifth annual Short Film Contest.
It was the first time Randolph won money for his work: $25,000 toward his next Wyoming film project. Filming begins in October for “… epilogue,” the film Randolph originally set aside to tell Taylor’s story.
At 22, Randolph knows what he wants. Already he’s spent years studying the greats and developing an eye for filmmaking that’s rare for anyone, let alone a young 20-something.
“He’s driven to be responsible for every second on the screen and that’s just highly unusual,” said Mike Riley, Randolph’s former teacher and mentor at Cody High School.
Randolph grew up on 16 acres in the mountains of Montana, where he ran free with his dad’s old video camera.
He shot the river and animals and made three- to four-minute westerns and war movies, the stuff of little boys. He used his younger brother, Garrett, as a test dummy.
Randolph’s dad had acted in plays, TV commercials and low-budget films before moving the family to Montana, and the two would play together and act out scenes. Steven Randolph remembered how the family would gather around the TV to watch his son’s latest work.
“We were always messing around with the camera, and it took ahold of him,” he said.
When Randolph was 11, his grandfather died. Randolph took his camera, gathered up photographs and made a tribute film set to music. Steven Randolph said it was hard to believe a child had made it.
“I could tell right away that he had a talent when it came to making films,” he said.
The family moved to Cody midway through Preston Randolph’s freshman year of high school. There, Randolph took Riley’s communications and broadcast journalism classes.
Riley said Randolph was independent and serious, consumed even then with the idea he would become a filmmaker. This was a kid who would work three jobs just to get enough money for a new microphone or to rent a particular camera for a weekend to shoot one scene, Riley said.
His sophomore year, Randolph made a short that gave a twist on the 1939 film “On Borrowed Time.” It took first place in the Wyoming High School Short Film Festival.
He made a fictional World War II film honoring his grandfather the next year. And won again.
He based his senior-year film on modern-day politics and religion, which won him the contest for the third time in a row.
“There were several advisers from around the state who were convinced I had done the work for him,” Riley said.
But Riley had no hand in the films. They were all Randolph’s.
Today Randolph runs the video production side of TCT, a local television and internet company in the Bighorn Basin, and works full time as a filmmaker through his own company, Cactus Productions. Randolph named the company after his grandfather, who earned the nickname “Cactus” in World War II. (He was from Arizona, and the other guys joked that the only thing in that state was cactus, Steven Randolph said.)
Randolph said his passion is feature films, not necessarily documentary work. But he has dedicated the last three and a half years to extensive research and interviews on the case of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who is currently serving two consecutive life sentences for the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Supporters say Peltier was denied a fair trial and that his case was mishandled by the FBI and the prosecution. Over the last 35 years, Peltier has been supported by the likes of Nelson Madela, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.
Although Randolph said the film about Peltier doesn’t have a set due date, he continues to travel the country lecturing and speaking out about the case.
“I’m very, very sure that he is innocent,” Randolph said. “… Someone should never be placed in prison for 36 years because of their political beliefs.”
Through his work on the Peltier story, Randolph found the subject of another film project currently under way. Planned to be a 30- to 40-minute documentary, the film will compare an old criminal case on the Pine Ridge Reservation to current cases, addressing a “large disparity of injustice Native Americans are receiving,” Randolph said.
Of course, Randolph never has just one project in the works. The scripting and storyboarding for “… epilogue,” the 25-minute film Randolph will fund with his contest winnings, is nearly complete.
A small cast of four primary characters and crew of eight to ten will shoot next month, and Randolph plans to complete the film by February. Randolph worked closely with friend and writer Jake Graham to develop the fictional story, which follows an obituary writer as he learns the life’s story of a recently deceased woman, Josephine, through the recollections of her estranged father.
“People can relate to it because most everyone has dealt with a situation like that,” Randolph said. “(There is) a lot of human emotion behind the story.”
http://trib.com/lifestyles/home-and-gar ... e0094.html
Behind his lens
Everything had been going wrong.
The Cody filmmaker had a story in mind, but schedules didn’t line up for the shoot. The deadline loomed.
So one week before the short film was due, Preston Randolph ditched his idea and talked to an old friend.
Bob Taylor had been a teacher’s aide in one of Randolph’s high school literature classes. Decades ago Taylor built a cabin by hand on Meeteetse Creek, along with a baseball field called Outland Field, where tournaments are held each Memorial Day. Randolph asked if he could tell Taylor’s life story.
Shooting took four days, editing a little less than three. It was just Randolph and his younger brother. They followed Taylor through his daily life and shot scenes of scrapbooks and baseballs, open fields and sky, water coursing through the creek.
“With Bob’s (film), everything went right,” Randolph said.
Randolph worked 20-hour days. He barely made the due date, uploading the film just hours before deadline. But this spring Randolph’s “The Summer of ‘81” took top prize in the Wyoming Film Office’s fifth annual Short Film Contest.
It was the first time Randolph won money for his work: $25,000 toward his next Wyoming film project. Filming begins in October for “… epilogue,” the film Randolph originally set aside to tell Taylor’s story.
At 22, Randolph knows what he wants. Already he’s spent years studying the greats and developing an eye for filmmaking that’s rare for anyone, let alone a young 20-something.
“He’s driven to be responsible for every second on the screen and that’s just highly unusual,” said Mike Riley, Randolph’s former teacher and mentor at Cody High School.
Randolph grew up on 16 acres in the mountains of Montana, where he ran free with his dad’s old video camera.
He shot the river and animals and made three- to four-minute westerns and war movies, the stuff of little boys. He used his younger brother, Garrett, as a test dummy.
Randolph’s dad had acted in plays, TV commercials and low-budget films before moving the family to Montana, and the two would play together and act out scenes. Steven Randolph remembered how the family would gather around the TV to watch his son’s latest work.
“We were always messing around with the camera, and it took ahold of him,” he said.
When Randolph was 11, his grandfather died. Randolph took his camera, gathered up photographs and made a tribute film set to music. Steven Randolph said it was hard to believe a child had made it.
“I could tell right away that he had a talent when it came to making films,” he said.
The family moved to Cody midway through Preston Randolph’s freshman year of high school. There, Randolph took Riley’s communications and broadcast journalism classes.
Riley said Randolph was independent and serious, consumed even then with the idea he would become a filmmaker. This was a kid who would work three jobs just to get enough money for a new microphone or to rent a particular camera for a weekend to shoot one scene, Riley said.
His sophomore year, Randolph made a short that gave a twist on the 1939 film “On Borrowed Time.” It took first place in the Wyoming High School Short Film Festival.
He made a fictional World War II film honoring his grandfather the next year. And won again.
He based his senior-year film on modern-day politics and religion, which won him the contest for the third time in a row.
“There were several advisers from around the state who were convinced I had done the work for him,” Riley said.
But Riley had no hand in the films. They were all Randolph’s.
Today Randolph runs the video production side of TCT, a local television and internet company in the Bighorn Basin, and works full time as a filmmaker through his own company, Cactus Productions. Randolph named the company after his grandfather, who earned the nickname “Cactus” in World War II. (He was from Arizona, and the other guys joked that the only thing in that state was cactus, Steven Randolph said.)
Randolph said his passion is feature films, not necessarily documentary work. But he has dedicated the last three and a half years to extensive research and interviews on the case of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who is currently serving two consecutive life sentences for the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Supporters say Peltier was denied a fair trial and that his case was mishandled by the FBI and the prosecution. Over the last 35 years, Peltier has been supported by the likes of Nelson Madela, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.
Although Randolph said the film about Peltier doesn’t have a set due date, he continues to travel the country lecturing and speaking out about the case.
“I’m very, very sure that he is innocent,” Randolph said. “… Someone should never be placed in prison for 36 years because of their political beliefs.”
Through his work on the Peltier story, Randolph found the subject of another film project currently under way. Planned to be a 30- to 40-minute documentary, the film will compare an old criminal case on the Pine Ridge Reservation to current cases, addressing a “large disparity of injustice Native Americans are receiving,” Randolph said.
Of course, Randolph never has just one project in the works. The scripting and storyboarding for “… epilogue,” the 25-minute film Randolph will fund with his contest winnings, is nearly complete.
A small cast of four primary characters and crew of eight to ten will shoot next month, and Randolph plans to complete the film by February. Randolph worked closely with friend and writer Jake Graham to develop the fictional story, which follows an obituary writer as he learns the life’s story of a recently deceased woman, Josephine, through the recollections of her estranged father.
“People can relate to it because most everyone has dealt with a situation like that,” Randolph said. “(There is) a lot of human emotion behind the story.”
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