Alan Govenar’s Down in Dallas Town is a startling film about the shifting terrain of public memory sixty years after the murder of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Through interviews with people on the street and songs recorded to memorialize JFK in the mid-1960s, the film explores the impact of the assassination on issues in today’s world, from lingering conspiracy theories to the proliferation of gun violence, homelessness, and the scourge of K-2.
Personal narratives are juxtaposed with the sentiments articulated in blues, gospel, norteño, and calypso recordings to haunting affect. Especially poignant is the account of Mary Ann Moorman, who returns to the assassination site fifty years later and details the making of her Polaroid photograph of the fatal head shot that killed JFK as the motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. This resonant new film by Alan Govenar confronts ways we come to terms with the past through the power of storytelling, image-making, and a songbook that is largely unknown.
Alan Govenar is an award-winning writer, poet, playwright, photographer, and filmmaker. He is director of Documentary Arts, a non-profit organization he founded to advance essential perspectives on historical issues and diverse cultures.
Govenar is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of more than thirty books, including Boccaccio in the Berkshires, Paradise in the Smallest Thing, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Untold Glory, Texas Blues, Stompin’ at the Savoy, Everyday Music, Texas in Paris, and A Pillow on the Ocean of Time. His book Osceola: Memories of a Sharecropper’s Daughter won First Place in the New York Book Festival (Children’s Non-Fiction), a Boston Globe-Hornbook Honor; and an Orbis Pictus Honor from the National Council of Teachers of English.
Govenar’s film, Stoney Knows How, based on his book by the same title about Old School tattoo artist Leonard St. Clair, was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and was selected as an Outstanding Film of the Year by the London Film Festival. His documentaries The Beat Hotel, Master Qi and the Monkey King, You Don’t Need Feet to Dance, Tattoo Uprising, Extraordinary Ordinary People, Myth of a Colorblind France and Looking for Home are distributed by First Run Features.
Govenar’s theatrical works include the musicals Blind Lemon: Prince of Country Blues, Blind Lemon Blues, Lonesome Blues (with Akin Babatundé), Texas in Paris, and Stompin’ at the Savoy.
The Book of Harth is a multiple award-winning documentary twenty years in the making, comes to DVD and VOD.
The documentary centers on NYC-based conceptual artist David Greg Harth, who embarked on a 20-year project to gather signatures from the most culturally relevant figures of our times in his copy of the Holy Bible.
As this decades-long odyssey ended, NYC filmmaker Pierre Guillet followed Harth over the last year of the project as he raced to get the final signatures to bring this massive undertaking to a close. The Book of Harth is a dissection of not just the art itself but the sacrifices made in the name of art that you won’t soon forget. The Book of Harth won the Best Documentary Feature award at Kevin Smith’s inaugural edition of the Smodcastle Film Festival in 2022, among many other awards.
The film features interviews with philosopher Noam Chomsky, artist Wim Delvoye, filmmakers Paul Schrader, Kevin Smith, and John Waters, and others.
THE SOUNDS OF FILM is the nation’s longest running film, music, and ideas themed radio show. For the past 30 years, the program has delivered a popular mix of interviews and music to listeners all over Long Island, parts of Connecticut and streaming live worldwide on the internet. Past people interviewed for the show include Alec Baldwin, Billy Joel, Connie Stevens, Carter Burwell, Alex Winter, Dionne Warwick, Jason Biggs, Nile Rodgers, Eric B, Vanilla Fudge and Chuck D.
Worldwide listeners can tune into the internet livestream of the SOUNDS OF FILM on Thursday at 6 pm EST at wusb.fm.
