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Moving towards a more inclusive and sustainable production model There is no monetary profit in documentary filmmaking that tell stories that that need to be told precisely because in mainstream production efforts it is the bottom line, not the story, that matters most. As production executives in Hollywood and with the Charlottesville-based Heritage Film Project, the for-profit film production company we founded in 2008, Soledad Liendo and I understand this trade-off between story and profit; we have been there ourselves. However, during the last decade we’ve also learned that the untold stories that often do not appeal to for profit production companies have been some of the most artistically and emotionally rewarding for us at Heritage Film Project. I can think of, to name just a few those produced over the last few years, despite COVID and with very limited funding, documentaries such as “Julian Bond: Reflections from the Frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement,” “Rita Dove: An American Poet,” “The Other Madisons,” “A Soldier’s Dream,” and “At Home with Alice Parker.” What an extraordinary journey this has been. And what a privilege it has been to document such creative, courageous, and inspirational individuals. Through these films we have discovered a special interest and talent for exploring the lives of artists, poets, scientists, composers, and social thinkers and activists. Their life’s work is transformational; their quiet, sometimes unappreciated, heroism cries out for documentation and for audiences beyond their particular fields. Our films are now available in public and academic libraries through well-respected distribution channels so that they can be accessed easily by teachers, students, and researchers worldwide. Our documentary catalogue has been explored by over one million viewers, across four continents and in many different languages. We are grateful to our documentary film subjects; the opportunity to work with them has confirmed our faith in the extraordinary potential of creative individuals, no matter their field, to unlock human potential and to help us build more equitable, more inclusive, more just communities. We also are grateful to our friends here in Charlottesville, from our original home in Argentina, and from around the world for their support and counsel. Our viewers and friends are telling us to adopt a nonprofit model so that we can take on more “stories that need to be told” and make it possible for our champions to make tax deductible donations for these important projects. That’s why we are establishing the Documentary Film Fund, a 501C3 organization, as a stand-alone but complementary organization to Heritage Film Project. We look forward to sharing news about documentary film projects in development and our plans for institutional partnerships, and we welcome suggestions for new projects as well. Eduardo Montes-Bradley 19 July 2021

Following on Daniel Chester French’s trip to Europe through his correspondence. Some letters are more interesting than others. The trials and tribulations of a New Englander on his way from London to Paris and then on to Firenze. Between the lines, an infinite source of amusement. Come this winter, I’m planning to follow on his footsteps. In anticipation, here are the first paragraphs of one of his letters, this one to his brother Will. More will probably follow soon. PS. I’m working on the interpretation of French’s accounts with an American, and Italian experts on French and Florentine Art. The underlined or bolded text is mine, and they point to clues in connection to the making of the film on Daniel Chester French. The letter was reproduced in its entirety. 4, Via Farinata degli Uberti , Firenze November 23, 1874. My dear Will, (his brother) I hardly know where to begin this letter for the reason that I am not sure whether you have seen those that I have already written home. I think I will take for granted that you have seen or will see them, however, and not repeat any more than would be agreeable to you under those circumstances. My trip across the ocean was very successful, being only too short. Had you seen me walking up the streets of Liverpool on the evening of our arrival, in company with a young and lovely maiden, you would not have seen the forlorn and homesick youth that you would have expected to view, from the fact of his being friendless at his departure from his native land. Did you ever hear Grace Hopkinson speak of Jim Ames? because this same Miss Ames is his sister. We had a very pleasant party as far as London where we separated for our different destinations. London I found smoky and dirty and generally disagreeable as to weather, but with many interesting things to see. I saw most of the sights that I had intended to, but shall have enough to occupy me if I ever spend a month there. At the British Museum I saw the Portland Vase which you enquired about in your letter. (I ought to have acknowledged that letter at the beginning of this letter, for I can assure you it was welcome. I received it in Paris) The Vase is not more than eight or nine inches high; smaller than the imitation that Mother has I should think. It is made of blue glass, so dark that it looks black, except where the light strikes through it. The figures are raised as in Mother’s. In the week that I spent in London, I failed to get much of an idea of the plan of the city, it is so mixed up, the streets are so crooked and narrow, and it is so big. Even a Bostonian may complain. Two weeks ago, Saturday, I left for Paris and reached that gay and lovely city after dark and had my first experience of making my wants known to a foreigner. I would strongly advise anybody meditating a descent upon a foreign land to learn that land’s language. It is possible to get along without, but decidedly inconvenient. As I was in an American house, I was not so bad, but bad enough. I saw the force of Dr. Fletcher’s arguments for terracotta. As I saw it in Paris, it certainly is the most beautiful material, to represent small figures in, that can be imagined. I hardly saw a plaster cast while I was there. I had a delightful time the week I was there and was sorry to leave. It is a most delightful city, full of beauty of all kinds. One of the most enjoyable days, I spent with Ned and Mrs Tuck,1 who drove with Miss Dolly Nelson and myself to Versailles, to the Palace of Louis 14th. I did long to have you with me there more than anywhere else. The gardens are so beautiful! Everything that money and taste could do has been done there. That old style of gardening (the geometrical style, they call it, don’t they?) is not so bad after all. The park there is laid out in straight lines, throughout, and it is very fine in its effects everywhere. They have plenty of statues and fountains and large trees to help them out, however. In some of the streets before coming to the Palace there are avenues of trees, two lines on each side of the road, the sidewalk running between, and these trees forty or fifty feet high are kept hedged in, so that the outer sides are perfectly rectangular. There you can’t tell much by that scratch. Can you? Mr. Tuck was very polite to me as was also Mrs. Tuck. I dined with them once, beside the day that we went to Versailles. Mrs. Tuck is a very pleasant lady only twenty-two or three years old (or, twenty-four) and received me very kindly. I found all the artists in Paris of the realistic school and opposed to idealization of any kind apparently. Perhaps they are right, but I don’t believe it. I say, work from Nature, but improve on her, if you can. I don’t see why a photograph is not equal to the best drawing that ever was made, if things are merely to be copied. I am sorry that you have not been more successful in your business during the past year, for more reasons than one, not the least important of which is, that you might come over here to pass this winter. Also, I wish you could afford to have more time for drawing and painting. I wish you would try oils. But to return. There is any amount of art in Paris and I should like very much to study there some time, though perhaps it is a better place for painters than for sculptors. There were four artists at our table at Madame Foulley’s and we talked art so that some of the other people left for more artless quarters. The prima-donna, who sat opposite me, furnished the music of the conversation, and also added to the beauty of the same. Well, I left Paris, Tuesday last at 3 P. M. and came to Florence, arriving at 6 o’clock Thursday afternoon. It was about as hard a journey as I ever took altogether, and I took a cold meanwhile, which still lends to my nose the brilliant hue, which is beautiful anywhere else. The guard came round to look at tickets Wednesday morning and told me in French that I ought to have changed cars some miles back on the road. I answered in English which was as intelligible to him as his French was to me. One of the passengers came to my assistance, however, after the conductor had disappeared and told me I should have to go back and take another train,—not very pleasant news to me. When the guard came back, he told me to follow him which I did and he put me in charge of a guard of another train going toward Florence, and after several changes, I caught up with the train I had missed, so that I reached Turin at the time I ought 10 o’clock P.M. Wednesday. Where I went, I don’t know, but as I came out all right, I don’t care. So much for not knowing the language. You never saw anything finer than the scenery from Turin here or rather the last half of it, over the Apennines. Aside from the beauty of the country the road would delight you from a professional point of view. The bridges and tunnels and masonry along the road are wonderful. Almost the whole of the country from Turin to Florence was covered with snow when I came through, in some places among the mountains, to the depth of several inches. Mr. & Mrs. Powers are as kind to me as if I were a blood relation and do all they can to make life pleasant to me. Florence is the most foreign city that I have seen, approaching my original ideas of it nearer than Paris or, in fact, any part of Europe I have been through. The city lies in a valley among the mountains, as I suppose you know, so that there are the most lovely views everywhere. Mr. Powers house is outside the city gates on a hill among many other American’s houses, in a most beautiful spot overlooking the city. Mr. Ball & Mr Fuller have studios near by. Mr. Hiram Powers’3 studio is still kept open to the public, part of it being occupied by Mr. Preston Powers. Mr. Powers and I went in search of a room this morning and found a very good one just outside the Roman Gate,—near Mr. Gould’s4 studio. It is to be ready for my reception in a few days. I haven’t entirely decided on my course of study, yet, but shall before long, and get at work as soon as possible. Yesterday, I took a walk in the morning up an avenue near Mr. P’s house. It is a wonderful street bordered on each side by a row of cypress trees, said to have been planted by the Medici. You can imagine that they are old and large. Do you know the cypress tree? I did not. They are shaped like our poplar and are evergreen, in fact like a cedar on a large scale. It seems as if most of the trees on that avenue must be nearly a hundred feet high if not more. The avenue itself is more than a mile long, with the Roman Gate at one end and an old palace, now a girl’s school at the other. It is the most impressive place I was ever in, and seemed more like Hawthorne’s Marble Faun, than I imagined any place could. In the afternoon Preston Powers took me out for a walk and showed me Galileo’s Tower and all sorts of remarkable places, which are waiting for you to come and see. I haven’t been to any of the galleries yet but shall before I get much older. I have been invited out every evening since I arrived, and have been to Mrs Ball’s and Madame Power’s, both of whose houses are very handsome, and both of whose daughters add to that virtue, agreeableness. You never saw such a tribe of big girls as they have here. Miss Ball must be nearly as tall as I am, and the two Misses Powers are bigger if not taller. I don’t wonder that they think I look delicate, as I have heard they do. They all are very kind to me, however, and will probably take turns trotting me on their respective knees. We are having most lovely weather, though the houses are not as warm as they might be. The roses are in bloom as also are other flowers, and the leaves are green upon the trees. This is the first clear weather I have had since I left the Steamer. I am writing this letter in the studio of Mr. Powers with the Greek Slave and her friends to keep me straight. I will find out about the Healey accusations if possible It looks now as if it would all be brought to light soon. Don’t I wish you were here? Your aff. brother Dan. C. French.

Alice: At Home with Alice Parker has been selected participate in two festival at once. At the upcoming 4th Mystic Film Festival in Connecticut, and at the International Sound & Film Music Festival (ISFMF) in Croatia. Both events will take place on the weekend of October 23–24. Alice Parker (96), and members of the Melodious Accord Foundation will be in attendance at the October 24th in Mystic. Mystic Film Festival The announcement, made earlier today by Shareen Anderson, could not have come at a better time while I’m exploring locations in the Berkshire for the upcoming documentary film about Daniel Chester French. Mystic Film Festival showcases independent feature-length and short-form narrative films and documentaries from around the world over four days and four nights in Mystic, Connecticut, and neighboring shoreline towns. Tickets may be purchased online. The festival’s 2021 slate of films covers a wide range of topics including true crime; heroism; creating music, art, and dance; preserving farming and commercial fishing; jazz legends; relationship dynamics; life during a pandemic; the murder of George Floyd; immigration; humanity’s complex relationship with nature; and building cultural bridges between countries. The Mystic Film Festival’s final day of screenings wraps up with an awards ceremony Sunday, October 24, at 7 p.m. at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. The festival awards include narrative feature, feature documentary, narrative short, documentary short, New England film, cinematography, directing, screenplay writing, student film, human rights, and conservation. Also at the ceremony, the top five screenplays will be announced. The grand-prize winner will win a table read in early 2022, a 12-month International Screenwriters’ Association Connectmembership, and a one-hour consultation with literary agent Charlie Northcote, owner of Core Literary Inc. Four finalists will each receive a six-month ISA Connect membership and a 30-minute consultation with Northcote. We're looking forward to attend, participate and share Alice Parker with the audience at this event in what we remember as the most beautiful sea-port village in America! International Sound & Film Music Festival (ISFMF) ISFMF, now in its nine consecutive year is a prestigious music forum held in Paula, in the Istria coast of Croatia. The festival's mission is promoting the importance of film music and its composers, as well as film sound. The festival's goals are to originate and encourage discussions, connecting people, advising, educating young composers, but also other people, through discussion panels, seminars, film market and media publishing; we tend to start and maintain creative and constructive discussions about that indelible link between film and music.

This documentary, part of MoMA's extraordinary collection, was made by the Swedish company Svenska Biografteatern as part of a series dedicated to showing famous places around the world. The original version was silent I wanted to preserve the spirit without the later post sound effects added in other versions. Allowing to see the film in the quiet of the night, by myself, without the suggestive sounds of cars passing, horses going by, and crowds help me to look for details on the screen hoping to find points of reference. Documentary footage such as this is extremely valuable to present-day documentarians when trying to contextualize a story otherwise constrain to the talking head, current-day footage of the location, or vintage photographs.

This coming Sunday I will be filming at Estouteville house for the upcoming documentary film on Ludwig Kuttner. The location promises to play an important role in the film, the sort of role that historical homes tend to play when the action and dialogue unfolds within. Estouteville is a historic home in Esmont, Virginia. The main house was begun in 1827, and consists of a two-story, seven-bay central block, 68 feet by 43 feet, with two 35 feet by 26 feet, three-bay, single-story wings. It is constructed of brick and is in the Roman Revival style. A Tuscan cornice embellishes the low hipped roofs of all three sections, each of which is surmounted by tall interior end chimneys. The interior plan, where many of conversations with Ludwig Kuttner will take place, is dominated by the large Great Hall, a 23-by-35-foot richly decorated room. Also on the property are a contributing kitchen; a square frame dairy; a square, brick smokehouse, probably built in the mid-19th century, also covered with a pyramidal roof; and a frame slave quarters. Estouteville was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Research for Daniel Chester French is moving along. In recent days we were able to confirm locations in New York City for the second week of November. First at Roosevelt House where I will meet with and interview Harold Holzer, author of Monument Man: The Life & Art of Daniel Chester French. Roosevelt House, located on east 65th street is an integral part of Hunter College, a public policy institute honoring the distinguished legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. On the following day I scheduled to meet and interview Thayer Tolles, Marica F. Vilcek Curator of American Painting and Sculpture in The American Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. During this second interview we’re hoping to learn more about French's enormous contribution to the MET as a trustee and de facto curator of the modern sculpture collection. A final interview will take place with New York Times contributor Eve Kahn whose recent article Overlooked No More: Hettie Anderson, Sculptors’ Model Who Evaded Fame brough a new perspective to considerations of race and class in the development of our documentary film on French.

Celebrating The Life and Times of Ludwig Kuttner Ludwig Kuttner is a visionary, an inventor, a friend of the arts born in Munich in 1946. His deep interest and understanding in how history shapes our future along with his firm belief in the creation of beauty and value over prosperity led to financial success in real estate, product development and investment. He’s a cofounder of the New York Academy of Art, the Charlottesville Angel Network, and the IX Art Park, board member of the Albert Schweitzer Foundation, Tibet House, and a longtime philanthropist. When approached to create a documentary film about Ludwig Kuttner I immediately knew we had an opportunity to tell the story of the second half of the 20th century in the eyes of a visionary who also contributed to redefined the cultural landscape in Charlottesville. Montes-Bradley The documentary film about Ludwig Kuttner’s life, will start immediate production and is expected to be completed for a possible release in Summer-Fall 2022. Executive Producer: Johannah Castelman Producer: Soledad Liendo and Heritage Film Project Written and Directed by Eduardo Montes-Bradley Made possible with a gift from Susan Krischel This post will continue to be updated as the production progresses.

What is all this talk about the Lincoln Memorial and Daniel Chester French? While working on the final brushstrokes to Black Fiddlers, we have been quietly working on the development of an extraordinary biographical portrayal on Daniel Chester French. Who’s French? Exactly! Daniel Chester French is one of America’s most distinguished sculptors and his Opus Magnum is now undergoing an eighteen-million-dollar restoration as part of the Lincoln Memorial centennial. The work will be unveiled and rededicated on May 28, 2012. However, the name of Daniel Chester French, the artist who conceived and carried on the work of art that framed and served as the stage to Marian Andersons, and as a shrine to the Civil Rights Movement, remains in the shadows of public interest. We now intent to correct that oversight with a 30 minute documentary film that will bring his life and work to audiences all over the world, a life and work that went far beyond the Lincoln Memorial to embellish the public spaces, parks and avenues, state and academic buildings with the extraordinary gift of his delicate art. Daniel Chester French’s film will be centered around Chesterwood, his home-studio nested the natural beauty of western Massachusetts. From Chesterwood we will approach his early life in Concord, where the intellectual milieu of the ninetieth century nourished his appetite for beauty and the arts. It was there, in Concord, that his professional career was launched with the unveiling of The Minute Man in time for the Centenarian of the American Revolution. While at Chesterwood we’re planning to explore the delicate figure of Andromeda, the eternal custodian of the mythical space, that other female figure that together with Memory at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are silent witnesses to the artist infatigable pursue of perfection. During the coming winter months, we are also planing to follow French’s footsteps in Rome and Florence where the sculptor first came in contact with a urban landscape where human figures made of marble and bronze, shared with citizens a common space, birthing from the same air. Daniel Chester French, is an ambitions documentary to be produced by Heritage Film Project and the Documentary Film Fund with the support of Chesterwood and under the fiscal sponsorship of The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

An Encounter in Concord, Massachusetts At last, I met Michael Richman! Who’s Michael Richman? Simply put is the most qualified to talk about Daniel Chester French. He has lived with his subject his entire adult life, and he’s one of the few scholars to have met the sculptor’s daughter when she was still living at Chesterwood, his summer-studio and retreat in the Berkshires, not far from Stockbridge where Arlo Guthrie (Remember Alice?), still as his home just a half a mile from the railroad track. The meeting took place in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where we run into a man walking his dog, a man that seemed to know where all the bodies are buried. Hawthorne, Emerson, Alcott, and Daniel Chester French. But we didn’t drive all the way to concord to visit graves but a Cenotaph, a memorial dedicated to three of the Melvin brothers, local chaps who perished during the civil war. The Melvin Memorial is one of French’s most exquisite works, and unique example in many ways in America’s landscape of public works of art in the early 20th century. The encounter with Michael Richman was brief, enough to recognize in each other as worthy partner to tackle a biographical portrayal of Daniel Chester French on a documentary film. Next time I see Michael it will be at his place in Portland, Maine in October. By then we would have already talked for hours on the phone, and corresponded via email about The Melvin Memorial and so many other works of art chiseled by the man who brought us together today in Concord.

Chesterwood, MA – One comes to semi-secluded sites such as this to collect thoughts, to walk on the woods, to visit nearby cantinas and try local libations. But since I don’t drink and I have a very bad relationship with the insects living in the woods around here, I must concentrate solely in my thoughts, and Chesterwood is designed to help you achieve the goal. Someone said today that a prominent artist, visiting Chesterwood in the early 1900, said that one comes out of this place transformed, changed. The visitor’s, who’s name I don’t recall preceded me and many other artists in residency at Chesterwood in the art of thinking and sleeping. Yes, I forgot to mention that since the day I arrived I have been collecting thoughts and sleeping like a log, with vivid and inexplicable dreams in technicolor. However, it is important to mention that my quarters are separate from the main house that once was the summer home and studio of Daniel Chester French. In fact, my home away from home is a cottage designed as a secondary studio for the sculpture, about four hundred yards south of the formal residence, closer to the Housatonic River. The Lower Studio According to those who know better, French needed an ancillary studio where he could work in seclusion whenever the presence of family, friends, visitors, clients, models and assistants in the main Studio became distracting. To build this cottage-studio hired neighbor Will Hawkins to in 1905. Located at the edge of the pasture across the road from the main Studio and sitting on the crest of a hill overlooking the Housatonic River, the two-story clapboard structure, dubbed the “Lower Studio” by the sculptor had one big workroom with a large north skylight and a small casting room. As with the main Studio, a railroad track and flatcar were employed, but there were three small tracks instead of one large one. By pushing a sculpture out onto a deck above the river, French could walk fifty feet down the hill and view his work as if it were placed on a five-story building. This studio was christened “The Meadowlark” in 1932 when the sculptor’s nephew Prentiss French and his wife, Helen, expanded it and began using it as a summer domicile. Beginning in 1983, it was the site of the Guggenheim Sculptor-in-Residence program. During the summer, demonstrations of the visiting sculptor’s technique were given here. Today, and for the next two weeks, this will be home.