How a Filmmaker Researches the Past

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Fred Ho

from Steven De Castro’s film
Fred Ho’s Last Year

— Steven De Castro is a recipient of a Rose and Sigmund Strochlitz Travel Grant to use the Fred Ho Papers held by Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.  A description of his research experience appears below.

Most folks visiting a library are doing so to write a book or a paper. But a library preserves not only the papers of our culture, but also its sights and sounds. And these audio and visual records are of particular interest, not just to writers, but to filmmakers.

Research on a historical film is similar to researching a book or paper. The director John Sayles, before producing Amigo (his drama set during the Philippine-American War), read over 100 books on the subject. The difference in documentary filmmaking is that after engaging in the scholarly work, one has to then engage in the business of negotiating and purchasing the rights to the video you have unearthed.

As a filmmaker, I have found Archives & Special Collections invaluable in my research for the upcoming documentary film, Fred Ho’s Last Year.

ABOUT THE FRED HO PAPERS

Enclosed within the walls of the Dodd Research Center’s archives are the sights and sounds created by one of the greatest avant-garde jazz artists of his generation – a prolific composer, a committed Asian American activist and public intellectual – Fred Ho (b. 1957).

Fred Ho is a 6-time Rockefeller Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, a 2-time National Endowment of the Arts recipient, the winner of an American Book Award and a Harvard Arts Medal. Despite these accomplishments, most people – even in the field of contemporary music – have never heard of him. Whether it is because of the fact that he is an outspoken Asian American (a rarity in the music industry), or whether it is because he infuses his own brand of leftist politics in most of his work, is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps the most compelling reason why such a prolific artist is not more widely known is that he refuses to be categorized. His music is too challenging to attract a popular fan base, and yet it embraces (and remakes) so many popular styles of music that it is not “out there” enough for other avant-garde musical cliques.

One of the most important facets of Fred’s art is that if you are buying his albums and enjoying his music, you are experiencing only a portion of his creative work. Fred is not only a musician, but an operatic composer whose works are meant to be both seen and heard at the same time. The only way to experience this, short of attending a performance, is through audio/visual media. The central repository of audio/visual records of Fred Ho’s work and public statements is in the Fred Ho Papers held by Archives & Special Collections.

Fred’s artistic and political direction profoundly changed when, in 2006, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Currently Fred’s condition is terminal and he has refused further chemotherapy. Incredibly, Fred still continues his work. As of this date, he has a concert with his orchestra at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and an upcoming book. The significance of the Fred Ho Papers to the fields of Asian American studies, art, and music is difficult to quantify, both for this generation of scholars and for future generations.

Most of the video within the Fred Ho Papers is undiscovered and unplayed. Video is (quite understandably) not of interest to scholars whose main interest is to publish papers and books. And although the video is quite visually fascinating and intellectually provocative, much of it is stored on magnetic tape that degrades with each passing year.

BRINGING THE ARCHIVES TO THE MOVIE SCREEN

Through my research at Archives & Special Collections, I am able to tell a more comprehensive story of Fred Ho’s life and work on a greatly expanded timeline, through the use of archival video. The video shows Fred performing and speaking many years ago, before I began shooting. Through the skills of documentary storytelling, this material comes alive and brings the art and thought of Fred Ho to undiscovered audiences.

And yet, finding the material is only a first step. Under the Fair Use exception to the Copyright Act, a university is allowed to play these videos to a classroom of students. However, a filmmaker is not allowed to incorporate these materials into a film without authorization. So I had found the videos. Now what?

In addition to being a filmmaker, I am a lawyer. Through weeks of calls and internet searches, I was able to track down these rights holders for a release. The television production companies had their own release forms, but in one instance, I drafted the release for the company representative to sign.

Licensing of archival video footage for a film is expensive. Generally, institutions have different rate plans for licensing, which eases the cost for independent producers such as myself. Thankfully, one institution and most individuals I have asked have released their rights for free.

Due to the age of the material, many rights holders failed to locate the original high-quality versions of the footage within their own archives. Therefore, some of the video archives in the Fred Ho Papers turned out to be the only existing copies. In those cases, my research allowed me to acquire these materials and negotiate their release even when they were lost by the production company that made them.

When a video is made, it is usually made for a short term purpose. Production companies cover an event to place on the evening news. A performer may videotape his own performance for the purpose of reviewing it the following day. The maker of the video rarely intends to create a lasting archive. And yet, as a historical documentary filmmaker, I depend on the archival video at Archives & Special Collections – sometimes stored in archaic analog formats – to bring the subject alive.

Steven De Castro, J.D., is the Producer and Director of the upcoming feature documentary, Fred Ho’s Last Year. His research is made possible by the University of Connecticut’s ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES INSTITUTE, ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AT THE THOMAS J. DODD RESEARCH CENTER, FRED HO FELLOWSHIP, and STROCHLITZ TRAVEL GRANT. You can contact him at decastro@credibilitymedia.com.

Northeast Conference on British Studies

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Lion_Rampant_TitleOn October 4th and 5th, the red coats are coming to UConn!  This years annual meeting of the Northeast Conference on British Studies, organized by Prof. Brendan Kane of UConn’s History department, is working collaboratively to promote historical research in archival collections.  The Dodd Center and Archives & Special Collections will be on display the evening of October 4th for the initial day’s reception.  Archives & Special Collections will have materials on display from the early modern period to anti-colonial struggles of the late twentieth century.

Mimeo Hip: Poems from Literary Mags Recently Added

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Take a trip with Mimeo Hip! Bite-sized posts highlighting poems and literary mags from the 1950s through the 1980s that were recently added to the Archives.

Welcome back to class, to a new home, and to autumn, with a poem by Bill DeNoyelles from Blue Smoke 3, March 1985:

Clean Sweep

A bedroom door opens easily with no humidity
My socks touch a chain whose charm was
Lost in a parking lot last night
We use sheets and blankets
For the first time in weeks
It rains… BLUESMOKE0001

 

BluesmokeCover

A Letter from Thomas A. Edison

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Letter from Thomas A. Edison to E.E. Dickinson & Co. of Essex, Connecticut, written on March 16, 1916, about a recommendation for Mr. V.L. King for work at the company. E.E. Dickinson Co. Records, Archives & Special Collections, University of Connecticut Libraries.

Letter from Thomas A. Edison to E.E. Dickinson & Co. of Essex, Connecticut.

Recently a researcher visited our reading room to look at the E. E. Dickinson Co. records and brought this letter to our attention.  Written on March 16, 1916, from Orange, New Jersey, it is a letter signed by inventor Thomas A. Edison about his recommendation of Mr. V.L. King, who was seeking employment at the E.E. Dickinson Company, a maker of witch hazel and birch oil in Durham and Essex, Connecticut.

The E.E. Dickinson Company was established by Alvin Whittemore, who owned a drug store in Essex.  By 1870, partners of Whittemore consolidated under the control of Rev. Thomas Dickinson and his family, including his son E.E. Dickinson, held the company as a family business until the 1980s.  By the 1920s the company produced half of all witch hazel produced in the United States.

Archivists and historians value primary sources for their content and context — how they contribute to our understanding of historical events or a historical time.  The value of a letter just because it has a famous person’s signature doesn’t usually fit in this category.  It has a different sort of value, one where anything that attaches us to a famous person is automatically valuable. In any event, we are happy to know about this letter in our collection and hope you enjoy it too.

Dodd International Justice Research Fellowship Report, 2013

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Court Scenes, 1945-1946
Thomas Dodd, Chief Trial Counsel in the Court of the International Military Tribunal, 1945-1946.

In January 2013 I applied for the Thomas J. Dodd International Justice Research Fellowship. This fellowship supports research at the Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, furthering the Center’s aim to promote human rights. The Center is also dedicated to promoting the work and career of Thomas J. Dodd, executive trial counsel for the United States at the International Military Tribunal (IMT Trial). A higher degree by research student from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University, Melbourne (Australia), I was both honoured and excited to be given this opportunity. The fellowship involved a two-week stay at the University of Connecticut (UCONN) campus to conduct Ph.D. research during summer 2013. Over a period of two weeks I worked closely with the Center’s staff searching through the Thomas J. Dodd collection and analysing documents relating to war crimes trials of Nazi criminals held in the aftermath of World War II, specifically the IMT Trial.

The Dodd Center’s collection is exceptional because it brings together a comprehensive range of trial documentation at one location. The Dodd Papers are a valuable set of historical documents that hold relevance in a range of academic fields, not least human rights and history. Moreover, the documents are predominantly printed in English, and include various translated German documents, which normally I and many other scholars would be unable to access. I was excited to be given the opportunity to conduct research in an international setting but also to engage with the valuable archives housed at the Dodd Center.
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Dodd’s Congo Foray

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Thomas J. Dodd and Moise Tshombe, 1961

Thomas J. Dodd and Moise Tshombe, 1961

“…the role of the Senate [is] to advise on foreign policy and not merely to assent to faits accomplish…”

Sen. Thomas J. Dodd to Sec. of State Dean Rusk, December 1964[i]

 Within two weeks of the Congo gaining independence from Belgium in June 1960, the mineral-rich Katanga province attempted to secede, thrusting the country into chaos. The Eisenhower administration intervened in order to prevent a communist takeover of the nation. During the Kennedy administration U.S. involvement marked an unprecedented projection of American power in sub-Saharan Africa. As Secretary of State Dean Rusk said in July of 1962, “there was no other problem including Berlin in which [the] President, [the] Secretary and senior colleagues have spent as much time as [the] Congo.”[ii] The event created a paper trail at the Kennedy Presidential Library second only in volume to Vietnam; surpassing that of Britain, and even of the Soviet Union.[iii] When including donations to UN operations, U.S. aid given to that country amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.

As I argue more thoroughly in my dissertation, the Kennedy administration viewed the crisis not only as central to the Cold War, but also to decolonization. In 1960 alone, seventeen African nations declared independence. By intervening in the Congo, Kennedy wanted to prove to newly emerging nations on the African continent, as well as the Third World at large, that American-styled democracy and capitalism could secure political and economic freedom for colonially oppressed peoples. Like other U.S. interventions during this era, however, events did not turn out as American policymakers had expected. Gen. Joseph Mobutu ascended to power in 1965, ruling the country as a dictator until 1997. The decay of the state under his rule contributed to the destabilization of the region and approximately five million deaths even after he had departed from power.[iv]

Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT) was one of the leading opponents of the Kennedy administration’s policies in the Congo.  Believing Kennedy’s sympathy with Third World nationalism had caused the President to lose sight of the larger Cold War struggle, Dodd used his position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to effectively challenge the power of the executive branch. Dodd supported Moise Tshombe, the leader of Katanga with whom the Kennedy administration was at odds. Even though Tshombe was reviled by the Afro-Asian bloc for betraying Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the Congo who was assassinated by Belgium in 1961, Dodd argued that the United States should nonetheless support Tshombe’s bid for power since he was a self-avowed anti-communist willing to partner with the West.

The UN thwarted Tshombe’s secession in 1963, but through an unlikely turn of events he became Prime Minister in 1964. By then the Kennedy administration’s nation-building efforts had failed to transform the Congo into a viable nation-state, and leftist revolutionaries with support from Algeria, Cuba, and China, were seeking to overthrow the government. Dodd’s persistent lobbying in Washington had kept alive the possibility of Tshombe becoming an American ally. Indeed, Dodd’s advocacy made a difference when the Johnson administration began searching for a new Congolese leader to back, one capable of warding off the revolutionaries and partnering with the West to bring stability to the country.

As a recipient of a Rose and Sigmund Strochlitz Travel Grant, I was able to spend a week examining Dodd’s papers at the Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center located on the campus of the University of Connecticut in Storrs.  With approximately seven linear feet of material relating to the Congo, it is an especially rich collection that provides a detailed account of the Senator’s opposition to the Kennedy administration’s policies as well as his advocacy for Tshombe. Some of the highlights of the collection include private memoranda between Dodd and his staff, the itinerary and notes from Dodd’s trip to the Congo in 1961, speeches and periodical articles written by Dodd, reports from American missionaries in the Congo, and correspondence between Dodd and Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Secretary of State Rusk, Tshombe, and Tshombe’s representatives. The collection also contains official government documents from Katanga, including cabinet meeting minutes.[v]

Scholars studying U.S. foreign policy and/or the Congo will find this collection informative. It serves as a prescient reminder that congress can effectively challenge a president’s foreign policy, and helps reveal the agency and vision of Tshombe whom conventional narratives have portrayed as a puppet of Western interests. Recent events in that country demand that we examine its history, of which this collection helps to illuminate.

–William Mountz, PhD Candidate, University of Missouri

Recipient of  a 2013 Strochlitz Travel Grant

[i] Letter from Sen. Thomas J. Dodd to Sec. of State Dean Rusk, 21 Dec. 1964, Box 260, Thomas J. Dodd Papers, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.

[ii] Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in the Congo, 7 Jul. 1962, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. 20 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1994), 501-503.

[iii] John Kent, America, the U.N. and Decolonization: Cold War Conflict in the Congo (New York: Routledge, 2010), 2.

[iv] Gerard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Jason Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011).

[v] Researchers will also be happy to know that they will encounter an exceptionally professional and friendly archival staff.

Marc Simont

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Many Moons by James Thurber (Harcourt, 1990)

Many Moons by James Thurber (Harcourt, 1990)

The Northeast Children’s Literature Collection mourns the loss of our good friend, Marc Simont. Mr. Simont placed a significant amount of his work here and joined us at the CT Children’s Book Fair four times between 1993 and 2002. He was talented, charming and witty, and will be sincerely missed.

Stray Dog, retold and illustrated by Marc Simont (HarperCollins, 2001)

Stray Dog, retold and illustrated by Marc Simont (HarperCollins, 2001)

The finding aid at Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center describes Mr. Simont:

Marc Simont was born November 23, 1915, in Paris, France to Joseph and Dolores Simont from the Catalonian region of northeastern Spain. Joseph was an illustrator and artist/reporter for L’Illustration in Paris. Because his parents moved frequently Marc attended schools in Paris, Barcelona, and New York and became a U.S. citizen in 1926. Though he later attended art schools he considered his father his greatest teacher. He studied art in Paris at Académie Julian, Académie Ranson, and Andre Lhoté School. In the U.S. he attended the New York National Academy of Design and Jerry Farnsworth’s summer school in Provincetown, Mass. He worked as assistant to mural painters Francis S. Bradford (1939 N. Y. World’s Fair) and Ezra Winter (Library of Congress).

The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss (HarperCollins, 1949).

The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss (HarperCollins, 1949).

Simont’s first illustration job was for a pulp magazine that folded before he could collect his $25. Eventually he became an author and illustrator of children’s books, greatly influenced by Ursula Nordstrom, editor of Harper Bros. He illustrated books by Ruth Krauss, James Thurber, Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, Karla Kuskin among others. His illustrations for Janice May Udry’s A Tree is Nice won the Caldecott Medal in 1957, and he received Caldecott Honors for his pictures in Ruth Krauss’s The Happy Day and his own The Stray Dog. Simont has also been recognized by the Child Study Association, Society of Illustrators, N.Y. Academy of Sciences, N.J. Institute of Technology, American Institute of Graphic Arts, and Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor.  In 2008 his political cartoons were awarded the Hunter College James Aronson Award for “Cartooning With A Conscience.”

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber (Simon and Schuster, 1950).

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber (Simon and Schuster, 1950).

This curator’s favorite book is The Philharmonic Gets Dressed, by Karla Kuskin, published in 1982 by Harper and Row.  Kuskin’s story, in which “one hundred and five people are getting dressed to go to work”  is accompanied by Simont’s illustrations showing the musicians bathing, dressing, traveling to the concert hall, and “turning the black notes on white pages into a symphony.”

The Philharmonic Gets Dressed by Karla Kuskin (Harper and Row, 1982).

The Philharmonic Gets Dressed by Karla Kuskin (Harper and Row, 1982).

A wonderful story about Simont is retold in his obituary which appeared in the New York Times on July 16, 2013.  Simont and Robert McCloskey lived together in Greenwich Village when McCloskey was working on his classic Make Way for Ducklings.  In order to study ducklings more thoroughly for his drawings and with Simont’s assent, he brought home a family of ducklings which lived in the bathtub for several months.

Rest in peace, Mr. Simont.

–Terri J. Goldich

Marc Simont

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Many Moons by James Thurber (Harcourt, 1990)

Many Moons by James Thurber (Harcourt, 1990)

The Northeast Children’s Literature Collection mourns the loss of our good friend, Marc Simont. Mr. Simont placed a significant amount of his work here and joined us at the CT Children’s Book Fair four times between 1993 and 2002. He was talented, charming and witty, and will be sincerely missed.

Stray Dog retold and illustrated by Marc Simont (HarperCollins, 2001)

Stray Dog retold and illustrated by Marc Simont (HarperCollins, 2001)

The finding aid at Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center describes Mr. Simont:

Marc Simont was born November 23, 1915, in Paris, France to Joseph and Dolores Simont from the Catalonian region of northeastern Spain. Joseph was an illustrator and artist/reporter for L’Illustration in Paris. Because his parents moved frequently Marc attended schools in Paris, Barcelona, and New York and became a U.S. citizen in 1926. Though he later attended art schools he considered his father his greatest teacher. He studied art in Paris at Académie Julian, Académie Ranson, and Andre Lhoté School. In the U.S. he attended the New York National Academy of Design and Jerry Farnsworth’s summer school in Provincetown, Mass. He worked as assistant to mural painters Francis S. Bradford (1939 N. Y. World’s Fair) and Ezra Winter (Library of Congress).

The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss (HarperCollins, 1949)

The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss (HarperCollins, 1949)

Simont’s first illustration job was for a pulp magazine that folded before he could collect his $25. Eventually he became an author and illustrator of children’s books, greatly influenced by Ursula Nordstrom, editor of Harper Bros. He illustrated books by Ruth Krauss, James Thurber, Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, Karla Kuskin among others. His illustrations for Janice May Udry’s A Tree is Nice won the Caldecott Medal in 1957, and he received Caldecott Honors for his pictures in Ruth Krauss’s The Happy Day and his own The Stray Dog. Simont has also been recognized by the Child Study Association, Society of Illustrators, N.Y. Academy of Sciences, N.J. Institute of Technology, American Institute of Graphic Arts, and Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor.  In 2008 his political cartoons were awarded the Hunter College James Aronson Award for “Cartooning With A Conscience.”

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber (Simon and Schuster, 1950)

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber (Simon and Schuster, 1950)

This curator’s favorite book is The Philharmonic Gets Dressed, by Karla Kuskin, published in 1982 by Harper and Row.  Kuskin’s story, in which “one hundred and five people are getting dressed to go to work”  is accompanied by Simont’s illustrations showing the musicians bathing, dressing, traveling to the concert hall, and “turning the black notes on white pages into a symphony.”Marc Simont "Philharmonic Gets Dressed"

A wonderful story about Simont is retold in his obituary which appeared in the New York Times on July 16, 2013.  Simont and Robert McCloskey lived together in Greenwich Village when McCloskey was working on his classic Make Way for Ducklings.  In order to study ducklings more thoroughly for his drawings and with Simont’s assent, he brought home a family of ducklings which lived in the bathtub for several months.

Rest in peace, Mr. Simont.

–Terri J. Goldich

David Polochanin’s new poetry

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The recent James Marshall Fellowship awardee David Polochanin has published some new poems.  Check them out at  http://www.gadflyonline.com/home/index.php/how-to-write-a-poem/.

This curator’s favorite is “Dogs riding in cars, a brief analysis” with second favorite, “Moving in with Martha Stewart.”  Congratulations, David!

Claudia Rueda’s new book

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Rueda cover 2013 Rueda 2013 pg6Congratulations to Claudia Rueda, Billie M. Levy Travel Grant recipient in 2009, for the new English translation of her 2011 book “Todos es relativos.” This one is “Is it Big or Is it Little?” and is published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.  This is a charming book for the youngest readers which compares concepts such as deep and shallow, long and short, and beginning and end.  Felicitaciones, Claudia!