This award will support the production of a two-hour documentary about one of the great milestones in the history of flight: the 1935 crossing of the Pacific Ocean by a Pan American Airways flying boat called the China Clipper. The Pacific crossing was a technological achievement that captured the world’s imagination in much the way the space program did a generation later. It also began the era of transoceanic flight – an era that would lead to profound changes in American foreign policy, commerce and the very way Americans saw the world. Produced by one of the makers of "Forgotten Genius," NOVA's NEH-funded, Emmy Award-winning biography of black chemist Percy Julian, "Across the Pacific" will combine dramatic re-enactments, interviews with scholars, and films and photographs drawn from the rich archival record about the early days of commercial aviation.
This grant will support the production phase of a 90-minute film about the life and work of Frederick Law Olmsted. He is known as the father of American landscape architecture; what is unknown to the viewing public is the fact that he had so many different careers, trying to reform 19th-century America in surprising ways. He succeeded mightily, changed the nation, and his concerns foretold the future. But he also struggled with failure, loss, and with despair for much of his life. The project also includes a website, five short films about Olmsted parks for web distribution, and more.
The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association (PVMA), a nationally recognized history museum and library, in collaboration with institutional partners, is a grant for an ambitious Interpreting America’s Historic Places Planning Project focused on the compelling story of the early 19th century discovery of three-toed dinosaur tracks along a sixty-mile stretch of the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the deep impression these earliest American dinosaur discoveries made on ideas, art, religion, and culture in the United States. The broad public appeal of dinosaurs will engage a wide audience in the stories of the tracks’ discoverers and the first public reactions to these finds.