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Watch "Young Butte America Speaks" about the making of the Butte Digital Film Project |
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The Butte Digital Film Project gives twenty-four young adults the opportunity to creatively explore, examine, celebrate and critique their hometown using the medium of digital film. A small group of film producers, humanities professionals, local historians and community members will provide instruction, mentoring the young filmmakers in the areas of narrative composition, interviewing, location scouting, filming, sound recording and editing. The project is sponsored by the Butte Silver Bow Public Library.
The final product—seven short films—will be made available to the public for viewing in several formats and in various venues. There are also plans to develop a feature length film that incorporates the shorts but also documents the life-cycle of the project and the experiences of the young filmmakers. Project Mentors
Advisors
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Related Discussions
Check out these active discussions in the Humanities Montana forum:
Butte Silver Bow Public Library
 Butte Silver Bow Public Library, founded in 1893, is a
monument to the rising and falling of Butte in fame and flames.
After three fires, the library's original building was lost and the
library has a new location in a former telephone company building.
The library collection has been burned and soaked and yet
preserved. The Butte experience is full of phoenixes rising from
the ashes. There is as much a need to remember the past as there is
to heal from it. The library hopes to facilitate conversation and
healing with the telling of a different story, the story of those
who are here today, living in the shell of yesterday. The project
will be connected to the Butte Community Change Project and used as
a springboard for discussion on young-adult needs in the community
and the planning of programming to meet those needs through the
cooperation of government, non-profit and public sector
organizations.
Butte, America
From the Butte, America website: "Butte, America recounts the sometimes glorious, often sorrowful, but always fascinating story of the most lucrative hard rock mining town in United States history, 'the Richest Hill on Earth'.... In Butte, the Industrial Revolution collided with the romance of the frontier, corporate capitalism battled organized labor, and human appetite laid waste to land and water, yielding vast fortunes for a few and a tragic environmental legacy for the people left behind. Those people are the heart of the film.... In a copper crucible, they forged a community whose toughness and solidarity speak to what's missing in America today."
Project Sponsors
The Butte Digital Film Project would like to thank the following
organizations for their generous support.
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© 2012 Created by Ken Egan.
The aim of this project is to use personal narrative,
history, and the power of storytelling and documentary film
techniques to create change and opportunity for young adults in the
community of Butte. Visual and oral accounts of the experience of
young adults living in Butte using the media of digital film will
document their understanding of the past, the troubles they
experience in the present and what they see in Butte's future.
There are crises in the Butte community in the form of vandalism,
violence, alcohol abuse and drug use that are tearing at the fabric
of the community. This project hopes to allow the youth of Butte to
show others how they see their community. The need to create dialog
and an exchange of ideas to address the distress in the community
requires the input of all stakeholders. Working in digital film is
a medium the current generation understands.
The Butte Digital Film Project was largely inspired by
Butte, America, the 2009 documentary directed and
produced by Pamela Roberts. That film, like the Butte Digital Film
Project, strives to examine—honestly, unflinchingly—the qualities
of Butte, Montana that connect its past, present and future.