Letters to the Editor

MLK Film in Online Presentation

Dear Editor:

Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts, in partnership with Southampton African American Museum, is pleased to announce the special online presentation of Martin Luther King Jr: A Personal Portrait on Thursday, March 25, at 8 p.m. via Zoom. Following the screening, Emmy Award-winning cinematographer George Silano, who filmed the footage over the course of a week in December 1965, will join Brenda Simmons of SAAM for a question-and-answer session. Tickets are free at baystreet.org; email registration is required. For additional information, contact Marketing Coordinator, Michael Pintauro, at mpintauro@baystreet.org

Martin Luther King Jr: A Personal Portrait is an intimate and candid glimpse at the life of America’s great Civil Rights leader, at a high point in his work and the Civil Rights Movement. Filmed in his Atlanta home over the course of a week in December 1965, the documentary introduces Dr. King shortly following his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize and the passage of the The Civil Rights Act. Dr. King speaks openly with the film’s producer, journalist Arnold Michaelis, about his position within the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the notion of sacrificing one’s own life in the fight for a higher cause. The film includes rare footage of a discussion with King’s wife, Coretta, who provides her own unique perspective of their home life and his activism.

Arnold Michaelis is a renowned television producer and journalist, who over the course of his career interviewed such important cultural figures as John Wayne and Leonard Bernstein to Eleanor Roosevelt and Indira Gandhi. To help create the film, Michaelis hired freelance cinematographer, George Silano, who would later rediscover the footage in 2012 in the archives of the University of Georgia, where the film had been kept following Michaelis’ death in 1997.

George Silano is an Emmy Award-winning cinematographer and photographer whose career has spanned fifty years. In addition to his work on Martin Luther King Jr.: A Personal Portrait, Silano worked on a number of feature length documentaries, including The City of Ships, Changing World, The Hippie Temptation, and What Do You Say To A Naked Lady? He directed the film The Stoolie, and was director of photography on films Recess and The Last American Hero. He lives in North Haven.

Born and raised in Southampton, Brenda Simmons earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Community Human Services with a Concentration in Advocacy from SUNY Empire State University. From 2005 to 2015, she served as the Assistant to the Mayor and Recording Secretary in the Village of Southampton. She is Founder and Executive Director of the Southampton African American Museum (SAAM), located in a former restaurant and barbershop dating to the late 1940s, a place well known as “The Gathering Place” for Blacks at that time. She is Founder of the Pyrrhus Concer Action Committee (PCAC), which was formed to preserve the homestead of Pyrrhus Concer, a former indentured servant, legendary whaler, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who was born in Southampton Village in 1814.

Bay Street Theater is a year-round, not-for-profit professional theater and community cultural center, which endeavors to innovate, educate, and entertain a diverse community through the practice of the performing arts. It serves as a social and cultural gathering place, an educational resource, and a home for a community of artists.

Sincerely
                        Michael Pintauro

 

The Moshavim Movement Turns 100

Dear Editor:

The Moshavim Movement celebrated 100 years since the establishment of the first moshav at Beit HaNasi with the participation of President of Israel Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin on Monday March 8th/ 24 Adar. The Moshavim Movement represents 254 villages across the country, from Kfar Yuval in the north to Faran in the southern Arava.

Secretary General of the Moshavim Movement Amit Yifrah and representatives of moshavim from around the country, including Elad Betzer, a third-generation descendant of the founders of Nahalal; Menashe Malmud, a founder of Kfar Mallal; Shaike Shaked of Nativ Ha’asarah close to the Gaza border; and Shimon Bitton from Avivim, on the Lebanese border, also participated in the event. Shimon was rescued from the terrorist attack on the bus in Avivim in 1970 in which he lost his father and cousins.

Liora Hasson from Moshav Na’ama in the Jordan Valley told the president about the farm she has run from the establishment of the moshav. Liora asked to emphasize today, International Women’s Day, the work of Israel’s women farmers who have worked the land from the establishment of the moshavim until today.

“As many of you know, my late wife Nechama ז”ל was from Moshav Herut, part of the Moshavim Movement,” said the president. “She was a child of nature, a moshavnikit, a woman of the soil. Her mother, Drora-Kayla, ran the farm alone, together with her daughters,” said the president, noting the importance of the national and personal undertaking the moshavnikim fulfilled in the history of Israel.

“This past year has taught us how important and non-trivial it is to be able to enjoy and celebrate the nature with which the State of Israel is blessed. For those of us who aren’t fortunate enough, like you, to live in the green, rural areas of Israel, we have understood the importance and advantages they bring us all even more clearly – for leisure and holidays, but for so much more – for maintaining or borders and for established and sustainable Israeli agriculture,” said the president at the end of his remarks, wishing the next generation continue in the path forged by the pioneers of the Moshavim Movement a century ago, and that they grow in Israel from a deep connection to the history, nature and agriculture of the place, and to the bounty of its produce.

Sincerely
Jonathan Cummings