Faking the War of 1812
A talk by Lawrence Hott, producer/director of the documentary film, The War of 1812
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
6:30 p.m., reception to follow
The Lilly Library
Lawrence Hott will discuss the problem of historical truth in documentary film, particularly in the context of the War of 1812, a period which presents a number of challenges to a documentary filmmaker. Hott is producer/director of the documentary film, The War of 1812, broadcast on PBS in October 2011. The War of 1812 film and bonus features can be viewed online, courtesy of PBS/WNED: http://www.pbs.org/wned/war-of-1812/the-film/watch-film-and-bonus-features/
Lawrence Hott and his partner Diane Garey have been making documentary films since 1978 as part of Florentine Films, and later Hott Productions. Their productions are among the most-watched broadcasts on public television. Notable titles include John James Audubon: Drawn from Nature and Wild by Law, the story of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and three men responsible for its passage, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Hott’s awards include an Emmy, two Academy Award nominations, the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, five American Film Festival Blue Ribbons, and Fourteen CINE Golden Eagles. He received the Humanities Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities in 1995; a Massachusetts Cultural Council/Boston Film and Video Foundation Fellowship in 2001; and the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism in 2001. He has been on the board of non-fiction writers at Smith College and has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Massachusetts Cultural Commission, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Hott is a former juvenile court investigator and a lawyer by training, who has said that the law and documentary filmmaking have more in common than one would think: “a lot of legal practice has to do with the presentation of arguments, working with people, and being clear in your correspondence. I can’t think of a better training for a filmmaker than three years of law school.”
The talk will be followed by a reception. Both the talk and the reception are sponsored by the Friends of the Lilly Library and take place in concert with the exhibition, The War of 1812 in the Collections of the Lilly Library, on view through December 15, 2012, in the Main Gallery of the Lilly Library. An expanded version of the exhibition is available online at: http://collections.libraries.iub.edu/warof1812/