Tagged: film

Nearly 60 years ago this week, Washington University launched a 3-year, $20 million capital campaign – at the time, the second-largest by an American university.         

The fundraising effort included a short film called "The Second Century." Its director was Charles Guggenheim, who would later gain fame as a documentarian.

"If it wasn't here, we wouldn't have anywhere to go."

About a dozen people mill around the small lobby of the Senate Theater in Elsberry, Mo., a little town about an hour north of St. Louis.

Filmmaker Phillip Andrew Morton returned to the north St. Louis County community of Spanish Lake in 2007 to find his boyhood home abandoned and his elementary school empty.

He decided to make a documentary to explore what had happened to his hometown, including the underlying causes of “white flight” from the area.

Called simply “Spanish Lake," the documentary is expected to be released this summer.

A sneak peak of the film will be shown at the Open/Closed and Shuttered Flim Fest in April.

St. Louis Public Radio’s Maria Altman spoke with Morton and we have a summary of their conversation - and a trailer of the film - for you here.