Ben Proudfoot

Almost Famous: The Lost Astronaut

Ben Proudfoot

Edward Dwight Jr.

In 1963, Ed Dwight Jr. was poised to be NASA’s first African-American astronaut, until suddenly he wasn’t.

Almost Famous: The Other Fab Four

Ben Proudfoot

Mary Dostal, Sylvia Wiggins

In the mid-1960s, four teenagers from Liverpool were changing the face of pop music. Their names were Mary, Sylvia, Pam, and Val — the Liverbirds!

Almost Famous: Kim I Am

Ben Proudfoot

Kim Hill, Cassius Hill

Kim Hill was a rising singer when she met a young rapper named will.i.am, but she quit the Black Eyed Peas just before they became famous.

The Queen Of Basketball

Ben Proudfoot

Lusia Harris

She was arguably the greatest women's basketball player. She won three national trophies; she played in the ’76 Olympics; she was drafted to the NBA. But have you ever heard of Lucy Harris?

Rwanda & Juliet

Ben Proudfoot

A feature documentary set in Kigali, Rwanda, the epicenter of the genocide that left a million dead two decades earlier. The film follows eccentric retired Dartmouth Professor Emeritus, Andrew Garrod, as he mounts Romeo and Juliet with college students from both Hutu and Tutsi backgrounds. Hopes, expectations, pasts, personalities and cultures collide as opening night approaches.

A Concerto Is a Conversation

Kris Bowers, Ben Proudfoot

Kris Bowers, Horace Bowers, Sr.

A virtuoso jazz pianist and film composer tracks his family's lineage through his 91-year-old grandfather from Jim Crow Florida to the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

That's My Jazz

Ben Proudfoot

Marie Buch Hoyer, Lasse Funch Sørensen

A world-renowned pastry chef, reflects on his relationship with his deceased father Milton Abel Sr., famed Kansas City jazz musician.

Cause of Life: Jerry

Ben Proudfoot

Abraham J Bonowitz

A devout Christian, Jerry Givens was Virginia’s chief executioner, before he became an advocate of abolishing the death penalty.

Almost Famous: The Silent Pulse of the Universe

Ben Proudfoot

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Growing up in a Quaker household, Jocelyn Bell Burnell was raised to believe that she had as much right to an education as anyone else. But as a girl in the 1940s in Northern Ireland, her enthusiasm for the sciences was met with hostility from teachers and male students. Undeterred, she went on to study radio astronomy at Glasgow University, where she was the only woman in many of her classes. In 1967, Burnell made a discovery that altered our perception of the universe. As a Ph.D. student at Cambridge University assisting the astronomer Anthony Hewish, she discovered pulsars — compact, spinning celestial objects that give off beams of radiation, like cosmic lighthouses. (A visualization of some early pulsar data is immortalized as the album art for Joy Division’s “Unknown Pleasures.”)

Cause of Life: Angela

Ben Proudfoot

Robert Chanate

Angela Chaddlesone McCarthy was a teenage mother raised on a Native American reservation who overcame great odds to become a Kiowa tribe legislator in Oklahoma.

Cause of Life: Calvin

Ben Proudfoot

Kara Gaucher

When his son-in-law was killed in a tragic car crash, World War II veteran Calvin Haworth became a surrogate parent and an activist against drunk driving in Minnesota.

Almost Famous: The Unchosen One

Ben Proudfoot

Devon Michael

It was the late 1990s, and 3,000 young actors around the world were scouted for the role of a lifetime. On the ride home from school, Devon Michael’s mom told him he’d be auditioning for "The Phantom Menace," one of the most anticipated movies ever. From 3,000, the producers narrowed it down to three, and soon Michael was at Skywalker Ranch doing a test screen with George Lucas and Natalie Portman.

Almost Famous: The King of Fish & Chips

Ben Proudfoot

Haddon Salt

In the late 1960s, Haddon Salt built a fast-food empire. Then Kentucky Fried Chicken came knocking.

Cause of Life: Humberto

Ben Proudfoot

Mikayla Trujillo

A hard-working bricklayer from the projects, Humberto Trujillo helped build the main Phoenix post office — and rose to become his city’s first Hispanic postmaster.

Cause of Life: Rosary

Ben Proudfoot

Rosalie Castro

Rosary Castro-Olega was a retired nurse who returned to the frontlines to fight the virus, ultimately becoming one of the Filipino-American nurses who were disproportionately killed by the virus.

Still Here

Ben Proudfoot

Melvin Dismukes

Fifty years later, the real Melvin Dismukes chronicles his first-hand experience of the infamous Algiers Motel Incident, for which he was wrongly charged with first-degree murder in 1967.