“Pitching Man” –Director Craig Davidson, playing with short film: “Gandi At Bat” Directors: Stephanie Argy & Alec Boehm
6:30 pm Catered VIP Reception and Meet & Greet with Director Craig Davidson; Film Screening followed by Q&A
PITCHING MAN: Satchel Paige Defying Time is a compelling 55-minute documentary narrated by actor Billy Dee Williams. Over a decade in the making, this film pays homage to a remarkable athlete.
Paige was the single most important player in the old Negro Baseball Leagues and an American legend. He was an extraordinary athlete and a genuine original who played the game for forty years on makeshift rural sandlots and in major league ballparks against the best in the game.
When Paige triumphed in the major leagues as a 42-year old rookie, he solidified his position as a hero in black communities and confirmed his status as one of the greats of the game.
Satchel Paige was unique and idiosyncratic but his accomplishments in baseball reflected his perseverance hard work and discipline. His personal struggle against racism and later ageism had tremendous impact. He was almost entirely self-made and possessed and inner dignity and strength. Satchel Paige's weapons were skill, wit, charm, humor, intelligence, savvy and an overpowering fastball.
Paige became the first Negro Leaguer to win induction into baseball's Hall of Fame. His is a vivid story that illustrates much about the times and the plight of Black Americans. This documentary remembers a true baseball immortal and paints a vivid portrait of American society in transition.
For well over a decade, filmmakers Craig Davidson and Donn Rogosin pieced together this extraordinary story. The journey began while recoding interviews for their critically acclaimed documentary, THERE WAS ALWAYS SUN SHINING SOMEPLACE: Life in the Negro Baseball Leagues. "It seems everyone had a story about Paige, arguably the greatest pitcher of his era," noted Davidson, "he was complex with Madison Avenue savvy, B.T. Barnum showmanship and a wit that could disarm his harshest critics."
The collaboration of Davidson and Rogosin has produced a series of the most important works on the black baseball leagues. The celebrated documentary, THERE WAS ALWAYS SUN SHINING SOMEPLACE, narrated by James Earl Jones became the definitive film about the Negro League experience. Widely-praised by the national press the film was featured at the Smithsonian Institution, National Baseball's Hall of Fame, the Negro Baseball Museum and was shown as a prime-time feature for public broadcasting's national schedule. The film is now used extensively in classrooms throughout America to convey to a younger generation the significant contribution of black ballplayers to the cultural life of the nation.
Donn Rogosin's book, Invisible Men, is one of the best-known and most respected histories of the Negro Leagues. It received outstanding reviews upon publication and remains widely used in libraries and educational institutions as well as among baseball fans and historians.
The Davidson/Rogosin collaboration created a unique and extensive collection of filmed interviews, audiotapes and archival photographs of the Negro League experience. PITCHING MAN is the culmination of their hard work and dedication documenting black baseball's most charismatic personality -- Leroy 'Satchel' Paige.
Gandhi at the Bat is a newsreel-style account of the little-known (and totally fictional) incident when Mohandas K. Gandhi pinch-hit for the New York Yankees in 1933. Based on a short story by Chet Williamson that originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 1983, Gandhi at the Bat is a faithful recreation of a 1930s-style newsreel. The 11-minute movie includes over 75 effects shots that transform the actual shooting location (a minor league ballpark in Bakersfield, California) into a faithful recreation of Yankee Stadium as it was over seventy years ago.
