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Wakan Films' and The Hunter Neil Company's Award Winning documentary:
"Black Hawk Waltz:
Tales of a Rocky Mountain Town"
(In this photo, our film crew interviews a true gold miner beside a mountain stream in Black Hawk, Colorado. This stream has turned an orangish color from all of the heavy metal tailings from the old abandoned Gold mines, and this water is the same water that is used to make Coors Beer-- "Yum, Yum." Coors does puritfy the water, they say, but I wouldn't drink the stuff)
TO Wakan Films Documentary MAIN PAGE
Summary of this page:
THE FILM'S AWARDS AND IMPRESSIVE STUFF
STRANGE THINGS WE DISCOVERED WHILE MAKING "BLACK HAWK WALTZ"
FILM ABOUT TRUE-LIFE COLORADO "NORTHERN EXPOSURE"00422 Dibner, Martin Admiral, The $3.00 Paperback 1st Edition 2nd Printing VG/VG Bantam Books NY 1968 440 pp. Naval Command Fiction General Age discoloration. Firm. I0000423 Smith, Martin Cruz Gorky Park $3.25 Paperback Nth printing VG/VG Ballantine Books NY 1983 433 pp. Drama Fiction General Murder Russia Motion Picture Bestseller POI stamp inside flyleaf I0000424 Land, John Labyrinth $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition Stated VG+/VG+ Fawcett Gold Metal NY 1986 374 pp. Conspiracy Fiction General Slight spine cant. Crisp. I0000425 Wessel, John This Far, No Further $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition VG+/VG+ Island Books NY 1997 371 pp. Mystery Fiction Mystery/Crime Private Investigator Chicago Slight spine cant. Firm. I0000426 Robbins, Harold Carpetbaggers, The $3.25 Paperback Reprint F/F Pocket Books NY 1962 679 pp. Suspense Fiction General Slight spine cant. Firm. 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I0000449 Shatner, William Tek Vengeance $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition F/F Ace Books NY 1993 294 pp. Crime Ridden Future Fiction Science Fiction Slight spine cant. Firm. I0000450 Crichton, Michael Disclosure $4.00 Paperback 1st Edition F+/F+ Ballantine Books NY 1994 497 pp. Revenge Fiction General Computer Industry Crisp. I0000451 Bolan, Mack Blind Eagle $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition VG+/VG+ Gold Eagle Book Don Mills, Ont 1994 347 pp. Defense Team Fiction General Spy Satellite - Jam Spine cant. firm I0000452 Bolan, Mack Target America $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition VG+/VG+ Gold Eagle Book Don Mills, Ont 1994 346 pp. Defense Team Fiction General Pureto Rico Separatist Group Spine cant. Firm. I0000453 Bolan, Mack Hellground $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition VG+/VG+ Gold Eagle Book Don Mills, Ont 1994 348 pp. Defense Team Fiction General slight spine cant. Firm. I0000454 Bolan, Mack Ambush $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition VG+/VG+ Gold Eagle Book Don Mills, Ont 1994 345 pp. Defense Team Fiction General Drug War Slight spine cant. Firm I0000455 Cook, Robin Fatal Cure $3.50 Paperback 1st Edition VG+/VG+ Berkley Books NY 1995 449 pp. Health Care Reform Fiction General Medical Suspense Spine cant. Firm. I0000457 Kubasik, Christopher Poisoned Memories $3.50 Paperback 1st Edition F+/F+ ROC Books NY 1994 313 pp. Fantassy Fiction Fantasy Crisp. I0000459 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume II $3.50 Paperback 1st Edition 3rd Printing F/F Bantam Books NY 1986 662 pp. Sherlock Holmes - Detective Fiction Mystery/Crime Victorian England Baker Street - 221B Lt edge stains. Crisp. I0000460 Donaldson, Stephen R. 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January 22, 1998
"Black Hawk Waltz: Tales of a Rocky Mountain Town," a one-hour documentary about a small eccentric Colorado mountain town, a true life "Northern Exposure," was selected as a winner in the 1997 Telly Awards, a prestigious national competition that honors film and video productions as well as non-network TV programming. Winners in 1996 included works produced by Walt Disney Home Video, Mirimax Films, The Oprah Winfrey Show, HBO, Time Life, Inc., the A&E Networks, the Discovery Channel, ABC News, Nickelodeon, National Geographic, the History Channel, and others.
The documentary, about the eccentric people and history of Black Hawk, Colorado, won the award before being broadcast PBS stations in Colorado, Montana and the Rocky Mountain region, and possibly other stations across the country. It was broadcast by KRMA (channel 6) Denver in June 1997 (where it was received by viewers throughout the Rocky Mountain states) and by Montana PBS, also on June 1997. The documentary was also acquired by The History Channel, and will be broadcast sometime in 1998.
The 58 minute documentary won an award (from amongst 4,500 entries) at the Houston International Film and Video Festival, as well as at the Columbus (OH) Film and Video Festival. "Black Hawk Waltz" also won a 1997 CINDY Award. In addition, it was accepted into "First Glance: the Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Festival" (screened on March 25, 1997), and "Film Fest New Haven" in Connecticut (to be screened on April 5, 1997). The film's producers are waiting word from many other festivals where the documentary has been entered.
Bill Ostroff, Director of the Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Festival, says "Black Hawk Waltz is the best documentary I've seen in the past two years."
The project was produced and directed by two filmmakers: Dennis Aig of the Hunter Neil Company (who lives in Bozeman, Montana and New York, NY) and Khashyar Darvich of Wakan Productions (who resides in both Gilpin County, Colorado and Gaithersburg, Maryland). The two producer-directors first met accidentally at an airport, where they both were waiting for the same L.A. plane to negotiate different film deals.
The $100,00 documentary was funded with Colorado state gaming historical funds allocated to the city of Black Hawk to help preserve its local history in the face of the dramatic changes that legalized gaming brought to the city. After gaming was introduced into Black Hawk in 1991, many residents believed that although gambling brought enormous economic benefits to their dying town, it destroyed a precious sense of community and non-mainstream appeal.
Entirely through the voices of the town's residents and images from its present and past, "Black Hawk Waltz: Tales of a Rocky Mountain Town" tells the story of Black Hawk, Colorado (about 45 minutes west of Denver) from its founding in the 1850s up to the present day. It was in Black Hawk, in the late 1850s, that gold was first discovered in Colorado. The town began as a placer mining camp and grew into an area of underground mines and later a milling and smelting town. Black Hawk's mushrooming growth in a few short years after its founding inspired newspaperman Horace Greely's phrase about the American Gold Rush, "Go west young man."
Mining in the area stopped after World War II, because the U.S. government stripped the town of most of its steel and iron, including its mining and milling equipment, as a part of America's war scrap metal recycling effort, and the town's economy was almost completely devastated.
Benefiting from its scenic location, Black Hawk became a favorite site of those seeking solitude, including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and other members of the "Beat Generation." Later, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and others performed in adjacent Central City and visited Black Hawk.
In late 1990, to save Black Hawk and two other former mining towns from closing, the towns' residents and voters of the State of Colorado decided to permit limited stakes gambling, including low stakes black jack, poker, and slot machines.
The film explores the true uniqueness of the residents and history of Black Hawk, as well as some of the changes with the advent of gaming. Gambling brought great economic benefits as well as the diminishing of Black Hawk's small town magic as nearly one half of the town's original residents moved away after gambling. Today, thousands of gamblers descend upon the town every day. The town now has a little more than 100 residents, and gaming provides Black Hawk with an annual budget of over $16 million.
The Really Strange World of Black Hawk's History
Some of the interesting facts revealed by resident interviews, most of which included in the film:
1) An excavator who digs old outhouses in the Black Hawk area has discovered a variety of things in old outhouse pits including a glass eye, false teeth, and a 100-year-old bottle containing a preserved fetus found behind a former brothel that was presumed to have been discarded by a prostitute.
2) Several older residents remember encounters with the Ute Indians in Black Hawk as recently as the 1930's. At the turn of the century, the Utes would visit Black Hawk to perform dances and in later years would ask certain familiar residents for food.
3) There was a metal submarine built in Black Hawk in the 1800's that was sunk and later raised from a mountain lake 9,000 feet above sea level.
4) A Black Hawk-area resident co-founded a newspaper in the 1970s, "The Little Kingdom Come," to present irreverent and unpublishible accounts of the news that the official local paper would not report. Included in each issue, which is still published "whenever we damn well feel like it," is the "Gunslinger of the Month," a nude centerfold of a local Black Hawk area resident (both men and women) wearing only a cowboy hat (to cover their lower unmentionables), boots, and a six shooter. Centerfolds have included the mayor of Black Hawk's rival city, an attractive bare-breasted grandmother, a mother-daughter team, and the naked trombone section of the enowned Central City Opera sporting only their instruments.
5) Black Hawk and Central City are adjacent to one another, and the two towns have been rivals since their founding in the 1850s. In the late 1800s, a post office was built in Central City. Residents of Black Hawk were envious, and hooked up the post office to a team of horses in the middle of the night and drug the building to Black Hawk. The next night, residents of Central City drug it back to their town. Postal officials then decie Slight spine cant. Firm. I0000468 Shatner, William Tek Secret $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition F/F Ace Books NY 1994 292 pp. Future World Fiction Science Fiction Super-Industry Slight spine cant. Crisp. I0000469 Williams, Michael and Teri Before the Mask $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition F/F Walker, Karl TOR Books Lake Geneva, WI 1993 312 pp. Evil Clerics Fiction Fantasy Slight spine cant. Crisp. I0000470 Follett, Ken On Wings Of Eagles $3.25 Paperback Nth printing VG/VG b/w photos Signet Books NY 1984 414 pp + preview American Capative - Iran Fiction Biography Perot, H. Ross Bestseller Minor age Discoloring. Clear reinforcing tape. Firm. I0000471 Christie, Agatha Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition F/F Harper Paperbacks NY 1991 277 pp. Hercule Perirot Mystery Fiction Mystery/Crime Crisp. I0000472 Thomas, Craig Hooded Crow, A $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition F/F Harper Paperbacks NY 1993 504 pp. International Espionage Fiction General Fold mark lwr rt crnr. Firm. I0000473 Clarkson, John And Justice For One $3.25 Paperback 1st Edition F/F Jove Books NY 1993 353 pp. Revenge Fiction General Firm. I0000475 MacMillan, Scott At Sword's Point $3.50 Paperback 1st Edition F+/F+ ROC Books NY 1994 351 pp. Vampires Fiction Fantasy World Domination Undead Nazis Crisp. I0000476 Auel, Jean M. 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6) Folk singer Judy Collins started her career in Black Hawk, and made beer in her bathtub. One night, she mystified her audience with a five minute introduction to a song that had just 17 words: "If you haven't made love to the landlady's daughter, then you shan't have another piece of pie." Audiences were dumb-founded but a local friend planted in the audience clapped enthusiastically in support.
7) Beat poet Jack Kerouac made a stop in the Black Hawk area, which was recounted in his novel, "On the Road." Kerouac was very influenced by his stay in the area and was also reported to have been thrown out of a bar for fighting and bothering local women (not mentioned in his novel).
8) One Black Hawk resident in the early 1900s would ride his trained pig to school. The pig would wait for him at the small schoolhouse until school was over and then take him home.
9) Up until the late 1970s, city saloon patrons would wear six-shooters in holsters, check their gun-belts in at the bar, and then pick them up when they were done drinking for the evening.
10) Residents tell a plethora of brothel stories, including that showgirls would take care of sick miners and that brothels made their real money from drinks, with a glass of beer costing as much as $2.00 in the late 1800s, more than the price of a few minutes with a prostitute.
11) Former Black Hawk residents include: the maker of the Stetson hat, the builder of the Pullman train car, and Madame Curie (who used radium found in the Black Hawk area for her X-rays). Judy Collins lived in Black Hawk for about a year before becoming famous.
12) There was a beat funeral in Black Hawk in the late 1970s for a Gilpin County beat poet that was attended by Hollywood producers and poet Allen Ginsberg and other Beats. A blues guitarist played at the grave site while the Beats read their poetry and drank alcohol from a silver flask. They then sprinkled amphetamines and other drugs into the grave before leaving.
13) Several notorious motorcycle gangs have spent time in Black Hawk, including the Devil's Disciples. The Hell's Angels were driven out of Black Hawk in the 1960s, and then tried to enter neighboring Central City but were turned away by a posse of citizens who aimed rifles at them from the high windows of city buildings.
14) The phrase "Go West Young Man" was actually coined by newspaper man Horace Greely to describe the Colorado gold rush begun in Black Hawk, not the California Gold Rush as many believe.
15) Wagon-pulling oxen were given metal shoes, fabricated in two crescent-shaped sections because the animal's hooves are split. The oxen were lifted in the air with a belly band to fashion or change their shoes.
16) Children in the one room school house in town had to use a six-seat outhouse (three for the boys and three for the girls) in the back of the school until the 1960s. In 1994, while the school was being renovated, construction workers accidentally knocked the outhouse over and it went tumbling literally down a hill, nearly falling on top of some nearby houses. The outhouse was later fully restored.
Wakan Productions and the Hunter Neil Company are planning several joint projects, including a couple of feature films based on scripts by Khashyar Darvich, one of which is about Iranians in America, poetry and Sufism called "Farewell to Rumi."
Dennis Aig has won two Emmies and has been nominated for two others, and has won several major awards for his documentaries at film festivals across the country. He has produced and directed several documentary films, many of which for PBS. Aig is also an associate film professor at Montana State University and has worked on "A River Runs Through It" and "Far and Away."
Khashyar Darvich has written five feature film scripts, including one about Iranians in America ("Farewell to Rumi"), another about a quadriplegic man with multiple sclerosis who discovers true inner life after a surrealistic intergalactic adventure he takes within his mind and eventually runs for the U.S. Senate ("Stars like Angels"), and a Native American western about a white man living among the Jicarilla Apache of New Mexico ("Many Hidden Fires").
"Black Hawk Waltz" was filmed in March and June 1996, with a 18-member professional crew, was edited in August and September 1996, and completed in October 1996. The documentary premiered locally in the first week in October 1996 in Black Hawk on a big screen, and was received enthusiastically by the audience and press.
The intention of the documentary is to preserve the oral stories of older residents and promote understanding of the past as a context for modern day Black Hawk. It hopefully will serve as a resource for future generations and will bring an increased sense of community to the area, which was lost after gambling began.
Research for the film was conducted by a 13-member team which includes students from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The documentary became a community-wide effort, as a local Nederland, CO grocery store (B&F Super Foods) donated craft service food and drinks during the shoot, and several Black Hawk casinos donated breakfast and lunch for crew members. The Gilpin County Dory Hill KOA provided a cabin for some of the film crew and Beau Jo's Pizza in Idaho Springs provided the crew with free pizza for dinner. In addition, the Oasis Brewery in Boulder and Left Hand Brewery in Longmont provided the production with beverages for their end-of-shooting "wrap" party. Two Gilpin County residents, Bess Thomas and Aspen Davis, who helped make a Black Hawk history video as high school students last year, were consultants to the project.
The producer-directors of the film would be happy to speak with you further about the project. You may to contact Producer-Director Khashyar Darvich at (301) 947-5613 and Producer-Director Dennis Aig at (406) 585-7414. The City of Black Hawk may be contacted through City Clerk Penny Round at (303) 582-5221.
BOTH COLOR AND BLACK & WHITE BEHIND-THE-SCENES PHOTOGRAPHS ARE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST FOR THE MEDIA UPON REQUEST.