Saving Brinton follows eccentric collector Mike Zahs who discovers the showreels of the man who brought the moving picture to the Heartland. He begins a journey to restore the legacy of America’s greatest barnstorming movie man and save these irreplaceable cinematic treasures from turning to dust.
The documentary film, directed by Tommy Haines and Andrew Sherburn, will make its NYC premiere at 2017 DOC NYC on November 13 and 14, 2017.
The screenings of Saving Brinton are presented at DOC NYC with an additional 10-minute package of silent films from the collection with live narration by film subject Michael Zahs. Included among the shorts are films by Edison and the Lumière brothers as well as a rediscovered “lost film” from 1904 by George Méliés that premiered in October 2017 at the prestigious Pordenone Silent Film Festival.
In a farmhouse basement on the Iowa countryside, eccentric collector Mike Zahs makes a remarkable discovery: the showreels of the man who brought the moving picture to America’s Heartland. Among the treasures: rare footage of President Teddy Roosevelt, the first moving images from Burma, a lost relic from magical effects godfather Georges Méliés. These are the films that introduced movies to the world. And they didn’t end up in Iowa by accident.
Amid the old nitrate reels are the artifacts of William Franklin Brinton. From thousands of trinkets, handwritten journals, receipts, posters and catalogs emerges the story of an inventive farmboy who became America’s greatest barnstorming movieman.
As Mike uncovers this hidden legacy, he begins a journey restore the Brinton name and return the films to big screen glory in the same small-town movie theater where Frank first turned on a projector over a century ago.
By uniting community through a pride in their living history Mike embodies a welcome antidote to the breakneck pace of our disposable society. “Saving Brinton” is a portrait of this unlikely Midwestern folk hero, at once a meditation on living simply and a celebration of dreaming big.