Three members of The University of Alabama’s faculty won awards for their work at the Southeast Region Emmy Awards. At the June 8 ceremony, Ben Goertz, a telecommunication and film adjunct instructor, Mike Letcher, the production manager at the Center for Public Television and Radio and Andrew Grace, a telecommunication and film instructor, collectively took home five awards.
Goertz, whose Crimson Tide Productions team was behind the “Alabama All-Access SEC Preview Special” that won in the category of Television News and Program Specialty Excellence for Sports – One-Time Special, said the award was both a rewarding and encouraging.
The program, which analyzed the drama of the football team’s regular season and previewed the SEC championship game, is the latest in a series of similar specials by Crimson Tide Productions.
Saturday’s Emmy was the first for Crimson Tide Productions, but Mike Letcher, whose film, “In the Path of the Storm,” won for Television Programming Excellence, Documentary – Cultural, is not new to success at the Regional Emmys.
Letcher, who has been making documentaries for about 25 years, has won several times for documentaries about Tuskegee, William Bradford Huie and Dorothy Love Coates. This latest award-winner, a portrait of Bayou Le Batre, Ala., was originally conceived as a documentary about Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, who founded a clinic in the fishing village.
“We shot some stuff but couldn’t quite make a complete story out of it,” Letcher said.
Then Letcher was introduced to “In the Path of the Storm,” a book by Frye Gaillard, Peggy Denniston and Sheila Hagler.
“The film became an adaptation of the book,” Letcher said. “We took Benjamin, added other characters and put a historical and multicultural context around them.”
The documentary tells the story of a town populated by a diverse group of people that Letcher describes as “trying to break into the economy.” It covers nearly a century of Cajuns, Eastern Europeans, Vietnamese and African-Americans’ stories, “bookended by two hurricanes.”
Letcher said the community, which has struggled recently, was genuinely tight-knit.
“I think it’s real, and I think they’re real, and that’s kind of rare in television these days,” he said. “There’s something unique and real about those folks. It’s beautiful, natural and real. If it goes away, okay, but something will be lost if it does.”
Where Letcher set out to preserve a Southern slice for the future, Andrew Grace – whose work with Alabama Public Television picked up three awards – reached into the South’s past in a bid to widen the current field of view.
“The Durrs of Montgomery,” which won in Television Programming Excellence, Documentary – Historical, Craft Achievement, Audio – Post Production and Craft Achievement, Best Editor (Non-News), tells the story of Clifford and Virginia Durr, an Alabama couple born around the turn of the century.
The Durrs were players in historical events ranging from the New Deal to the Red Scare to the civil rights movement.
“They challenged a lot of our assumptions about the way a Southern gentleman and lady should be,” he said. “They broke every mold they were put into and behaved in ways that are fundamentally unique and original.”
Their story includes being the couple that bailed Rosa Parks, their former seamstress, out of jail the night she was arrested for refusing to leave her seat on a bus. As the civil rights movement continued, the Durrs became a beacon and a shelter for the visitors who flooded into the center of the action.
Since little video existed of the couple, Grace relied heavily on written work – letters, biographies and 26 hours of Virginia’s oral storytelling – curated by her into an autobiography.
“For me, I’m more interested in the way an award like this will make people see the movie,” Grace said. “That’s the reward for me.”
