Stranger with a Camera

Broadcast Schedule

ELIZABETH BARRET
Producer/Director

A native of Kentucky, veteran documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Barret has pursued an abiding interest in the history, culture and people of Appalachia. She works as a community-based artist with Appalshop, the award-winning media arts center in Whitesburg, Kentucky. In her films QUILTING WOMEN (1976), HAND-CARVED (1980), COALMINING WOMEN (1982) and LONG JOURNEY HOME (1987), Appalachians tell their own stories. These films have screened at film festivals worldwide and been televised nationally in the U.S. and Europe.

Barret is a recipient of the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, a NEA Southeast Regional Media Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Film Fellowship. STRANGER WITH A CAMERA premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.

HUGH O'CONNOR
Subject/Documentary Filmmaker

Hugh O'Connor, a native of Scotland who moved to Canada in 1947, had a distinguished career as a filmmaker for the National Film Board of Canada. He directed the NFB Science Film Unit and was one of the principal makers of the technically innovative film, LABYRINTHE, one of the highlights of Expo 67 in Montreal.

In 1967 O'Connor was on leave from NFBC to direct sequences for US, a film commissioned by the United States Department of Commerce for Hemisfair 68, an international exposition to be held in San Antonio, Texas. Produced by Francis Thompson Productions for the American pavilion at Hemisfair, US was intended to provide an overview of life in the United States, surveying both its achievements and its problems.

A father of three, O'Connor was shooting footage in eastern Kentucky for the film US when the tragic shooting depicted in STRANGER WITH A CAMERA ended his life.

A selected filmography of the work of Hugh O'Connor is available on the Web site of the National Film Board of Canada.