Thumbs Up for Mother Universe

Website: https://www.lonnieholleystory.com

Thumbs Up for Mother Universe: Stories from the Life of  Lonnie Holley, a feature documentary on the remarkable musician and visual artist is currently screening in festivals, and will be available soon on this website. Lonnie Holley has been described as a poet, a prophet, a hustler, a visionary artist, and a shaman. The 72-year old Holley has overcome systemic poverty, Jim Crow, and a nightmare childhood to emerge as a creative powerhouse with an agenda to save the planet—-Thumbs up for Mother Universe!

Winner: Daniel Wood Audience Award, Fine Arts Film Festival, Venice, CA
Best Documentary, Harlem International Black Film Festival, Harlem N.Y.
Best Feature Film, Black Harvest Film Festival, Chicago, IL
Audience, Award, TallGrass Film Festival Wichita, KS
Best Documentary, Bronze Lens Film Festival, Atlanta, GA

Official Selection: Cucalorus Film Festival; Richmond International Film Festival,
Montgomery Film Festival, Baltimore International Black Film Festival, Tallahassee Film Festival, Charlotte Film Festival, Toronto Black Film Festival.

Click here for the New York Times article.

Who’s That Stranger?

Writer/Director/Camera/Editor
29 min. (2007).
Winner: Audience Award, Rome (GA) International Film Festival

Screened at Atlanta Film festival. At 95, Kasper ‘Stranger’ Malone holds the Guinness World Record for the longest recording career in history (1926-2005). As the baby boomers prepare to retire, this film presents an inspiring picture of vitality from someone who simply kept working, 30 years beyond retirement.

To purchase a DVD, send a mailing address and a check for $15 + $3 shipping & handling to:

George King & Associates
813 United Ave SE
Atlanta, GA 30312

WHO’S THAT STRANGER? video

Seeing Color: Object, Light, & Observer

Writer/Director
30 min, HDTV video (2002) National Gallery of Art

Produced for the National Gallery, this 30 minute video created for high school and college students, explores how painter’s use color. Featuring National Gallery curators and restorers, contemporary painters Sean Scully and Sam Gilliam, and a host of others.

Indivisible

Selected as one of 22 documentary artists to participate in this national touring exhibition, CD, and book (Local Heroes, Changing America W.W. Norton & Co.) on the development of grass roots democracy in twelve American communities. Center for Documentary Studies and the Center for Creative Photography, 2000.

Will the Circle be Unbroken?

Writer/Producer
26 x 30 min, audio (1997) Southern Regional Council
Winner: 1997 Non-Print Media Award (Oral History Association), NFCB Golden Reel: “Best National News & Current Affairs Programming” (National Federation of Community Broadcasters), 1998 George Foster Peabody Award.

The Peabody award-winning, 26-part Public Radio series produced in conjunction with the Southern Regional Council. Distributed on over 250 public radio stations nationwide.  (National reviews). A personal history of the civil rights movement in five southern cities and the music of those times.

Goin’ to Chicago

Producer/Director
70 min, 16mm, color (1994/2001) George King & Associates
Winner: Cine Golden Eagle, National PBS broadcast 2001.

2001 national PBS broadcast.

In the twentieth century more than 5 million African Americans journeyed from the cotton fields and Jim Crow justice of the rural South to the promise of a better life in the industrial cities of the North and West. Goin’ to Chicago tells the story of why people left, where they went, and what happened to them.

Goin’ to Chicago website

Ten Thousand Points of Light

Writer/Co-Producer/Director/Camera/Sound/Editor
30 min, video (1991/2011) Velvet Video
Winner: Atlanta Film & Video Festival, Charlotte Film & Video Festival

A voyage into southern suburban gothic, this homage to the art of Christmas lights and Elvis becomes so much more. Turn up the chroma.

The 20th Anniversary Edition DVD of Ten Thousand Points of Light, the underground hipster’s Xmas classic is now available for the first time. It features a new music score, interview updates with the family, a commentary, and more!

See the promo here on YouTube.
Please copy and send to your friends!

Bananaland

Co-writer, co-producer
1988 Seven Stages Theater

Co-written and co-produced with Ruby Lerner, this critically-acclaimed (L.A. Times, American Theater, The Drama Review) multi-media, “theme park” that viewed the history of US foreign policy in Central America and the Caribbean, through the lens of the banana trade. Also wrote lyrics for all music, wrote and produced the numerous video and audio installations featured in the work.

You Can’t Judge a Book by Looking at the Cover

Writer/Producer/Director
30 min, video (1987) George King & Assoc.
Winner: Atlanta Film & Video Festival.

Regional PBS broadcast. A video on the working process of the late New Orleans’ writer/performer John O’Neal–an artist in dialogue with concepts of “community” and social change. Through a mythical character, Junebug Jabbo Jones, O’Neal works the corners of African American history, translating wit and folk wisdom into theater.