December 4, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PASCOAG, R.I. –– More than 100 staff, patients and former patients of the state-run Zambarano Hospital yesterday attended the final test screening of ON THE LAKE: Life and Love in a Distant Place, a documentary movie about the tuberculosis epidemic in America in the 1900s and globally today.
Several of the former patients had not been back to the hospital in decades, since they were successfully treated for tuberculosis. Most of those who viewed the hour-long movie were seeing it for the first time. Production of ON THE LAKE began a year ago at Zambarano, and later took filmmakers David Bettencourt and G. Wayne Miller to Colorado, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Maryland and New York. The final cut will have images and reports from overseas.
“A year ago, we began shooting this film at this hospital and we are back here today with thanks for the great cooperation everyone has given us at Zambarano,” Miller said in introducing the film. “This has been quite the journey. We could not have made it without all of you.”
Zambarano opened as a TB sanatorium in 1905 but with modern treatments available for the disease now has a different patient population.
The first test screening of ON THE LAKE was held in October in Pittsburgh, with the second screening last month at Harvard College in Cambridge, Mass. The film will not be shown again until it premieres at 8 p.m. on Feb. 13 at the Stadium Theatre in Woonosocket, R.I. PBS broadcast will follow.
Among the patients in attendance yesterday was Frank Beazley, who has been at the hospital almost 42 years, since breaking his neck in a fall down stairs. Beazley, who turns 80 on Dec. 13, was the subject of the inspirational 12-part 2006 Providence Journal series The Growing Season, http://www.projo.com/extra/2006/beazley/
ON THE LAKE is the first production from Eagle Peak Media, a multi-media company founded in May by Bettencourt, the award-winning director of YOU MUST BE THIS TALL: The Story of Rocky Point Park, and Miller, journalist and author of seven books. Two more Eagle Peak documentaries are in pre-production.
For more information about the movie, visit www.OnTheLakeMovie.com.
(This is not an RIFC Production)