CARVALHO's JOURNEY a One-Hour Documentary Film Solomon Nunes
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CARVALHO’S JOURNEY A One-Hour Documentary Film Solomon Nunes Carvalho, Self-portrait Daguerreotype, 1850 Proposal for a PBS documentary film about the life and times of Solomon Nunes Carvalho, 19th Century Jewish-American artist, photographer, explorer, and inventor. DOWN LOW PICTURES LLC 55 Washington St, Suite 630 Brooklyn, NY 11201 Tel: (718) 624-5033 Fax: (718) 624-5034 American Jews no longer thought in terms of defined limitations but rather as Americans whose minds and opportunities knew no boundaries and could expand with the West. A new Jew was being formed. When presented with the opportunity, the American Jew, even if a recent immigrant, reached for the Golden ring and went through the "Golden Door." -Jerry Klinger …My heart beat with fervent anxiety, and whilst I felt happy, and free from the usual care and trouble, I still could not master the nervous debility which seized me while surveying the grand and majestic works of nature. I was far way from the comforts of my home. A deep sigh of longing for the society of man wrested itself from my breast. Shall I return, and not accomplish the object of my journey? No, I will onward, and trust to the Great Spirit… -Solomon Nunes Carvalho Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West, 1854 A faded daguerreotype of Native American lodges sits in the Library of Congress, one of the oldest existing photographs of the American West. It is presumed to be the work of Solomon Nunes Carvalho, an artist and daguerreotypist who accompanied explorer John C. Fremont on his fifth and final expedition to the West in 1853. How Carvalho came to this most illustrious and dangerous of positions and how it affected him for the rest of his life is the subject of our story. The tale of Solomon Nunes Carvalho is one of the greatest untold stories in American Jewish history. Born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1815, Carvalho was an observant Jew who made extraordinary contributions to American history and culture – a man whose talent and ingenuity vaulted him to the highest ranks of the country’s practitioners of art and science - yet who remained firmly rooted in his devotion to his own community and beliefs. Carvalho’s Journey is a one-hour documentary film for PBS that examines the 19th century Jewish-American experience through the lens of one extraordinary man’s eclectic and exemplary life. A Sephardic Jew of Spanish- Portuguese descent, Solomon Nunes Carvalho hailed from Charleston but lived at various times in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, and traveled widely across the country. Fueled by artistic talent, adventurous spirit, commitment to community, and an unquenchable curiosity about the natural and spiritual worlds, Carvalho cut a wide swatch across the major cultural, intellectual, and historical currents of the 19th century. Carvalho’s professional accomplishments – as a successful painter, pioneering daguerreotypist, explorer, inventor, and published memoirist – were matched only by his personal ones, as a community-minded Jew, a founder of Jewish organizations in numerous American cities, and a leading participant in many of the pressing religious and Carvalho’s Journey, proposal for a documentary film 2 intellectual issues of his day. Carvalho was a product of a singular period in American and Jewish history, when the young country was full of creativity, industry, and independent spirit, and its small community of Jews was figuring out how to fit into the larger culture while still maintaining its unique religious identity. THE FILM Produced for broadcast on PBS, exhibition at film festivals, and for wide educational and DVD distribution, Carvalho’s Journey will tell the little-known story of Carvalho’s life and works, centering on his daring and exhilarating journey across the continent as the official photographer of John C. Fremont’s 1853 expedition, a journey which almost cost him his life. Drawing extensively from Carvalho’s best- selling memoir, Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West, the film will be both an introduction to and an examination of Carvalho’s amazing life story, as well as an incisive and penetrating look at the Jewish-American experience of the mid-19th century. The film will utilize interviews, narration, voiceover recordings, original music, period paintings and photographs, dramatic landscape cinematography, and Carvalho’s own paintings and daguerreotypes to weave a complex and visually stunning narrative presentation of the story. In addition to his adventures in the West, the film will explore the story of Carvalho’s early life and education, his youthful wanderings which took him to sea and abroad, his experimentation with the earliest forms of photography (he is almost certainly the first Jewish American photographer), his late career as a successful inventor and elder statesman, and, especially, his career as a successful portrait and landscape painter in studios he established in Charleston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Considered by many to be the first Jewish American to make his living solely as an artist, Carvalho specialized in portraiture but was also devoted to creating historical and Biblical narrative paintings. The film will be produced and directed by Steve Rivo, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has worked as a producer of a number of historical documentary films made for public television (see bio below). The film will principally draw on the book Photo Odyssey: Solomon Carvalho’s Remarkable Western Adventure, (Houghten Mifflin, 2000) by Arlene Hirschfelder, and will also feature the work of Robert Shlaer, a present-day daguerreotypist who retraced Carvalho’s journey for his book Sights Once Seen (University of New Mexico, 2000). The film is sponsored by the National Center for Jewish Film, a non-profit distributor, motion picture archive, and resource center, with the largest, most diverse collection of Jewish-themed film in the world. Carvalho’s Journey, proposal for a documentary film 3 THE STORY At the time of Fremont’s expedition in 1853, Solomon Carvalho, then 38 years old, was a successful artist, businessman and active member of the Jewish community with a wife and three children. Some years earlier, Carvalho had gained prominence for his role in the debate over Orthodox versus Reform Judaism, which had begun in Charleston during the 1820’s. Carvalho’s father, David, helped found the first Reform congregation in the U.S., but surprisingly, Solomon held fast to Orthodoxy and actively tried to promote and advocate for traditional Jewish practice. In the Jewish newspaper The Occident, he wrote, “Religion must signify itself in our actions in life, ay, it must embrace the whole sphere of our activities and affections.” Yet he saw little conflict in his devotion to religious practice and faith and his full participation in secular culture and endeavors. So when the famed explorer John C. Fremont announced that he was commissioning a photographic and artistic record of his fifth and final expedition in search of a railroad route to the Pacific ocean, Carvalho, who had recently begun practicing the new art of daguerreotyping, jumped at the chance to join Fremont. Carvalho was selected to document the journey, and along the way, he kept an extraordinary journal. His writings resulted in a book-length account, which when published in 1857, made him a minor celebrity. The journal is an insightful, heartfelt, and harrowing account of the Fremont expedition, and it provides an unusually rich and detailed foundation for a documentary portrait of daily life on the dangerous westward trail. Carvalho related the dramatic adventures of the group’s 2400 mile, five-month journey from New York City to Parowan, Utah, which included a disastrous attempt to cross the Rocky Mountains in the deep freeze of winter. Traveling by stagecoach, steamer, pony, mule and by foot, Carvalho and his fellow explorers faced tremendous obstacles, including grass fires, frigid winds, drenching rainstorms, and driving snow, but they also discovered astonishing vistas and the stunning terrain of the unexplored middle American West. As an urbane Jewish city dweller, Carvalho took great pleasure in detailing his experiences and poking fun at himself while learning to ride a horse and saddle a mule, hunt buffalo, and live off the land. He described the difficulty of hauling his cumbersome gear and making daguerreotypes in waist-deep snowdrifts, and, perhaps most challengingly, trying to maintain his commitment to Judaism while adapting to the food (horsemeat was a staple) and the extremely challenging conditions. By turns amusing, absorbing, and startling, the book’s narrative begins as a story of a promising and educational journey and becomes a life-or-death odyssey of near starvation, freezing limbs, and tragedy before the group reaches safety among the Mormons of Utah. Carvalho’s Journey, proposal for a documentary film 4 Carvalho’s life was dramatically transformed by the experience. The breathtaking landscapes of the American West energized his spiritual and creative pursuits, but the trip also offered Carvalho unique possibilities for cultural interactions that he never could have dreamed of while living in Charleston or Baltimore. His experiences with the American Indian guides in his group (from the Lenape tribe) and other members of the Cheyenne and Ute he encountered, as well as an historic encounter with Mormon leader Brigham Young, broadly widened his view of the world – and were unique for a Jew of his generation. Young, one of the most fascinating characters of the 19th century, assisted in Carvalho’s rescue from near death and facilitated his rehabilitation in Salt Lake City, where the two enjoyed wide-ranging conversations about their respective religious convictions. After the expedition and a brief stay in Los Angeles, where he opened an art studio and helped the tiny Jewish community establish a Hebrew Benevolent Society, Carvalho returned east, carrying the influences of his western journey with him.