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UWG Alum produces video for PBS
February 15, 2005
CARROLLTON, GA - A University of West Georgia alumnus has co-produced an award-winning documentary that will be featured nationally on PBS.
“Briars
in the Cotton Patch: The Story of Koinonia Farm,” written and co-produced
by Michael Booth (’75) has been selected by PBS-Plus, the distribution
arm of PBS, for release to all 349 PBS stations as part of the network’s
satellite feed. The program is being distributed as part of Black History
Month, although some stations will air it during other months. “Briars”
is scheduled to air Feb. 28, at 3 p.m., on Georgia Public Broadcasting
(GPB).
The documentary also received a prestigious 2004 CINE Golden Eagle Award. CINE is an organization that recognizes non-theatrical film and video production.
Booth has very fond memories of his time at UWG, especially of the late Dora Byron, who served as assistant professor of journalism from 1969-1977. Booth said that Byron, a reporter, magazine writer and newspaper editor, taught him how to focus on a subject.
“She gave me a framework that really opened my eyes to what writing can be,” Booth pointed out. “It was really great to have a professor that not only told you how to accomplish something, but was doing it herself.”
Booth was also an initial disk jockey at the campus radio station WWGC (now WUWG) and did some student films. One garnered him an award from the Atlanta International Film Festival in 1974, as “Georgia Young Filmmaker of the Year.”
After graduating with a bachelors in English, there were few jobs in the Atlanta area for a filmmaker, so Booth worked as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor until the mid-1980s, when he also began working on scripts for various video and film producers. Today, he owns his own Atlanta-based company, Face Communications.
“I do a lot of corporate video and non-profit video,” said Booth, an award-winning writer/producer.
He has written and/or produced more than 350 video and film programs during the past 15 years, including the Academy Award-nominated documentary film “Building Bombs” in 1991. He was named to Who’s Who in Media and Communications for 1998/1999. The former journalist was twice presented with Georgia Press Association Awards for his achievements.
Booth became involved with the “Briars” project from an association with producer and filmmaker Faith Fuller. Her parents, Millard and Linda Fuller, founded Habitat for Humanity in 1977 at Koinonia Farm, an interracial Christian community near Americus. Booth met Fuller when he produced videos for Habitat for Humanity.
“She began doing interviews and thought it would be a small thing but the project quickly got so big she needed help. So she asked me if I would be interested,” Booth explained. “We did the interviews and wrote the script over a three-year period working on weekends and nights.”
As Fuller grew up in Koinonia, she never took time to understand its history. She was interviewing Koinonia members in 1999 for a short fundraising video Fuller was producing for Habitat for Humanity International. During the production, Fuller said she became fascinated with the story and Koinonia’s founder Clarence Jordan.
Jordan was a Biblical scholar who began the farm as an experiment in Christian living. According to the documentary, blacks and whites worked on the farm together, getting equal pay and living accommodations in exchange for their labor. During a time when southern segregation was the law, many were openly and sometimes violently opposed to the idea of equality between the races. Jordan and the farm would endure years of bombing, shooting and economic boycotts — including attacks by the Ku Klux Klan — to become the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity.
Booth said that despite the attacks, the farm remains in operation today. It’s also been the subject of four popular books, “Cotton Patch Gospels,” written by Jordan and an Off-Broadway musical.
“Koinonia is still going. They have had ups and downs but they have survived them all,” he pointed out. “They have a fabulous spirit about them to take any blow and keep going.”
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