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Winner of Multiple Awards including the Lambardi Award from the Sport & Society: A Mirror of our Culture Film Festival
See why the Presidents of the Green Bay Packers and St Norbert College presented the cut glass Lambardi Award to a group of men clad in vintage 1919 White Sox uniforms. These men portrayed the baseball players that came back from the dead to play the game they loved. Find out what drove a happy married appliance salesman and father of two to spend a fortune and travel the world documenting this amazing story of the Field of Dreams Ghost Players: Relive the Magic.
Ghost Player: Relive the Magic, a magical, award-winning documentary about a baseball team grown on the original Field of Dreams that then traveled the world. This unique documentary melds cinema verite montages made up of footage shot over two decades with heartwarming storytelling that is engaging and entertaining.
The film intersperses high definition, professional production value interviews with footage taken from amateurs, professionals, and students of film work. The film's images span more than 20 years of play and travel and were culled from more than 600 hours of footage.
Of special note are the clips of: baseball legends such as Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers, Bob Feller, and Fergie Jenkins; as well as Hollywood stars Kevin Costner, Kelsey Grammer, Richard Dean Anderson, Jonathan Silverman, and Candace Cameron.
The film's editor, Aaron Spears, received an award from the Iowa Motion Picture Association for the excellence in which he was able to blend vintage VHS, betamax, and digital imagery footage files into a heartwarming tale about this legendary baseball phenomenon.
Rather than being a chronological accounting of the team, this retrospective ebbs and flows through the Ghost Player's past and present in a conversational and unconventional storytelling format. Viewers of the film often comment on how surprised they were to find so much emotional-engagement and range in the documentary.
Kevin Quinn, Sport and Society in America Sports Conference director (and one of the category judges), explains: “The theme of the conference was about sport and society, and this film hit right at where those topics intersect. Here are a bunch of friends in a small town doing something they love, and they made a lot of other people’s lives better. The film does a good job of evoking emotion. They just nailed it. Obviously, this was a labor of love. The emotion in it is so genuine. The commonality that exists with baseball at the same time represents something uniquely American.”
Awards/Recognitions:
- Official Selection – Sedona International Film Festival (by invitation)
- Best Documentary – Sport and Society in America Sports Conference
- Best Iowa Film – Wild Rose Independent Film Festival
- Best Iowa Filmmaker – Interrobang Film Festival
- Winner Redemptive Storyteller Award (Professional Film Category) – Redemptive Film Festival
- 2nd Place, US Short Documentary – All-Sports Los Angeles Film Festival
- Silver Eddy in Professional Documentary – Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival
- Honorable Mention Documentary – Bayou City Inspirational Film Festival
- Distinctive Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking – Wild Rose Independent Film Festival
- Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking – Iowa Motion Picture Association
- Achievement in Editing Long Form – Iowa Motion Picture Association
- Kids First Film and Video Festival - Official Selection
- Achievement in Original Music Score – Iowa Motion Picture Association
- Finalist Best Documentary – National Baseball Hall of Fame's Baseball Film Festival
- Finalist Best Documentary – Naperville Independent Film Festival
- Finalist Best Documentary – Kids First! Film & Video Festival
- Finalist Best Documentary – Chagrin Falls International Documentary Film Festival
- Finalist Best Documentary – Fairfield Film Expo
- Finalist Best Editing – Wild Rose Independent Film Festival
- Finalist Best Feature – Wild Rose Independent Film Festival
- Finalist Most Entertaining – DocMiami International Film Festival
- Featured Film – Driftless Film Festival
- Featured Film – PeachtreeVillage Independent Film Festival
Doc "Moonlight" Graham Days! August 11th-14th 2011
Ghost Players, families and friends are invited to Doc "Moonlight" Graham Days! August 11th-14th 2011. Planning is underway for attending this fine summer event in Chisholm, MN. Please send an email to shoelessjoe@ghostplayer.us or call 563.875.8217, and let us know if you would like more information about departure times, transportation and costs.
