The Return of the Cuyahoga

Florentine Films/Hott Productions Inc., America’s River Communities, Inc., and WVIZ/PBS ideastream® Present THE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA

Premieres on WVIZ/PBS Tuesday, April 22 at 9:00 PM (Earth Day)
Repeat broadcasts: Thursday, April 24 at 8:00 PM; Saturday, April 26 at 9:00 PM; Sunday, April 27 at 7:00 PM

Press materials, including cassettes and high-resolution photographs, are available upon request. Contact Cara White, CaraMar Publicity, 843-881-1480, . In Northeast Ohio, contact Jane Temple, 216-916-6132,

Cuyahoga River and Cleveland SkylineTHE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA is a fascinating look at the life, death and rebirth of one of America’s most polluted rivers.  Perhaps best known as “the river that burned,” the Cuyahoga is, in fact, an emblematic waterway.  Its history is the history of the American frontier, the rise of industry, and the scourge of pollution. In 1969, when the river caught on fire, the blaze ignited a political movement that not only saved the Cuyahoga and its communities, but continues today with the current environmental movement.

The Cuyahoga caught fire as far back as 1883.  In 1914, a river fire threatened downtown Cleveland, until a providential shift in the wind turned it away.  In 1918, a river fire spread to a shipyard and killed seven men.  The Cuyahoga burned again in 1936, 1948, 1949 and 1952.  Then on June 22, 1969, the polluted Cuyahoga, slick with oil and full of debris, caught on fire.  The river didn’t just burn in Cleveland — it burned in the nation’s imagination. Along with the rise of other social movements in the late sixties, the country was also beginning to take note of our damaged environment. The fire started a chain of legislation and events that continue today, including the creation of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, Earth Day, and the Environmental Protection Agencies at the federal and state levels. The Cuyahoga is America’s best example yet of a watery success story.  The dead river came clean — and back to life again.

“This is a truly national story,” says filmmaker Larry Hott.  “Rivers in industrial cities across the country were catching fire due to the build up of oil, waste and debris.  The Rouge River in Michigan, the Schuylkill in Philadelphia, and the Chicago River all burned as often and as drastically as the Cuyahoga.”

A DVD of The Return of the Cuyahoga can be purchased by calling 800-937-5387 ($24.95+ shipping and handling).

View a preview of THE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA

See more images and clips from the film and learn about America’s industrial growth and environmental movement at the web site of The Return of the Cuyahoga film and education project.

Along the Cuyahoga
In addition, 90.3 WCPN will air the radio documentary Along the Cuyahoga on Friday, April 18 at 10:00 PM. Originally broadcast in 1996 for the Cleveland Bicentennial, this hour-long documentary looks back on the earliest days of Cleveland and life along the Cuyahoga River.  For a period of 10 years, the Cuyahoga River was the Northwest boundary of the United States, with the land east of the river being US territory and the land west of the Cuyahoga still belonging to the Native Americans.  This program examines the lives and relationships among the early settlers of Cleveland like Lorenzo Carter and Hanna Huntington, to the Indians of the Cuyahoga River Valley like Stigwanish and O’Mic. Listen to the documentary

The Sound of Ideas
On this program, we’ll preview the documentary, talk about how clean the Crooked River has become, and hear about the remediation work that remains to be done with Larry Hott and Len Materman. Originally aired April 17, 2008. Listen to the program

Around Noon
Dee previews the PBS special Return of the Cuyahoga with award-winning filmmaker Larry Hott. Originally aired April 17, 2008. Listen to the program

Educational Resources
The Return of the Cuyahoga On-Line Curriculum answers questions about how a river could burn and why it happened here.  Included is an entire unit plan containing several cross-curricular lessons correlated to State of Ohio Science Standards in the areas of environmental history, environmental investigation, and eliciting social action. Interactive features include animated maps, streaming video, and a glossary which is linked to new words throughout the site. A database allows teachers to enter and compare water testing data gathered from local tributaries.

The Life Depends on Water web site was created in cooperation with Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District to inform and inspire students and the general public into environmental conservation action. In addition to a wealth of information, links to supplementary resources, a glossary, and an animated map, you will find: Lessons, correlated to State of Ohio Science Standards, Web quests, and Service learning projects that will encourage your students to take action and get involved in real world solutions.

About the Cuyahoga River

Cleveland Harbor, June 22, 1889
Eighty years to the day before
the infamous fire of June 22, 1969
Photograph by J. D. Coxe, Jr.
Western Reserve Historical SocietyWhen the United States was a new nation, the Cuyahoga marked the western frontier: beyond it, all was unclaimed land — Indian Territory. But by 1870, the river was on a frontier of a different kind: the industrial frontier. On the river’s banks arose the country’s pride and joy — a burgeoning multitude of smoking factories in a booming display of what was called progress. But, as it flowed through Akron and Cleveland, the river became a foul-smelling channel of sludge, with an oily surface that ignited with such regularity that river fires were treated as commonplace events by the locals.

After many fires, the river burned again in 1969 just as a third kind of frontier swept across the nation: an environmental frontier. And the Cuyahoga River became a landmark on this frontier too, a poster child for those trying to undo the destruction wrought by the rampant industrialization of America.

“This is a good news story, something we don’t often hear about the environment nowadays,” says Hott.  “The river was a mess forty years ago but it’s getting better now due to the efforts of a coalition of organizations and businesses.  For the Cuyahoga, and perhaps other rivers in America, there’s reason to hope.”

Cuyahoga River flowing through
the Cuyahoga Valley National ParkThe Cuyahoga’s story is a particularly apt example for future environmental efforts, because the river can’t just be “set aside” as a pristine wilderness park — it runs right through Cleveland, after all. And, like most American rivers, the Cuyahoga has to serve widely varying needs — aesthetic and economic, practical and natural, human and animal. The challenge sounds impossible: how to maintain industrial uses of the river, encourage recreation and entertainment, and still preserve the nature in and around the river…a seemingly impossible challenge and yet one that much of our nation is facing today.

Diane Garey and Lawrence R. Hott of Florentine Films/Hott Productions produced and directed THE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA. The pair has received numerous honors including an Emmy, the Peabody Award, two Academy Award nominations and in January 2008, a duPont-Columbia Journalism Award.

The film is being distributed for educational and home video use by Bullfrog Films, 800-543-3764 or bullfrogfilms.com.

Funding for THE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA provided by Peter B. Lewis, The Cleveland Foundation, McDonald Hopkins, LLC, The Lubrizol Foundation, The Abington Foundation, The GAR Foundation, The George Gund Foundation, The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, The Akron Community Foundation, The Ohio Humanities Council and the Davey Tree Company.

Credits
Produced and directed by Lawrence R. Hott and Diane Garey, written by Ken Chowder.  Executive Producer Len Materman.  Co- Executive Producer Ted Esborn.  A co-production of Florentine Films/Hott Productions, Inc., America’s River Communities, Inc. and WVIZ/PBS ideastream.

Filmmaker Bios

Film director Lawrence R. Hott filming
in the Cuyahoga River, Cleveland HarborLAWRENCE R. HOTT (Director and Producer) has been producing documentary films since 1978, when he left the practice of law to join Florentine Films, Inc.  His honors include an Emmy, two Academy Award nominations, a George Foster Peabody Award, the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, the Erik Barnouw Award, five American Film Festival Blue Ribbons and 14 CINE Golden Eagles as well as screenings at the Telluride Film Festival and first-place awards from the San Francisco, Chicago, National Educational, and New England film festivals.

Hott was a Fulbright fellow in film and television in the United Kingdom in 1994.  He received the Humanities Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities in 1995, a Massachusetts Cultural Council/Boston Film and Video Foundation Fellowship in 2001 and the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism in 2001. Since 2002 Hott has completed seven films for PBS broadcast including: the one-hour Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness and Survival; the two-hour The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced; the one-hour Ohio: 200 Years; the one-hour Niagara Falls for WNED-TV, Buffalo and PBS; the two-hour Through Deaf Eyes for WETA-TV, Washington, D.C., and the one-hour John James Audubon: Drawn from Nature, for PBS’s American Masters.

DIANE GAREY (Producer)
Diane Garey has had a distinguished career as a documentary and feature editor and producer.  She edited and co-produced Wild By Law in 1992 and in 1997, she edited Divided Highways, winner of an Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Programming.

Cuyahoga River fire, 1952,
Jefferson Street and West 3rd
Cleveland State UniversityIn 1996 and 1997, Garey produced and edited her first feature, The Boyhood of John Muir, winner of the Gold Hugo at the Chicago Television Festival and the Gold Award from Parents’ Choice.  Her two-part series The People’s Plague: Tuberculosis in America aired nationally on PBS.  P.O.V. broadcast her award-winning short Tell Me Something I Can’t Forget in 1993.  She also edited American Experience’s Knute Rockne and His Fighting Irish that same year.  Garey’s most widely distributed film is the one-hour Sentimental Women Need Not Apply: A History of the American Nurse, which is in use in most nursing and medical schools in the country and was also broadcast on PBS.

Her recent writing and editing credits include Ohio: 200 Years; Imagining Robert; and The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced.  She recently edited and co-produced Niagara Falls for WNED-TV, Buffalo, Through Deaf Eyes for WETA-TV, and John James Audubon: Drawn from Nature for PBS’s American Masters series. Diane Garey shares ownership of Florentine Films/Hott Productions, Inc. with her husband Larry Hott.  The couple received the Humanities Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities in 1995.

About WVIZ/PBS ideastream®
WVIZ/PBS, Northeast Ohio’s public television station, is part of ideastream, a non-profit organization that applies the power of multiple media to education, culture and citizenship.  In addition to WVIZ/PBS, ideastream includes 90.3 WCPN, WVIZ/DT (high definition), education and public service cable channels, broadband interactive video distance learning, and the internet.  ideastream creates several hours a day of award winning programming for distribution on these streams receiving in the last year a regional Emmy, multiple Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists and Public Broadcasting awards including Best Newscast and Program of the Year in Ohio.

About Florentine Films/Hott Productions

Aerial View of the Cuyahoga River flowing
through the Flats area of ClevelandLawrence Hott and Diane Garey started working together on films in 1978 as members of the Florentine Films consortium. In 1981 they formed Florentine Films/Hott Productions Inc. Since then they have received an Emmy, two Academy Award nominations, five American Film Festival Blue Ribbons, fourteen CINE Golden Eagles, a George Foster Peabody Award, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, the Erik Barnouw Award and over one hundred national and international awards. Their work has been screened at a variety of major film
festivals, including the New York Film Festival, Telluride, and Women in the Director’s Chair.

About America’s River Communities, Inc.
America’s River Communities, Inc. (ARC), a nonprofit 501(c)3, was founded in early 2000 by the leaders of community-based nonprofits from California, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Texas who participated in a Clinton Administration White House Task Force related to rivers.  ARC initiates collaborations within communities that engage their residents in efforts to protect natural resources, promote economic prosperity, and preserve culture and history. ARC fulfills its mission by acting as a creator and convener. As they did with THE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA film and education program, ARC’s Board works in concert with local partners to develop projects that address a community need, and then solicits the insights of those closest to the issue and assembles the best team of people and organizations available to successfully complete the effort.