Viral Video: Orson Welles Narrates "Freedom River"

[posted by Sheigh Crabtree]

I grabbed Freedom River, an animated political parable narrated by Orson Welles and posted below, from metafilter. A user had pulled it from Andrew Sullivan's blog. The prolific cultural pundit noted in his post that the cautionary parable couldn't be more timely.

"Freedom River's" director Sam Weiss passed away five years ago. He probably never imagined thousands of people would view his 1971 short on YouTube one weekend in 2006. I just wrote about one of the 13 people listed in the credits: Tony Rivetti, who got his start as an animation camera operator. Rivetti is Dean Semler's longtime 1st AC and currently shooting I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry with the DP.

Comments

[Joseph C. Cavella]

I'm just as amazed as Sam would have been that this film is getting attention.
Orson Welles was in France at the time and we sent him the script, a tape recorder and a check and crossed our fingers.
Apparently it touched him in some way because we got the tape back and we were on our way.

Joseph C. Cavella