For The Big Screen

Candles illuminate tombstones at the National Cemetery last Friday night during the filming of a new visitor center movie for the Vicksburg National Military Park.
~The Vicksburg Post~

Last Friday night, April 24, 2009, a new documentary was being videotaped at the park of monuments and of the National Cemetery. It was expected to be available in January. The film will document city life during the Civil War and the 1863 battles and siege that helped turn the course of the war. When completed it will be shown at the Vicksburg National Military Park visitor center. The current movie has been running since the 1970s and often had failed to hold the interst of park visitors, park chief historian Terry Winschel said.

The new film is being produced by Northern Lights Production of Boston, which has been making documentary films sine 1985. Among Northern Lights credits are films about Mount St. Helen's, Lassen Volcanic National Park, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Little Rock Central High School and Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut. Segments of the film will include Miliken's Bend re-enactments and will be shot in and near Richmond, VA., where crews and re-enactors will film next month.

Friday night's cemetery scene featured about 250 luminaries place in front of headstone. Nine scouts from Richard Van Den Akker's Boy Scout Troop 76 helped set up and light the candles, which were placed in glass holders rather than in paper bags with sand, as luminaries usually are.

In 1999, luminaries were on every grave for the 100th anniversary of the park's founding. Luminaries are a nice way of remembering the veterans who died, and they wanted to replicate what was done in 1999, but the effect they wanted was better with candles in glass.

The public could watch from a distance, but was asked to stay out of the way of the film crew. My daughter, Debra and granddaughter, Lucy, just happened to be in the park Sunday as they were at the Cairo Museum filming. She said it was very interesting to watch them make a movie and a nice treat for my granddaughter!