The 101-minute documentary, The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, released in May 2009, plays Reel North Film Festival (RNFF's) monthly documentary night tonight in the Basement Bijou of the Thompson Public Library. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Showtime is 7 p.m. and admission is $5.
While the songwriting duo of Richard and Robert Sherman were never exactly household names, devoted Walt Disney fans of such classic 1960s and 1970s movies as Parent Trap, Mary Poppins, The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Charlotte's Web, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Jungle Book, among more than 50 films, know their music.
After attending Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, the brothers started out writing country and rock tunes. At the outset of the 1960s, they began working for Walt Disney.
Who can forget "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and "Chim Chim Cheree" from the 1964 musical Mary Poppins, sung by co-stars Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, with the latter song winning the Best Song Academy Award?
The Sherman brothers along the way picked up two Academy Awards and a Grammy for their musical movie sound work and were Walt Disney's only staff songwriters. Both brothers had a deep affection and unusually close relationship with Disney, who died at the age of 65 in December 1966.
Despite a hugely successful professional collaboration of more than 50 years, the brothers, Robert Bernard Sherman, 85, and Richard Morton Sherman, 82, have completely different personalities and can barely tolerate each other personally, spending next to no time together socially outside the office.
The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story is directed by Gregory Sherman (only son of Richard) and Jeffrey Sherman (eldest son of Robert), who were strangers growing up. It was just in recent years that they became acquainted and decided to tell their fathers' story.
Colleagues, fans, relatives and the Shermans themselves capture the collaborative process of Robert, older and quieter, and Richard, more of a flashy extrovert, through archival clips and recollections.
The brothers have written more than 1,000 songs for more than 50 movies - as well as for television, records, theme parks and the theatre.
Reel North Film Festival, now in its eighth year, under the direction of Lisa Evasiuk - and in partnership with administrator Cheryl Davies of the Thompson Public Library - has over the last several years, gradually expanded from a three-day film extravaganza of indie and alternative films, traditionally shown the first weekend in November, to adding Saturday night double-feature movies from fall through spring, and as of Nov. 24, 2009, monthly weeknight documentaries, which debuted in front of a full house with Food, Inc., a 94-minute documentary about the U.S. food industry, which was nominated in the category of distinguished documentary achievement for an International Documentary Association award in 2009.
Last month, to a packed house, Reel North showed the 58-minute documentary "And This Is My Garden" from Wabowden's Mel Johnson School Gardening Project by Winnipeg filmmaker Katharina Stieffenhofer of Growing Local Productions in association with Buffalo Gal Pictures of Winnipeg.
Phyllis Lang, Liz Jarvis, and Jean du Toit's Buffalo Gal Pictures merged with Tina Keeper's Keeper Productions to form Kistikan Pictures last November. Kistikan is Cree for "garden." Keeper was the Liberal Member of Parliament for Churchill riding from 2006 through 2008, and is a member of the Norway House Cree Nation.
