Partnering with the SouthSide Film Institute and led by a collaborating team of regional artists — Doug Roysdon, Mock Turtle Marionette Theatre; Dave Fry, Godfrey Daniels Folk Music Club; Bridget George, Bach Choir of Bethlehem and Touchstone Theatre; Bill George, Touchstone Theatre; and filmmaker Aidan Gilrain McKenna will premiere “Rooted”, a story of artists embracing place, a 75-minute documentary film in Baker Hall, Zoellner Arts Center, at 2 pm Father’s Day, June 15.
Drawing from over 200 hours of interviews, new and archival video, music, and photos, the film distills and celebrates the Bethlehem story of a community transformed by art, of artists transformed by a community.
“Rooted” follows the stories of a handful of artists who spent their lives living and creating with the people and place of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
What were the hardest challenges they faced? What did they learn? How did their home, the place of their inquiry, change over the decades? And what might it all mean for the generations of future art creators to come?
The film is a celebration of almost 50 years of art, music, and performance that transformed a community.
Filming began in earnest in early September with of 2024 with seven different tree planting ceremonies to honor several of the artists and places where art creation sprang up over the last decades— Parham Park next to Touchstone Theatre, the IceHouse Performing Arts Center, Central Moravian Church, Yosko Park in South Bethlehem, Godfrey Daniels, Zoellner Arts Center, and Payrow Plaza.
Bill George, Co-Founder of Touchstone Theatre and Rooted Project Member said: “Rooted traces the fascinating, complex, personal, and compelling drama, working alone and often side by side together over decades — and how place becomes crucial to identity, voice, catharsis, and a revitalized community, how it stimulates us economically, socially, environmentally, and spiritually.”
During the mid-nineteen-seventies, a surprising shift of fortune befell the City of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As the curtain began to fall on over a century of steelmaking, this small post-industrial community underwent an unanticipated rebirth—a transformation from a Steel Town to an Arts Town. That transformation has still not seen its full potential, yet awakened by government advances in the late 1960’s (the new 501-C3 tax laws and emerging State Arts Councils) and the experimental zeitgeist of the time, idealistic artists began to transform this particular back yard of American life. Since then over thirty new cultural non-profits, a dozen galleries, innumerable festivals, and an accompanying layer of small creative businesses have taken root in Bethlehem’s Lenape soil. A strong, artist-led and community-minded arts culture took shape on the streets, in repurposed and sometimes abandoned buildings, and its work and practices evolved following a dedication to excellence, originality and play, collaboration, social justice; and curiously enough, an increased emphasis on the importance of place.
Rooted will endeavor to tell this story, featuring interviews with over fifty artists and community representatives, video and photo records of pivotal arts events from throughout the decades, and the documentation of a ceremony of sorts—tree plantings at seven different locations in Bethlehem that were important sites for the emergence of this not-to-be-forgotten work.
The film’s budget is expected to be approximately $50,000, and a public campaign for donations is ongoing. Rooted will be moving, informative, and useful for general audiences
— locally, nationally, and internationally — and will eventually be housed at the Special Collections branch of the Lehigh University Libraries to be a resource for generations to come.