Prairie Mosaic
Prairie Mosaic 1302
Season 13 Episode 2 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
Filmmaker Melody Gilbert, F-M bridges, Sails Up art project, ND musician Thomas Anderson.
On this edition of Prairie Mosaic we introduce you to Melody Gilbert, a documentary filmmaker who profiles subjects who may not fit into societal norms; learn about the history of two bridges that connected Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN; celebrate Detroit Lakes MN 150th birthday and view their commemorative "Sails Up" art project; listen to classical guitarist Thomas Anderson from Binford, ND.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Prairie Mosaic is a local public television program presented by Prairie Public
Prairie Mosaic
Prairie Mosaic 1302
Season 13 Episode 2 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
On this edition of Prairie Mosaic we introduce you to Melody Gilbert, a documentary filmmaker who profiles subjects who may not fit into societal norms; learn about the history of two bridges that connected Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN; celebrate Detroit Lakes MN 150th birthday and view their commemorative "Sails Up" art project; listen to classical guitarist Thomas Anderson from Binford, ND.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch Prairie Mosaic
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(woman) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by-- the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4th, 2008; the North Dakota Council on the Arts, and by the members of Prairie Public.
Welcome to "Prairie Mosaic," a patchwork of stories about the art, culture, and history in our region.
Hi, I'm Barb Gravel.
And I'm Matt Olien.
On this edition of "Prairie Mosaic," we'll meet an award-winning filmmaker, celebrate a birthday, and hear from a premium classical guitarist.
♪ ♪ Documentary filmmaker Melody Gilbert has a unique talent for profiling subjects who may not fit into societal norms.
She hopes her films spark discussion and maybe even an understanding of those she profiles.
My name is Walter Mondale.
Does this mean anything?
I'm looking for the thing around the thing, because the thing is interesting.
Right?
Like, that is interesting, but it's the thing around that thing that's really interesting.
[bass & drums play jazz] I actually am not like most people where I was a movie fanatic.
I was a story fanatic, and I was a journalist, a working journalist for 15 years.
Melody Gilbert, Newsline 9, Neillsville.
I never went to film school.
A lot of people don't know that about me.
I teach in journalism and film programs, but I never went to journalism school or film school.
I learned by doing.
I was on a shoot, and as soon as the camera went off, and as soon as the big cameraman left and the sound person went away, the person started telling me things that they wouldn't tell me when the camera was on.
And I thought, oh, that's what I want to do, I want to spend more time with people.
I want to spend more time, get to know them better, learn the stories more.
(women) ♪ Going to the chapel and we're ♪ My very first independent film was called "Married at the Mall."
I decided that I needed to do something that was close because I was living in St. Paul.
The Mall is 10 minutes away.
And I decided I was going to spent a year doing something instead of a day.
Every kind of diversity you can possibly imagine.
I spent a year filming weddings there and making a lot of mistakes.
So I did a lot of, the camera work myself.
I worked mostly with a wireless microphone, and I had a ton of audio problems, I had a ton of video problems from the camera, and I just learned by making a lot of mistakes, I really didn't understand the business side of making films.
I just immersed myself in that world, and I started going to a lot of film markets and film festivals, and meeting all the film people.
I'm really honored to receive this award It was at that point that I started realizing, oh, there was a whole business of independent films.
So I'm Melody, and A Life Without Pain took about a year to make.
The most successful film I ever had that made me think I could actually be in the business and stay in the business for awhile, it was a life without pain.
(woman) People always think of pain, pain, pain, oh, if I could get rid of the pain.
I'm thinking, you do not even know how lucky you are that you can feel it.
I just want to know why people do the things they do.
So when I heard about people who want to be an amputee, and I'm going to say that again, 'cause it's like, they want to be an amputee?
Like, really?
I kinda just needed to go find out.
About the only way I would get through a day is looking at that longingly for some time.
That's about the only way I'd get through a day.
I'm a person that has a right to exist that way.
(Melody) One of the most beautiful things that happens when you make a film is sharing part of you with your audience.
She is probably one of the most insightful, empathetic people I have ever met.
And she closely observes human behavior, and she does it in a way that doesn't disturb you.
She does it in a way that is so authentic.
I just am really interested in what drives people, and I want to know what it is.
Even if I don't find out the answer, I want to understand it a little better.
I mean, does it get any prettier?
There were some moments filming during Silicone Soul that were a little uncomfortable.
(man) I can live without somebody to love me.
but I can not live without somebody to love, somebody to spoil and take care of and be good to.
So I have Jackie for that.
I really needed to find ways to balance that film from the men who have female companions with other things that made it so it was humanizing for anybody to see.
I mean just, it's so lifelike.
To them it is real.
(Melody) You have to kind of just find ways to focus on the question you're trying to answer.
And that's what I do when I go out to film.
She is able to bring out just with a single question, to bring out a response that is so evocative and revealing.
(man) How many people can you say in your life that you have a daily relationship, that you touch, feel, create together every single day for 23 years?
And I still mostly work alone, I still enjoy working alone.
It's just me, the camera, and a wireless microphone.
Why do I like doing that?
It's because it creates intimacy with people, and they trust me.
The really good stuff that I get in my films I feel like comes from those rare moments when you're just with someone.
It's not about Republicans, Democrats, it's about human nature.
Mr. Mondale is so humble.
And he did not want a film made about him.
His assistant and I kind of worked in tandem, and she would tell me he was going to be at this event tonight or that event tonight.
I just started showing up, again, with my camera, just me and my camera, no crew, no anything.
I started following him around, and at one point he was like, oh, well, I guess you're making a movie about me.
(Walter Mondale) I try to argue about how I would like to see America go.
I guess what I would want people to think about when they think of a Melody Gilbert film is that when you're done watching it, that it creates conversation.
It doesn't necessarily give you answers.
It takes you on a journey, and it will make you want to talk after you watch it to someone else-- hey I just saw this, I can't believe it, it's something I never knew about before-- let's talk about it.
In this Artifact Spotlight, Mark Peihl of the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County in Moorhead, Minnesota informs us of the history surrounding two of the bridges that connected Fargo and Moorhead.
Hi, I'm Mark Peihl, I'm the archivist of the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County, and we're here in the Hjemkomst Center of Moorhead, Minnesota, and this is my Artifact Spotlight.
Today I want to talk about bridges here in Fargo-Moorhead.
It always takes about 10 or 15 years to get a bridge built between Fargo and Moorhead.
It always has; the same was true back in the old days.
You've got 2 cities, 2 states, the federal government is involved, and people argue about who's going to build them, who's going to pay for them and maintain them.
The same was true in the 19th century.
in 1872 the first bridge crossed the river, the railroad bridge, the Northern Pacific Railway was built.
And for about 10 years after that, the 2 cities, Fargo and Moorhead, argued about whether to build a wagon bridge on the north side of the downtowns or one on the south side of the downtowns.
Finally In 1883 they compromised, and instead of building one decent bridge, they built 2 lousy bridges.
Tried to save money that way; it didn't pay off.
I've got some artifacts out here that were remnants from the south bridge.
The South Bridge is where the Main Avenue Bridge is today between Fargo and Moorhead.
The second bridge was called the North Bridge, and that ran from what's now NP Avenue in Fargo to the northeast up to where American Crystal Sugar has their downtown headquarters just south of the Hjemkomst Center where we are.
By the turn of the century both of these bridges were really falling apart and had to get rebuilt.
They weren't built for modern traffic.
Eventually they became so dangerous to cross even pedestrians were blocked from crossing the bridges.
The Main Avenue Bridge where these came from, the South Bridge, was torn down in 1936 A fellow named A.R.
Bowman who was actually president of our Historical Society back in those days, managed to get ahold of parts from that Main Avenue Bridge and donated them to our museum in 1936.
The first artifact is this bridge plaque right here, and it says Milwaukee Bridge and Iron Works.
That was the company that was in charge of building the South Bridge, the Main Avenue Bridge.
The date on it is 1883.
There were 2 of these plaques, one on either end of the bridge, high up above the bridge.
In 1883 steamboats were still operating out of Fargo-Moorhead.
The steamboat have pretty tall smokestacks, and the Army Corps of Engineers required that all of the bridges be able to turn out of the way in order to allow these steamboats to pass.
1883 was a big bridge building year.
Both the North and the South Bridge were built.
And both railroad bridges, the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern Railway bridges were rebuilt in those years, 1883 and 1884.
So all of them had to turn to allow a steamboat to pass.
These improvements cost each of them $10,000 in 1883 dollars, and that's a lot of money today.
The way that they operated, each of the bridges was built on a round central pier.
The main structure of the bridge actually literally balanced on top of that round concrete structure.
At the very top of that structure was basically a lazy Susan, a turntable.
There was a mechanism for turning that bridge.
When a steamboat wanted to cross the path of the bridge, in order to get the bridge out of the way a local policeman or a bridge tender would come out with a key.
And we have one here, this one is from the Main Avenue Bridge right here.
it has a socket on the far end over here.
This would have a wooden bar going across the top of it, so it was kind of T-shaped.
A bridge tender or a local policeman would insert this key, the bottom end of that key, down through a hole in the deck and engage this gear right here.
This pinion gear right here would engage with a rack gear that ran around the very top of the bridge footing.
The bridge tender would turn this key, that would in turn turn this pinion gear, and it would run around the rack gear and very slowly that bridge would turn out of its way to allow the steamboat to pass.
And when they were done, they would turn it back, of course, the wagons could continue going across the bridge.
When they were first built and first installed, the Moorhead Daily News reported that they were so well-balanced that a small child would have no trouble turning the bridge.
But I've never seen a photograph of a Fargo-Moorhead bridge turn to allow a steamboat to pass.
They were only used for just a few years.
They were installed in 1883, 1884, and by the spring of 1888 railroads had put the steamboats out of business.
It was so much faster and so much easier to move materials and people by rail than it was by the steamboats.
The steamboats couldn't compete, and in the spring of 1888 they all moved to Grand Forks, and they never really came back to Fargo-Moorhead.
So these things were probably only used a few dozen times.
And these artifacts are just a couple of the items; thousands and thousands of artifacts we have here at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.
In some cases in our storage areas, some cases out on display.
Come on down, check them out.
We'd love to have you visit our museum.
Detroit Lakes, Minnesota is a popular summer destination for many around the state, but its history is just as interesting.
In 2021, the city celebrated its 150th anniversary with events and activities for all ages, including an art project that can be seen all around town.
[piano, bass, & drums play softly] (man) Detroit Lakes is really a destination place.
We get tourism here, it's a great place to come and visit.
People want to live here.
(Emily Buermann) The original name of Detroit Lakes, Big and Little Detroit Lakes is "Gaiajawangag."
That's the Ojibwe word, it means a crossing in a sandy place.
The town was founded in 1871.
But years and years and decades and decades and decades before that, where the city sits now is at an access point of 4 oxcart trails.
They went from Minneapolis to Winnipeg, and Pembina, North Dakota to Brainerd, and they all kind of met right here at this lake.
So we were kind of bound to be a trading area to begin with.
The fist settler who came and built where Detroit Lakes city is was Colonel George Johnston.
He was a Civil War soldier, he came here and he built a flour mill on the river.
He needed employees, so people started moving, and that was really kind of the catalyst of why the town was built right here.
The father of tourism is John K. West, and he was really responsible for coming up with the sort of Detroit Lakes propaganda to get people to come here as tourists, not just to come here to live and work.
We have great tourism, but we also have a lot of good industry here.
We have some manufacturing facilities, we've got a pretty vibrant retail community here in Detroit Lakes.
(Emily Buermann) The water here has been so many things.
It's been industry, the logging companies needed to use the water to transport the logs.
The tourism started almost immediately with the town to try to get people to come here.
And they're showcasing this, you can't imagine how clean and pure this water is, you can scoop out of the lake and drink the water out of the lake it's so pure.
I worked here for 5 years, I had a pretty good grasp of what made Detroit Lakes Detroit Lakes.
We came up with a list of what we thought were the most important bullet points that I needed to cover, and then as I got into it, it got more and more, and it grew into this huge 33 panels that's just history.
(Hans Gilsdorf) 150 Sails is reflective of the 150 years that Detroit Lakes has been and the 150 years to come.
It's an amazing amount of work, amazing amount of beauty that just makes her grandeur shine.
Our logo is Sail's Up, Our pride is the Lakers.
So the sailboat was what we kind of settled on.
So I designed the main shape and the look of it.
Then we met with a local company.
They agreed right off the bat to do the whole thing, to help sponsor the fabrication.
So we knew we'd have these sailboats.
We planned to do 75 wires that were 4 feet and 75 tabletops.
Because some places don't have public space to put a large sailboat sculpture.
What's amazing is every artist got the same 3-dimensional canvas.
It was a white sailboat sculpture.
And to see where their imaginations took it.
We have it ranging from a monarch butterfly to wildlife to seasonal to landscape to mosaic, photography.
We have artists that have done multiple pieces, and we've had artists as young as 10 on up to 82.
It's amazing to see what the imagination, creativity is.
Then to have the sponsor support that by picking these different artists.
People were just amazed, they were just blown away by the diversity of what the artwork, the colors, what these things are being.
Now people driving around town, the comments are, they're just tickled to see these things when they walk into a business or they go to a park or they drive around town, they see these sculptures everywhere.
They're fun splashes of creativity and color.
The whole point of this is to get people to come to Detroit Lakes to see the retail, different locations, different businesses, and our parks within our community-- the amenities that Detroit Lakes has.
[guitar plays in bright rhythm] It's the people that make it special here.
It's a beautiful place to come and visit, and people want to live and work here.
(Emily Buermann) It's a sense of community.
As I was going through the research-- our whole team here was involved in the research for this-- we were finding letters people were writing to each other and writing to their friends back east and writing to their legislators and saying this place here needs to have this, or it needs to have this new amenity or we should build a pavilion!
We've seen the community spirit all the way from the beginning, and it just flows all the way through.
It's not a surprise that the sense of community in Detroit Lakes is the way it is.
That's really the heart of I think what Detroit Lakes is.
We really support everybody to make sure our community shines bright.
Thomas Anderson is a classical guitarist and a professor of guitar studies at the University of North Dakota.
His passion is teaching technique to students and sharing his love for different styles of music.
[playing melodically in bright rhythm] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [guitar only; no vocal] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [guitar only; no vocal] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [guitar only; no vocal] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [playing in melodically in a major key] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [guitar only; no vocal] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [guitar only; no vocal] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ If you know of an artist, topic or organization in our region that you think might make for an interesting segment, please contact us at... (Barb) You can watch this and other episodes of "Prairie Mosaic" on Prairie Public's YouTube channel, and follow Prairie Public on social media as well.
I'm Barb Gravel.
And I'm Matt Olien.
Thank you for joining us for another edition of "Prairie Mosaic."
[guitar, bass, & drums play in bright country rhythm] (woman) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by-- the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4th, 2008; the North Dakota Council on the Arts, and by the members of Prairie Public.
Support for PBS provided by:
Prairie Mosaic is a local public television program presented by Prairie Public