The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians through Film will be the first
full-length documentary film to focus on the work and
lives of librarians. Using the entertaining and appealing context
of
American movies, the film will hold some surprises for people who may
think they know what librarians do. American film contains hundreds of
examples of
librarians and libraries on screen -- some positive, some negative,
some laughable and some dead wrong. Films such as Sophie's
Choice, Philadelphia and It's a Wonderful Life
show librarians as negative stereotypes. The librarians in Lorenzo's Oil, Desk Set and The
Shawshank Redemption, on the other hand, are competent and
professional. Dozens of interviews of real librarians will be
interwoven with movie clips of cinematic librarians and serve as
transitions between the themes of censorship, intellectual freedom,
children and librarians, pay equity and funding issues, and the value
of reading.
As the film unfolds, we will meet the
dedicated children's librarian, the witty library director, the
high-tech corporate librarian, the smart medical librarian, and and
the dedicated cataloger. We visit a prison literacy
program, an elementary school library and a town faced with the most
severe library crisis in decades. We will show the challenges
created by shrinking financial support
and increased materials costs. We will encounter older librarians who
have witnessed the explosion of technology and younger librarians, who
were born into the information age. We will travel to large library
systems with dozens of staff and visit small libraries with one
librarian working alone.
The Hollywood Librarian is a unique
and charming blend of film clips, humor and critical analysis of the
popular image
of librarians. It will create a new-found empathy for the profession by
revealing the diversity of individual librarians and the importance of
what they do. This documentary will increase the public's awareness of
the
complex and democratic nature of librarianship in the age of
technology, and be a step toward librarians redefining themselves as
not only more than a stereotype, but also as a cultural imperative.
