MPBN to air ‘Story of Houlton’

    HOULTON, Maine — Houlton’s rich history will be the subject of a documentary being aired on local television this weekend.

“The Story of Houlton,” a video produced by the Houlton History DVD Committee and commemorating the bicentennial of the town in 2007, will be shown on Maine Public Broadcasting Network this Saturday at 11 a.m. and again Sunday at 10:30 p.m.
The video, which was completed in October, 2007 by Michael Fawcett of The Idea Factory, Inc. of Reed Plantation, documents Houlton’s rich past from 1807 to 2007.
“The video was done by the Houlton Historical group,” Fawcett said. “It was done by a bunch of historians in Houlton.”
The project got its start about 10 years ago by Greg Swallow, who felt it was important to preserve Houlton’s rich history with some type of film. Reception was, at first, luke warm to the idea of making a movie of Houlton’s history, mainly because people did not grasp the concept.
“The biggest challenge in making the film, was that people didn’t know what the group was doing,” Fawcett said. “I volunteered to make them a five-minute promo, which they used to get the project going again. It was a preservation project.”
Several thousand hours went into editing the project, which has only aired once – at the Temple Theater during Houlton’s Bicentennial celebration. The film features 87,000 elements in the 50-minute program.
“What we found was people were not saving a lot of the old photos and 8mm movies that were made long ago,” Fawcett said. “History just wasn’t valued. So we wanted to gather the information and put it into a digital format where it will survive.”
“This finally completed all the things it was supposed to do,” Fawcett said. “A copy went to every library in the state of Maine and we submitted it to MPBN, but this is the first time it is going to be shown on television.”
“MPBN Community Films offers a diverse selection of quality productions that showcase our region, people and culture,” said Laura Schenck of MPBN. “’The Story of Houlton’ is a great example of how talented local filmmakers were able to capture the town’s rich history and then through our MPBN Community Film series, we were able to share it with all of our viewers.”