Joliet museum program wins award

The Joliet Area Historical Museum's "Talk of the Town" audio-visual program was recently awarded a CINE Golden Eagle Award.

The CINE Golden Eagle Award is a national, semi-annual competition that acknowledges high-quality, professional production in a variety of content categories. The museum's "Talk of the Town" program was honored in the Professional-Non Telecast Division/Children's Education and Entertainment programs. The same video won another national audio-visual competition, the Aurora Awards, a few months ago. Walt Keener, curator at the museum, was happy with the awards. "We are very pleased to win," he said. "We have submitted it to the Illinois State Historical Association, and we're hoping to get a big local award, too. We're certainly applying to compete in awards from the state." He helped pick the photos that were used in the program and was a member of the exhibit committee that gave approval to the actors' costumes, the final scripts and the pronunciations of certain words.

The museum's exhibition design firm, Ueland, Junker, McCauley, and Nicholson of Philadelphia developed the concept for "Talk of the Town." It was further developed and filmed by the video production firm Hillmann and Carr of Washington, D.C.

The company was given access to Joliet's history through books, newspapers and photos from the museum. The firm produced all audio-visual components for the museum.
The museum's "Talk of the Town" program represents Joliet-area issues circa 1900. Four historically based characters "come to life" out of period photographs of the era and speak directly to the visitor.

Hillmann and Carr gave the raw tapes to the museum, so visitors can watch the entire footage if they would like to, Keener said. CINE, based in Washington, D.C., was founded in 1957 by a representation of people in business, education and government. Their goal was to depict American life for a global audience.

To see this award-winning video, visit the museum, located at Cass and Ottawa streets. For more information, call (815) 723-5201 or visit www.jolietmuseum.org.
As published in The Herald News, Joliet, IL, August 14, 2003