'A Love Letter to Beacon'

Howland Center to screen new Clearwater documentary Wherever Jodie Childers and Dan Messina show their newly released Pete Seeger documentary, Down by the Riverside, the filmmakers say most audience members seem aware of his folk music and civil rights activism and that he was blacklisted as a Communist sympathizer. But outside the Hudson Valley, many are surprised to learn that Seeger led a ragtag band of amateur sailors to resurrect the polluted Hudson River through Sloop Clearwater, headquartered in Beacon. The 85-minute documentary demonstrates how entangled the story of Pete and Toshi Seeger is with the American environmental movement, as well as Beacon, the city they called home for decades. "In many ways, the film is a love letter to Beacon," said Messina. He and Childers embedded themselves in Beacon for 18 months, filming from Seeger's 93rd birthday in May 2012 to a few weeks after his death in January 2014. That left them with 800 hours of footage and the challenge of creating a cohesive narrative. While reviewing scenes of Clearwater captain Nick Rogers and Seeger visiting the 18th-century warship USS Constitution in Boston, they recognized they had three intertwined stories to tell. The first, reflected in long-overlooked archival footage, shows the Clearwater being built in Maine and launched in 1969 on its maiden voyage to New York City, including the hardships the inexperienced crew faced in trying to get people to care about the Hudson. "The wind may be blowing against you," says Seeger in the film, "but if you use your sails right, you can sail into the wind and make slow progress using the very power of the wind that's against you." The second story revolves around the Clearwater's restoration in 2012 and 2013, which the crew races to complete before the annual Great Hudson River Revival. They quickly find themselves in over their heads, which is what brings them to Boston to learn how the Navy keeps the oldest warship in the world afloat. What no one knows at the time, of course, is that the coming revival would be the last for Pete and Toshi, who died in July 2013. "We knew we were filming something deeply meaningful, but the stakes were much higher than we ever could have imagined," said Childers. The film's final narrative will be the one most familiar to Beacon residents: the story of the Beacon Sloop Club and the Woody Guthrie, the club's Clearwater replica. In the film, Seeger proudly shows off the former diner with a tree growing through it where the club meets, tells the story of its efforts to transform a dump into a riverfront park and pitches the idea that becomes the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade. "We wanted to highlight the people who aren't famous," said Messina about the decision to give Sloop Club members nearly as much screen time as Seeger. "We wanted to make sure they got their due." That includes Toshi Seeger, the mastermind behind so many Clearwater projects. "People in Beacon know how central Toshi's role was because they experienced it," said Childers. "But people outside of Beacon don't know what a visionary she was." Seeger believed that simply telling people that the Hudson needed help wasn't enough. You had to take them sailing so they'd fall in love, then notice how filthy it was. Likewise, Childers and Messina hope that by putting viewers in the middle of song circles and meetings at the Sloop Club, as well as on the deck of the Woody Guthrie, they will elicit a similar reaction. "We could lecture you all day long about why PCBs need to be cleaned out of the river and why pollution is bad," said Messina. "But we're trying to get you to experience it on a visceral level." Seeger told the filmmakers that he hoped the documentary would inspire people to think, "I can do that." It has, Childers says: "People at screenings ask us, 'What can I do?' " Down by the Riverside will be shown by the Beacon Film Society at the Howland Cultural Center at 7 p.m. on Oct. 16, foll...