Area filmmakers Ryan Sarnowski and Susan Kerns have received a $10,000 grant to compete their documentary on the University of Lawsonomy, its founder and last last member. The grant, in conjunction with the Racine Heritage Museum, is from the Wisconsin Humanities Council.
Anyone who has ever driven from Milwaukee to Chicago, or vice versa, along the I-94 corridor has probably seen the University of Lawsonomy sign and its admonition to “Study Natural Law” and wondered what it was.
It is located at 4529 Highway 41, Sturtevant.
Natural Law refers to the teachings of Alfred Lawson, inventor of the first U.S. passenger airliner. The film will feature the efforts of Merle Hayden, 94, Lawson’s “last crusading follower,” according to a release.
Lawson, a passenger aviation pioneer who went bankrupt during the Depression, founded a movement advocating interest free lending and “justice for everyone who harms no one.”
Hayden joined the group as a teenager and continues spreading Lawson’s “financial philosophical and religious teachings, and the film follows his journey while “recovering the history of the movement.”
A Kickstarter campaign to make the film raised $16,000 in 2013. The grant will be used for post-production costs with the goal of a film festival premiere later this year.
Sarnowski is a freelance filmmaker and previous co-director of documentary center at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Kerns, who received a PHD from UWM, is assistant professor of cinema at Columbia College Chicago and previous education director at the Milwaukee Film Festival.
In an email Kerns wrote that she and Sarnowski have worked on the film since 2008 and spent “several years shooting Merle and his girlfriend Betty” at her home in Florida and at the EAA air show in Oshkosh. They digitized thousands of Hayden’s slides, photos, articles, books and home movies
“We are currently in the rough cut stage and are revising based on feedback, including feedback we received at a works-in-progress screening at Kartemquin Films in Chicago. This grant funding is earmarked, then, specifically to help with post-production costs once we have picture lock.”
Tags: Lawsonomy, Merle Hayden, Natural Law, UWM Posted by