War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator
The story behind the novel of the same name, mainly concerning three WWI aviators and the authorship of the novel.
Robert Clem
Director
Casts & Crew
Also Directed by Robert Clem
How African Americans created the upbeat musical form that started out as gospel quartet music and became rock and roll.
The Blind Boys of Alabama, Fairfield Four, Birmingham Sunlights, Selvy Singers, Four Eagles and Delta-Aires, show their common roots in the traditional gospel quartet style that began in the coal mines and steel mills of Birmingham, Alabama in the early 1900s -- the down-home, way back, soulful, rocking rhythms of the Jefferson County Sound.
Alabama-born Eugene Walter lived a magical life, reportedly running away from home at age three, living in the back room of a bookshop at ten, painting coffins in rural Mississippi while in the Civilian Conservation Corps in the late 1930s and serving as a cryptographer in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. That was before he took an ice cream freighter to France in the late 40s, met and worked with the American born princess who published the world famous literary journal Botteghe Oscure, helped found the Paris Review and acted in the films of Federico Fellini while translating most of the latter's screenplays into English. Along the way he won the Lippincott Prize for first novelists, a Sewanee Review Fellowship in poetry, and became the epicenter of the expatriate community in Rome, where his parties were legendary. Not bad for someone who barely graduated high school and never had a bank account.
Based on the popular World War I novel by author William March, director Robert Clem's COMPANY K follows a veteran of the first great conflict as he finishes a book about his wartime experiences and reflects on how a man's true character is revealed through his actions on the battlefield. From the German soldier who visits him in dreams to the camaraderie that is forged by fighting together and the true gravity of laying down your life for a greater cause, World War I veteran Joe Delaney will attempt to exorcise his demons through writing while struggling to readjust to small-town life following the trauma of war.
