The films of Gideon C. Kennedy and Marcus Rosentrater

Outlaw. Hero. Myth. Three perspectives on the black train robber of the 1890s, each built from the same evocative imagery of the traditional American folk song with which it shares a name.

Ten friends tell the unbelievable true story of the New Year none of them would forget – when they hired a limousine to take them to the beach…only to find themselves left for dead on a dirt road 24 hours later. Broad subject – the greatest bar story ever told – meets experimental form in the debut feature-length docu-drama by filmmakers Gideon C. Kennedy and Marcus Rosentrater.

LIMO RIDE is a true tale told by those who lived it, ten Southern raconteurs as practiced in spinning great yarns as they are in hard living.

Interweaving the audio of the participants themselves with a fast-paced visual narrative, it is not just a catalogue of facts. The storytellers’ knack for exaggeration, the passage of time and mind-altering drugs guarantee that much. Instead, it is one story told ten different ways. Insightful contradictions along with unreliable support weave a modern myth that falls not just into the South’s tradition of oral history, but into the mythological traditions of any barroom, any campfire, any time, everywhere.

Using Eugene Walter’s radio broadcasts as narration, the film takes a peek at the simple ingredients that make up the Gulf Coast and its signature cuisine – Gumbo, showing how their staggered repetition builds something wholly unique and intricately beautiful.

A short documentary by Isabel Machado and Gideon C. Kennedy

"Clandestine" is the history from 1940 to the present day of encoded shortwave radio broadcasts used to communicate from home governments to spies in the field, also known as Numbers Stations.

"Clandestine" is one man's story of his secretive father, a shortwave radio operator and Numbers Stations enthusiast, and the gulf in communication that exists between them.

Half fiction and half documentary, "Clandestine" intertwines these two stories to show how childish fantasies can lead personal heroes to public villainy.

Made entirely from ephemeral films (news reels, movie serials, industrial and educational films, etc.) existing within the public domain, this approximately 30 minute short will be the third project from Gideon C. Kennedy and Marcus Rosentrater and will debut at the 22nd annual International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Nov. 19-29 2009).

As the song title suggests, the video gathers useful remnants of the band’s performance by filming their shadows, a visual synonym for the ephemeral nature of song.

In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon visited Mobile, AL for 104 minutes, during which time he shook 100 feet of hands, lost a cufflink, and shared a stage with his biggest political rival, Governor George Wallace. "Dick-George, Tenn-Tom" is a sardonic look at their rivalry, the creation of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, and the attempt on Wallace's life less than a year later.

Stalked by celebrities, a paranoid paparazzo has locked himself in his apartment. Using a borrowed video camera, he chronicles the story of a vengeance directed at him by the celebrated and adored. But his manipulated life becomes sensationalized with a collage of tabloids and dramatizations as the owner of the camera edits the footage of this confession, bidding for his own fame even as the paparazzo declaims against our culture of celebrity.