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Cousins Al and David Brocca are experienced filmmakers and videographers. Al, a Kingston native, and David, a West Pittston native, currently live in Los Angeles. Making short films together since college, the pair worked for MTV networks before becoming freelancers, but over the last six years, their passion is for a project inspired by their roots.
Since 2008, the Broccas have been working on their documentary, “The Knox Mine Disaster,” and they are poised to speak about the film and show some clips of it during Mining History Month. At 7 p.m. Jan. 22, at the Nanticoke Cultural Center, David Brocca will lecture on the making of the documentary and the history the cousins uncovered. Excerpts from the film will also be shown at 2 p.m. on Jan. 23 at the Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton as part of a tribute to Myron Thomas, who led 25 men out of the the disaster.
The impetus to create the documentary, David said, came from a chance meeting with Bob Wolensky at a family funeral. Wolensky, a board member of the Anthracite Heritage Foundation and author of “The Knox Mine Disaster: January 22, 1959,” encouraged David to use his skills to do a piece focused on mining history in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
“We were doing a lot of interviews at the time, so we had our own rig,” David said. “We had a high definition camera and lighting. I read Bob’s book, and Al read Bob’s book, and we both agreed that this was an amazing story.”
Motivated by a desire to learn more about their cultural history, the cousins began interviewing surviving miners through introductions by Wolensky.
“We cut together a short film for the anniversary in 2009,” David said. “We screened it at the Anthracite Heritage Museum and thought that could be the end of it.”
What the filmmakers weren’t expecting was an outpouring of sentiment from those who saw the film.
“We shelved it for a while, but people kept saying, ‘You need to talk to this guy.’ It (became) all about doing this for posterity, because all of these miners were up in age, and it was all about capturing them while we still could,” David said.
In 2011, the Broccas met Jack Scanella, the newsman who shot the original footage of mining cars being sucked into the Susquehanna River. Scanella led them to the original 16 mm film footage of the 1959 event with the help of Thomas Gregory of WBRE-TV, where the reels were being stored.
David and Al had access to over 40, 55-year-old film reels with the task of digitally restoring them.
“Al had a contact at USC film school,” David said. “His name is Dino Everett, and he’s like the Indiana Jones of film restoration and vintage film clips.”
Although the process of restoring the reels lasted a year, Al and David knew they had something special.
“We wanted to make this film and get it on Netflix and Hulu,” David said. “We ended up contacting the International Documentary Association. They have a fiscal sponsorship program where they will be your non-profit and act as an executive producer.”
With the program supporting them, the cousins began reaching out for funding. With the film still in the making, they are continuing to look for budget opportunities, but their true investment has become a sentimental one.
“One thing that really pulled on my heartstrings was when we started a Facebook page,” Al said. “In this area, a lot of peoples’ grandparents worked in the mines … and when we started posting pictures of the miners and foreman, a lot of the family members started coming out and saying, ‘That was my grandfather,’ and they would really open up and pass it around. It opened up a dialogue. This is our ancestry, our history. It was tremendous to see all of that.”
Although the documentary isn’t complete, the clips that will be shown on Jan. 23 will be a premier of a different kind.
“They’re going to honor Myron Thomas who is really one of the unsung heroes of the Knox Mine Disaster,” David said. “We will be presenting some of the clips we restored. These are clips that his son and his grandson have never seen.”
The Broccas will launch a crowd funding campaign with their presentations.
“The hope is that the community will come together, contribute to the film, and we’ll be able to finish the film some time at the end of this year,” David said. “We want to hire a small, post-production staff of professionals and get this film to where it deserves to be.”
For the Broccas, the finished product is about quality film making and pride in their heritage. The theme, they said, is survival through adversity.
“The heart of it is with the miners and what they went through underground,” Al said. “But afterward, this is what … devastated this community. With 10,000 men unemployed over night the town went into a depression, and I want to let people know what struggles the community went through as well as the miners. It still echoes in this area today.”
