Hazzard Premiere!
Exciting news today!
My latest short documentary, Hazzard, will be premiering at the Tacoma Film Festival in early October. They are still working on the program, so more details about a specific time and place to catch the film will be forthcoming.
Here is a little about the doc:
In early 1900s Seattle Dr. Lina Hazzard believed that fasting was the cure for any all maladies, and watched as over 40 of her patients withered into death’s embrace.
Sometimes truth is crazier than fiction and this is definitely one of those times.
Dr. Linda Hazzard was a naturopathic doctor working around the Seattle area in the early 1900s. She was granted her license to practice medicine under a (now defunct) program that allowed alternative healers to submit documentation to the state that the deserved to be full doctors. Dr. Hazzard believed that fasting could cure anything. She told a reporter for The Seattle Daily Times in 1907 that: “Proper dieting will solve the problem of life and death and there is no reason why we should not live forever, for, after all, eating is only a vulgar habit that the human race could probably dispense with.” Several of her patients were known to have died under her care, while many others disappeared after seeing her. And this is only the beginning of her story. She robbed her patients of their possessions, forged wills, switched out bodies, hid dying patients from their relatives, and so much more. It is a true horror story.
After we completed the film we found a book about Dr. Hazzard that we’ve been reading. Her story is definitely deeper than what we could cover in 7 minutes. So for more information about Dr. Hazzard I recommend the book Starvation Heights. Or you can just go straight to the source and read Dr. Hazzard’s book Fasting For The Cure of Disease yourself.
We made the film in just 5 days for the International Documentary Challenge. We weren’t finalists, but had a great time nonetheless. Especially our producer, Luke, who enjoyed taking behind the scenes shots when no one was looking. You can see some of the shots on my Flickr photostream.