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“I just pursued what I felt was
a fantastic story,” she adds of
Vrancken’s tale.
Following her next major production,
Sing Behind the Plow (2007),
for UNC-TV, which focused on
a folk school founded in rural
Brasstown, North Carolina in 1925,
Hughes returned to the subject
of WWI and premiered North
Carolina’s World War II Experience in
2010. A tapestry of tales about North
Carolinian participants in the war,
Hughes says, it offers a better understanding
of “not only a state and its
people, but a time and generation
that responded when their country
needed them.”
Hughes’ most recent WWI
documentary was her independent
production of Marching Once
More, which, though begun in
2004, became an official selection
of the Cucalorus Film Festival in
2008. It premiered on UNC-TV in
January 2011, and in November,
began national distribution. Like
its predecessor, Marching Once
More could trace its origins to
the emergence of a fantastic story
– the return of veterans of the
Battle of the Bulge to Belgium and
Luxembourg for the 60th anniversary
of that fight. Marching Once
More received Midsouth Regional
Emmy Nominations for Historical
Documentary and an editing nomination
for Hughes’ associate, Adam Alphin.
Hughes also received two more nominations
for North Carolina’s WWII Experience
for Historical Documentary and writing.
Today, once again working in collaboration
with UNC-TV, she is pursuing yet
another fantastic stor about the opening of
the North Carolina mint. With a working
title, The Bechtler Mint, the documentary
tells the tale of German immigrant
Christopher Bechtler, who joined the
gold rush to North Carolina well ahead of
the more familiar rush to California, and
eventually ended up minting the country’s
first $1 gold coin.
Huges hopes to wrap up principal photography
this month, and awaits an official
UNC-TV release date.