Franklin: Five Hours in the Valley of Death

This weekend I received a review copy of Wide Awake's film, "Battle of Franklin: Five Hours in the Valley of Death." It was part of a promotional thing for roundtables and I'm listed as the contact for the Rocky Mountain Civil War Roundtable in North and South magazine. I've seen this film before and it is a very good film. This is what National Park orientation films should strive to be. So many of them are quite bad (and quite dated). The only drawback to this being a NPS film is that its 65 minutes long (also Franklin is not a NPS park so it doesn't apply here).

I was surprised to learn that Wide Awake had done 7 other films, I knew they had done some others but didn't not realize they'd done that many. One thing I like is that their focus is on the West. Only 1st Manassas and Spotsylvania (which I've seen and enjoyed as much as I did Franklin) represent the East. The West gets Chickamauga, Perryville, Shiloh, Stones River, Franklin and even one for Bleeding Kansas. Chickamauga, Mansassas and Spotsylvania also won Telly Awards (an award I've never heard of before). Bleeding Kansas and Franklin won Emmy Awards. I feel very safe in saying that if you watch these you will not be disappointed. I'm probably going to order Shiloh and Chickamauga in the near future.