Waterman
The films
Duke has been filmed since the 1910s, mostly by other people, for their own purposes. What survives is scattered across newsreels, home reels and a small number of finished documentaries.
Not yet
There are finished documentaries and this page is built to hold them. The files are not with us yet, and the rights to show them sit with the people who made them, which is a separate question from having a copy.
We are not going to put up a black rectangle with a play button on it. When a film can be shown here properly, with the permission written down and captions on it, it will appear on this page with its synopsis, its chapter list, its full credits and a transcript.
What each entry will carry when it lands:
- Title, runtime, director and production company
- A synopsis, and notes on what the production found in the archives
- Chapter list with timings, readable before you press play
- Full credits, including everyone interviewed
- A complete transcript, which is also how a deaf reader and a search engine get at it
- Captions, in every language we can do properly
- Who holds the rights, and what we are permitted to do with it
Why not just put them on YouTube
Because of what happens when the film ends. YouTube's end screen fills with whatever its recommender thinks is adjacent, which for a documentary about a Hawaiian waterman means wipeout compilations and nostalgia channels, with advertising sold against all of it. That is not a judgement about YouTube. It is that the last thirty seconds of a film about somebody's life should not be somebody else's inventory.
When these are hosted they will be hosted here, in a plain player, with nothing after them.
If you hold footage
Newsreel, home movie, a reel in a family garage, anything with him in it. We are interested in knowing it exists even if we can never show it, and we will help you get it somewhere that can look after it properly.
Contact details to follow.