NEW DOCUMENTARY REVEALS THE FORGOTTEN EXPLORERS OF LOUISIANA PURCHASE

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - With the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase approaching in 2003, historic and popular interest will revive to celebrate the great Lewis and Clark expedition. But scholars at the University of Arkansas remind the nation that, in that vast wilderness of new territory, Lewis and Clark were not the lone explorers.

A new documentary film - written, directed and produced by the Emmy award-winning team of Larry Foley and Dale Carpenter, with original music composed by UA professor James Greeson - resurrects the story of two nearly-forgotten adventurers, who set out to explore the southern reaches of the Louisiana Territory, while their more famous counterparts trekked west and north.

Like Lewis and Clark, William Dunbar and George Hunter were gentlemen-scholars with an adventurous streak. In 1804, after much correspondence, President Thomas Jefferson charged the pair with instructions to undertake a journey that would rival the Lewis and Clark expedition, already underway.

In "The Forgotten Expedition," Foley and Carpenter track the disappointments of the Hunter-Dunbar journey - from the indian hostilities that cut their expedition short to the considerable shadow cast by Lewis and Clark, who usurped the spotlight of history. But the documentary also records their triumphs - the fact that Hunter and Dunbar offered the first reports on Louisiana and Arkansas, traced the Ouachita River and discovered the natural hot springs that would become one of the country’s first national parks.

"These men could have been every bit as famous as Lewis and Clark if Jefferson hadn’t scaled back their journey out of fear of the Osage [indians]," Foley said. "Even then, because Hunter and Dunbar kept such detailed journals, they were quite well known and published right after the voyage. It wasn’t until Lewis and Clark returned that history started to forget them."

Those detailed journals represented a key element in discovering the expedition anew and developing the documentary, according to Foley and Carpenter. Reaching two centuries back in time, the filmmakers depended on historical documents - diaries, letters, scarce newspaper clippings - to piece together their script.

In addition, they called upon scholars from multiple fields to fill in the details of the journey. On-camera interviews feature several historians, including Trey Berry of Ouachita Baptist University and UA researcher Jeannie Whayne. But the documentary also calls upon an archeologist, biologist and chemist, who bring the perspective of their fields to the story and who comment on the natural observations that Hunter and Dunbar made.

Yet if historical research challenged the filmmakers, the visual element posed an even greater obstacle. Due to the expedition’s early 19th century time-frame, no still photography existed to illustrate the story. And with only a single painting of Dunbar in existence and no portrait of Hunter whatsoever, Foley and Carpenter struggled to bring to life two forgotten and seemingly faceless men. Their resulting search for artwork, locations and landscapes sent Foley and Carpenter on their own journey around the nation - tracing the steps of Jefferson, Hunter and Dunbar, even leading up the Ouachita River.

"We probably spent thirteen months shooting and editing this film, and the search for visual materials continued right into the final weeks. But that side of the research is just as critical as the script or the interviews," Foley said. "We can’t tell anything that we can’t show."

But after three trips up the Ouachita River, after location shoots at Jefferson’s home Monticello and Dunbar’s Mississippi estate, after recruiting local artists to provide sketches and local men to reenact treacherous moments of the journey - Foley and Carpenter produced a remarkably beautiful film. Carpenter’s ability to capture the character of location and landscape not only conveys the atmosphere, the sights and sensations of the journey, but it subtly stands in for the character of the men.

Carole Adornetto, director of production for the Arkansas Educational Television Network (AETN), believes the visual quality of the film along with its historical content will ensure its national distribution.

"Foley and Carpenter are aces at their work. They bring years of experience to the documentary process, and, most importantly, they have artists’ eyes. They know how to use the medium of television to tell a story," Adornetto said. "Whatever their subject, they manage to find the universal spirit that hooks the viewer, draws them in regardless of their interests.

"In the case of 'The Forgotten Expedition,’ that spirit has to do with our curiosity about the environment, our drive to conquer the unknown and the desire to test personal limits for the acquisition of knowledge," she continued.

For Carpenter and Foley, the thrill of documentary filmmaking is the fusion of so many different media, which layer information in a way that lends greater depth to any story. The stories they most enjoy telling, however, are those that few people have heard before - the ones that add greater depth to our own understanding.

"We don’t think of 'The Forgotten Expedition’ as the other Lewis and Clark story," Foley said. "It’s just what the title suggests - a story that fits into the entire epic of discovering and building this nation, yet only a handful of scholars and enthusiasts know that it happened."

Funding and support for "The Forgotten Expedition" were provided by the Arkansas Humanities Council, the Arkansas National Heritage Commission, Ouachita Baptist University and the University of Arkansas.