This archives piece today unfortunately is a post mortem for the death of the oldest standing movie studio in America (built in 1910) and the first home to Universal Studio . Yesterday into today the Champion Studio sitting just north of the Coytesville (Fort Lee) border on the lonely Dead End street called Fifth was destroyed. A lone bulldozer took apart one of the most important pieces of American film history. I did retrieve a brick and a scrap of wood with permission of a worker. This will go into our Fort Lee Film Commission archive housed in the historic Fort Lee Museum building on Palisade Avenue. These artifacts will join the others pulled from the building several months ago which include a portion of the original dressing room wall and a full dressing room door that date to the construction of the studio in 1910.
We did reach out to Englewood Cliffs as far back as the summer of 2012 when we first learned of the possible sale of the building. Since that time we worked with the Englewood Cliffs Historic Committee to gain access to the building. The Fort Lee Film Commission won a Bergen County History Grant to produce a documentary about the Champion. The work is currently in post production and we hope to have it completed in early 2014. Originally we had hoped to premiere it in Englewood Cliffs and then Fort Lee but as the Executive Director of the Fort Lee Film Commission I think this history deserves to serve as a tool to prevent any future destruction of the fragile history of the American film industry. My hope is to enter the documentary into film festivals and the first one we have our eyes on is the Golden Door International Film Festival run by the famed Sorvino acting family. This wonderful film festival is located in the historic Loews Theatre in Jersey City. What better festival or venue to premiere this documentary than in one of the most historic movie theatres in America, one that is being preserved into the 21st century.
The Fort Lee Film Commisison did all we could up to and including creation of an online petition - see the link here - http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-champion-studio-the-oldest-standing-studio/?utm_medium=socia... In a matter of a few days we were able to get well over 200 signatures from around the world in support of saving this building. We had hoped to reach 1,000 signatures by January 1st and then submit the petition to the Englewood Cliffs Mayor and Council in the hopes they would slow down the process and halt the issuance of a demolition permit for a short period of time to explore options. We did send a letter of support for saving the building to the Englewood Cliffs Mayor and Council several months ago. One option the Fort Lee Film Commission floated to the Englewood Cliffs Mayor & Council in that letter was to involve the electronics giant LG, the same LG that is in the process of building their North American headquarters about two blocks from the Champion site. To us it made perfect sense to reach out to such a corporate giant with ties to the 21st century media industry in the hopes they could come in and save the Champion and find a new use for it in terms of creation of a digital studio for the training of local students in the ways of 21st century film production. That was not to be.....
So what do we have left besides the broken timbers, chipped bricks and dashed hopes? We have our battle cry "Remember the Champion Studioi!" That is what we intend to do as a film commission, to keep the Champion Studio spirit alive through screenings of our newly named documentary "Remember the Champion Studio!" If we can screen this at venues across the United States it would go a long way in building consensus to save what film history survives in America today. So my friends please remember the Champion Studio and through our combined efforts it will not have died in vain.
