BFS history, the video

"This Is Our Quiet Time"

BFS ordinarily shares brief clips in its Video Archives, but we make an exception this week with the full version of the original BFS musical, Forward to the Past. Written and performed by the BFS community in 1989, Forward to the Past: the Historical Hysterical Follies of Brooklyn Friends School, relates our school's history as uncovered by an extra-terrestrial cultural anthropologist visiting the Planet Earth in his search for "friendly peoples." And he just happened to land at BFS. Of course, there are many familiar faces among the cast of teachers, parents, students, and friends, including Cheryl Foote, Don Knies, Jack Ramey, Martin Norregaard, Lawrence Gibson and many others. A clip of just the hip-hop finale was posted almost a year ago, yet today the beautiful solo, "This Is Our Quiet Time," beginning at 49:30, merits a listen.

BFS school-year beginnings, today and yesterday

Brooklyn Friends School began its 148th school year this month with its traditional convocation. Our opening assembly for older students, held at the Brooklyn Meeting House on Schermerhorn Street, came to be known as convocation in the early 1990s, yet this year's largest-ever student body required separate convocations for the middle and upper school divisions. Quite similar to years past, as one can see on this page from the 1916 Brooklyn Friends School catalog.

1916: Principal John L. Carver addresses the entire
BFS student body at a Thursday assembly

98 years ago,  each division, then called departments, held separate opening exercises just as we did this year. The photo above was taken at one of the bi-monthly assemblies of the entire school, in the exact same meeting room at the Brooklyn Meeting House. Since 1916, the meeting room has changed slightly and our entire student body has grown by perhaps 300 percent, but BFS and its historic home of the Brooklyn Meeting House remain beloved by students as one can see in this video of the upper school convocation, featuring the upper school student body singing our school song of today "Simple Gifts."

Simple Gifts 2014-15 from Brooklyn Friends School on Vimeo.

A truly phenomenal woman

A Truly Phenomenal Woman
BFS Dance Concert 1989

With Maya Angelou's passing last week, let's go back 25 years to 1989, the year which saw the creation and first performance of "A Truly Phenomenal Woman" at the BFS Dance Concert. This short dance was set to Maya Angelou's poem "Phenomenal Woman." Choreographed by Monique N. Brown '89 and first performed by Ming Lou Rosado '90, "A Truly Phenomenal Woman" has since been performed by other BFS students at later BFS Dance Concerts over the years as it became an important dance for the BFS Dance Concert repertoire. Maya Angelou's words continue to positively impact our world, and this dance has also positively impacted generations at BFS. Maya Angelou remains in our grateful thoughts for many reasons, and one is the empowerment her words gave our students which inspired them to create and perform this dance.

A Truly Phenomenal Woman - 1989 from Brooklyn Friends School on Vimeo.

Let Your Films Speak: The Bridge Film Festival,15 Years Young

"Know your history, ask questions and follow your heart." 

Garrett Bradley, BFS '03, Bridge Film Festival alumna

It's Spring Break, but it's also time to reserve your tickets for the 15th annual Bridge Film Festival on Thursday, April 10 at BFS. The festival was established in 1999 at BFS by Andy Cohen, BFS director of media services, and it celebrates Quaker ideals in action via short films created by students in grades 5 through 12 from Friends schools and Friends meetings around the world. Judges are members of the film industry and related fields, and selecting finalists is always difficult. Festival director Andy Cohen was interviewed in 2009 on the origins of the Bridge Film Festival. In its short history, the Bridge Film Festival has become an important way for young artists to connect and collaborate while creating purposeful, values-based films which spring from their common background in Quakerism. The founder of Quakerism George Fox once famously stated "Let your life speak," so the Bridge Film Festival encourages young filmmakers to "Let your films speak."

BFS 9 Years Ago: A Video Interview with Gil Zalman

Thoughts this week turn to the many wonderful people we know and have known at BFS, particularly those no longer with us. Such thoughts make me feel fortunate to have worked with the late Gilbert Zalman. I so enjoyed my occasional conversations with Gil over the years that I envied his students their near-daily opportunity to learn with and from him. We're only human and we often take things and people for granted, so I know I may not have been able to appreciate Gil as much at a young age as I continue to appreciate him as an adult and as his colleague.

Mysteries from the Video Archives

Dance Concert Rehearsal, probably 1998

Digitizing much of the BFS dance department's video collection for the BFS Archives video collection yielded unidentified rehearsal videos and one music concert video. Most of these videos seem to have been created after 2000. One dance concert rehearsal video seems to be from 1992 or 1998: that video was dated "Monday, March 2" and the only years with that day and date, which also add up for this video, are 1992 and 1998, but I'm pretty sure it's 1998 since I know some of the dancers in the clip personally. This archivist would greatly appreciate your assistance in identifying the years in which these five videos were created. Please lend a hand and comment below.

Great moments in BFS Basketball, 1925 and today

1925, BFS Boys Basketball Team,
with the Friends School League
Championship Trophy

It's a great basketball season for BFS teams, so today let's look back 89 years ago to February of 1925, when BFS won the Friends Schools national title in boys basketball by defeating Wilmington Friends. The BFS Digital Archives has this photo of our 1925 boys basketball team, with the Friends School trophy, which rests just outside our lower gym at Pearl Street today.

A shy princess from BFS's Once Upon A Mattress, 1988

1988 Once Upon A Mattress - Shy

From the 1988 BFS musical production of Once Upon A Mattress comes the song "Shy" in which Princess Winnifred the Woebegone expresses her true nature as she tries to find Prince Dauntless the Drab for the very first time. And this after she swam the moat to get to the castle, much to everyone's dismay. I think Carol Burnett would be proud.

Feeling your Blue Pride? Make that Indigo

It's a throwback this fine Thursday to the "Mood Indigo" scene from the 1989 BFS original musical A Small Cabaret. A Small Cabaret was a departure from the traditional BFS musical: this ensemble production featured standards like Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo" and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)," yet it also included more contemporary songs like "Miss Celie's Blues" from the film The Color Purple.

A bolt from the blue, it's true, it's you...

1987 Dames At Sea

Take two minutes to enjoy a charming duet in the BFS Middle School's 1987 production of Dames at Sea, capturing the moment when our romantic leads Dick and Ruby first meet, she swoons into his arms and they both know it's true love.

Stretching ourselves once upon the Natchez Trace

1987's The Robber Bridegroom, Upper School Musical

Scanning a 1920s scrapbook by hand can be monotonous, so I've been multi-tasking by going to my family's collection of BFS videos once again since I know video did not always survive in the school's collections over the years. My own home was the source of last week's Forward to the Past clip. Today we share a short scene from 1987's Upper School musical, The Robber Bridegroom which is followed by some quick insights from director Phil Bratnober at the cast party. Phil's words about "stretching ourselves to the limit" are worth hearing no matter when BFS was a part of your life. In case you did not notice, the band for this production is in the hayloft above the stage and the whole set is a carpentry feat that just goes to show "where there's a will, there's a way."

Now, what BFS gems do you have lying around your homes?

Video archives return with Forward to the Past, 1989

Forward to the Past - Finale - 1989

Do you remember Forward to the Past: Historical Hysterical Follies of Brooklyn Friends School? That was the 1989 musical about BFS - written and produced by BFS community members who also starred in the production. Forward to the Past was about an alien named T.E. from the far-distant future. T.E. was a budding cultural anthropologist visiting the planet Earth in the great search for "friendly" peoples. The actual site of T.E.'s visit just happened to be 375 Pearl Street in Brooklyn where he stumbled upon a trunk of memorabilia and shared its contents with his superiors in outer space. They learned a bit of Brooklyn Friends School's history and learned it has always been a friendly place. This rainy Thursday, let's look at the finale of Forward to the Past which features our first principal Mary Haviland leading the cast in song.

Canned Heat, with a brief history of Ceramics at BFS

Again, my colleague, director of media services Andy Cohen, comes through with a nice find as he transfers his own VHS collection. BFS has a long history in ceramics education and this short film by BFS students is about the Japanese pottery technique, Raku, as taught by BFS ceramics teacher Ellen Kahan during the Minimester of Winter, 1999.

Che bella voce!

Take a look back to 1993 for a fabulous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at BFS, sung by Middle and Upper School science teacher and past athletic director Janet Villas. Big thanks for making this possible go straight out to several of my BFS colleagues: director of media services Andy Cohen for the transfer; current athletic director David Gardella for saving the original VHS; and, of course, to Janet for her beautiful voice and performance. And, wow, basketball uniforms have changed over time! 

Video killed the archivist's mind...

Interesting issues emerge with video in the BFS Archives, particularly that VHS quality sure does not stand the test of time. I've now learned that 25 years is a pretty accurate VHS lifespan. Transferring Dance Concert VHS has been the major focus in the archives recently. There are often multiple copies of each Dance Concert, so listening to the same songs over and over can drive one to the brink.

Lights! Camera! Action!

In 2001, Brooklyn Friends School and its students were featured with Alanis Morissette and other celebrities in a public service announcement for Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The video runs five minutes, and it consists of six PSAs which range in length from 60 to 10 seconds. To learn more about Teaching Tolerance, A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, please visit tolerance.org.