Under a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ALT Films will produce five motion pictures for MOBIL MASTERPIECE THEATRE'S AMERICAN COLLECTION.  Three titles have been set thus far:

Agee

James Agee's luminous and largely autobiographical novel is a portrait of the fragility — and the resilience — of family.  Published posthumously, the book won the Pulitzer Prize and capped a career that included the screenplay for The African Queen and, with photographer Walker Evans, the classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a revelatory look at the lives of poor Southern farmers.  The film was directed on location in Tennessee by Gil Cates for ALT Films. more ...

Santiago

"In the twenty-one years I lived with my mother, we moved at least twenty times."  So begins Esmeralda Santiago's Almost a Woman, a riveting memoir of the coming-of-age of a young Puerto Rican girl in New York City.  When "Negi," as her family calls her, makes the biggest move of all — from Puerto Rico to a crowded tenement apartment in Brooklyn — she enters a new phase of her life: the transition from one culture to another and from childhood to womanhood.  Watched over by a strict mother and a tippling grandmother, Negi lives in two worlds, guiding her family into the new world of America in the mornings and attending New York's prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons.  And all the while she works toward an understanding of who she is — child, woman, American and Puerto Rican.

Esmeralda Santiago won national praise for her first memoir, When I was Puerto Rican.  Almost a Woman is her second memoir, and her newest book, Las Mamis, came out in 2000.

Hughes

This dramatic story, set in a small Iowa town during the Depression, focuses on the relationship between Cora, a young African American domestic, her employer, Mrs. Studevant, and Mrs. Studevant's daugher, Jessie.  As a member of the only African American family in town Cora lives a bleakly isolated life, but a deep bond develops between her and Jessie.   Cora is devastated when Mrs. Studevant's shame and narrow thinking result in Jessie's death.  At the funeral, Cora is faced with a choice: to let the cause of Jessie's death remain a lie or to stand and speak the truth — and lose everything she has in life.  more ...

Welty

Uncle Daniel Ponder, whose fortune is exceeded by his desire to give it away, is the talk of Clay County and a source of vexation for his niece, Edna Earle, whose efforts to thwart his generosity prove unequal to his ingenuity.  Bonnie Dee Peacock, the little girl from the country who become Uncle Daniel's second wife in order that he may have someone close by to whom he can give things, is not so small that her disappearance goes unnoticed.  Uncle Daniel's trial for the alleged murder of his seventeen-year-old bride is a comic masterpiece worthy of Welty at her best.

Cather

THE SONG OF THE LARK tells the story of Thea Kronborg, a young girl with a musical gift who learns that the gift possesses the artist as much as the artist possesses the gift.  To realize her destiny as a musician Thea must leave her family and home in Moonstone, Colorado to pursue her piano studies in Chicago, where she discovers that her true talent is her voice.  In this strange and intimidating environment she submerges herself in her studies and struggles to make ends meet until she encounters a wealthy young man who sponsors her.  They fall in love —  but in the end Thea is alone as she prepares for the final step in her development as an artist: her departure for Europe.  more ...