This week we launched a crowdfunder for two new documentaries in the works that should pop up in late spring 2025.
Big Cat of Georgia: A Fan’s Note on Johnny Mize and the Glory Days of Baseball
For baseball and history fans, this doc goes behind the scenes to look at baseball Hall-of-Famer Johnny “Big Cat” Mize (1913-1993) and his home in the Appalachian foothills of northeast Georgia. Author and baseball fan Jerry Grillo did a deep dive on Mize for his 2024 biography “Big Cat,” so we followed him around to get the inside scoop.
Jerry lives near the old Mize homestead and has his own family story to tell about taking 20 years to write the book. In the end, he discovered things about Mize that no one else knew, changing the way he saw one of the premier sluggers of the 1940s. Unlike most white southerners of his generation, Mize played with the best Black and Latin American stars of his generation years before Jackie Robinson integrated big league baseball.
While Mize was starring in all-white baseball in the late 1930s, across the color line in Atlanta the Black Crackers were attracting huge crowds at Ponce de Leon ballpark. All-star players like James “Red” Moore (1916-2016) were heroes in the community, and we were fortunate to interview him in 2008 when he was a spry 92 years old. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he lived long enough to be recognized for his playing ability by Major League Baseball and even President Obama during a 2013 White House ceremony.
More than a baseball story, “Big Cat of Georgia” looks at people who feel strong ties to their community's history, whether that be a local sports legend who put his town on the map or a Negro Leaguer who didn’t receive his full due until decades later.
Everything Elvis: Artist Joni Mabe Is More Than All That
When we started digging into the Mize family history, we soon came across his third cousin Joni Mabe in the next town over, Cornelia. Mabe is an acclaimed artist whose work spans over 40 years and and runs the gamut from religious-mosaic-like glitter portraits of country musicians to book art to "sculptural assemblages that appear both nostalgic for and critical of romantic notions of Americana” (Burnaway). Most recently she was a 2024 finalist for the $50,000 Hudgens Center for Arts & Learning Prize.
Check out her work here: https://jonimabe.net/
Another side of Mabe is her work as a devoted Elvisologist. She is the curator/proprietor of the Panoramic Encyclopedia of Everything Elvis that showcases her collection of over 30,000 Elvis-related items including a wart removed from the King’s right wrist in 1958. Yes, truly.
She houses this Elvis pilgrimage site in her great-grandparents' former three-story home that became her grandmother’s boardinghouse, then listed on the National Register of Historic Places after she and her father lovingly restored it. The house features exhibits related to the history of her family and the community, and some paranormal activity unrelated to Elvis (or is it?).
Looking Back at 2024
Thanks to individual contributions, our 2024 docs Saving the Chattahoochee (co-sponsored by Georgia Humanities and University of Georgia Special Collections) and Just Another Bombing? made over 30 rounds of theater/library/classroom screenings as well as broadcasts on public television. If you missed seeing them in public, you can now find links to them and other films at hjacobscreative.com.
Contributions from "Viewers Like You"
If you appreciate the way we tell stories (described as “lo-fi, thoughtful boutique affairs that keep it local while exploring big ideas” by Candice Dyer in the Atlanta Constitution), please consider a contribution. Our shoestring budgets mostly go towards paying others involved in the process — musicians, editors, sound designer, colorist, drone pilot, etc. — and delivering films pro bono to Georgia public television.
And if you’d like to go along on this creative journey with us, your help will be noted in the film’s credits.
We’ll also keep you updated with news about the film premiere happening in late spring 2025. We’re happy to announce that David Kirkpatrick, executive producer on Carville: Winning is Everything, Stupid!, has already signed on in a similar role for “Big Cat of Georgia.”