Local Producer Nominated for News Documentary Emmy
Cape Cod Chronicle August 31, 2006

By: William F. Galvin

Judy Blatchford knows a good story. She admits she was a “news junkie” at an early age. Next month the local resident and associate producer's film, “A Touch of Greatness,” a 54-minute documentary on an elementary school teacher, will be considered for an Emmy.

“Just to be nominated with all the documentaries out there is an honor,” said Blatchford, a resident of West Harwich and co-owner of Ay! Caramba, a Mexican restaurant in Harwich Center .

Blatchford has worked in television for many years, including a stint for WHDH in Boston in the early 1990s. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth , the Acton native said she furthered her education in technical school and learned editing techniques.

She went to work in television in Boston , but was bother by the “if it bleeds, it leads” approach to regional television news. Blatchford said one day she was working the microwave truck, beaming stories back to the station about three separate murders. The news team was the first on the scene when a 10-year-old boy was found with the top of his head blown off.

That day she quite her job and decided to move to Los Angeles . Taking a job at Greystone Film Company, she began producing documentaries for the Arts and Entertainment Channel, History Channel and CBS. It was a job she enjoyed.

“I like the story,” Blatchford said of documentary work.

In 1998 she moved to New York City . That is when she got involved in the “Touch of Greatness” project. It was an independent project she had heard about. A former student wanted to tell the store of an amazing teacher who impacted the lives of many of his students.

The student, Leslie Sullivan, was having a difficult time producing the documentary and allowed Blatchford to help with the project. There was a lot of archival footage dating back to the 1960s of elementary school teacher Albert Cullum, who had taught at St. Luke's School in Greenwich Village and later in Rye , N.Y. Blatchford recommended they have a reunion and many former students and their parents showed up.

“He was such an amazing man, he touched so many people,” Blatchford said. “He believed every child had a touch of greatness, but it could not be reached in the same way. But once you did reach it, they'd bloom.”

She said he was a strong believer in using the arts to find that special avenue of learning for students. Cullum would have students perform the works of Shakespeare and Socrates. His students would take on the parts, own them, and through the process, find the greatness.

Cullum at one time agreed to take on the most disruptive students in another teacher's class to illustrate the greatness within each student. That once disruptive student went on to become a lawyer, but decided to leave his practice and become a teacher in New York City , she said.

Sullivan met Cullum when he was an instructor at Stonehill College and she was studying to be a teacher. He had a profound impact on the way she thought about education.

Blatchford, who purchased a home in West Harwich in 1992, started working with Sullivan in 1998 in New York and traveled back in fourth to the Cape . In 2000, she and her partner, Ira Mendoza, opened Ay! Caramba in Harwich Center . Blatchford said she became worn down from the travel and got sick, requiring her to turn the project over to Catherine Gund, the founder of Aubin Pictures, who took over as the producer.

Cullum died just before the final version of the documentary was finished. Sullivan and Gund finished the project, and in 2005 it was part of the PBS Independent Lens series. It was nominated for a News Documentary Emmy for 2006.

It's a black tie affair, Blatchford said of the event scheduled for Sept. 25 at the Marriot Marquis hotel in New York City . The documentary will compete with four other nominees – “Born in Brothels,” “Children of Leningradsky,” “Dope Sick,” and “Left of the Dial.”

Selectman on Monday night invited Blatchford to show the documentary in town. The associate producer said she would like to do that. Ay! Caramba puts on a fundraiser for the Harwich Friends of the Arts each fall and Blatchford said she would like to arrange a showing associated with that event.

“I hope a lot of people get to watch this film,” she said. “They need to realize how important education is. We need to do a lot more for kids.”

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