Round Barn Ranch in Derby, Kansas was designed by architect Benton Steele in 1910.
The new documentary The Barn Raisers by Emmy® nominated filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films will be showcased at a Kansas Humanities Council preview event on Saturday, November 12th at the Community Center, 203 N. Third St., Marion, Kansas. This special program is free to the public and co-sponsored by the Kansas Barn Alliance. The one-hour film will begin at 2:00 p.m. followed by Q&A with the filmmakers and barn scholar Sally Hatcher.
Gypsum, Kansas farmer Leon Hahn and filmmaker Kelly Rundle take a break in Hahn's pride and joy.
The Barn Raisers tells the story of barns in the Upper Midwest by examining them through the lens of architecture. The film explores what barn styles, building methods and materials tell us about the people who built them, the life they lived and the role these “country cathedrals” played in the settling and building of the Nation.
Barns were constructed by farmer-craftsmen, professional builders who traveled from job to job and even architects like Frank Lloyd Wright. The Barn Raisers will paint a cinematic portrait of barns and builders, an important way of life that has been largely forgotten, and the film will remind us that these remnants from America’s rural past are still here to be interpreted and experienced.
Whitewater Falls Stock Farm Barn in Towanda, Kansas is in the process of being restored.
Numerous Kansas barns and barn experts appear in the film. Several featured structures include the historic 1910 Round Barn Ranch designed and built by architect Benton Steele; the Cooper Barn, considered to be Kansas' largest barn in the state; and the Whitewater Falls Stock Barn which was one of the country’s largest Percheron draft horse breeding farms. The barn is in the early stages of restoration. In addition to Kansas, the film was shot in Iowa, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio and Michigan.
Through its fiscal sponsor the Kansas Barn Alliance, The Barn Raisers was funded in part by the Kansas Humanities Council, a non-profit cultural organization promoting understanding of the history, traditions, and ideas that shape our lives and build community. The views and opinions expressed by this program do not necessarily reflect those of the Kansas Humanities Council.
The Kansas Barn Alliance is a Kansas not-for-profit organized in 2006 to discover, memorialize and preserve the story of rural Kansas, especially barns.
The Rundles are the producers of the regional Emmy® nominated historical documentaries Country School: One Room – One Nation, River to River: Iowa’s Forgotten Highway 6 and Letters Home to Hero Street (co-produced with WQPT-PBS).