Maurice Prather
Maurice William Prather( September 6, 1926- January 9, 2001) was an American motion picture and still photographer and film director.
He was born in Miami, Florida, the son of Maurice J. Prather, a mechanic, cabinet maker, and woodworker, and Zora M. Prather, both of them born in Missouri.
Young Maurice Jr. also had a younger sister, Laura Jo, some two years his junior.
The Prather family was living in Kansas City, Missouri, by 1930, where Maurice Jr.'s father found work at a local business called Greenwood's.
By the time he was in his senior year of high school, Maurice Jr. had become interested in photography and had an after- school job as an assistant cameraman and laboratory technician at the Calvin Company in Kansas City, the largest production company for industrial films in the world.
Upon turning 18 in 1944, Prather did not join the armed forces as most American young people were during those wartime days( Prather may have suffered from a physical problem which prevented him from serving in the armed forces).
Instead, he found work as a photographer of wartime airplanes for North American Aviation in Kansas City.
In 1945, he became an engineering photographer for Trans World Airlines( TWA), who for many years had a hub in Kansas City.
Still living with his parents in Kansas City, Prather then returned to the Calvin Company as an assistant cameraman for industrial films once again.
This was the longest Prather held onto a job during these early days in Kansas City --- two years( 1946- 1948).
For some reason, he decided to abandon photography altogether for a one- year stint as a schedule clerk at a Sears- Roebuck department store in Kansas City.
In 1949, he decided to get a college education and so enrolled in the journalism program at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.
While at KU, Prather got a part- time job at the local Centron Corporation film studio, working as a photographer once again on educational and industrial short films.
Prather's college activities included writing for the" University Daily Kansan" newspaper at KU and writing and photographing with several other students a" highlight book" of the 1951- 52 season of the KU Jayhawks basketball team.
Prather completed his journalism degree in June, 1953, and immediately went to work full- time at Centron.
Prather put in nearly ten years at Centron, making over one hundred educational and industrial films, many of them prize- winners.
Other than motion picture and still photography, he did sound recording on films and after a while began to direct films.
It was while at Centron that Prather met his wife, Rozanne, whom he married in the late 1950s.
He also first became acquainted with director Herk Harvey.
In 1959, Centron's camera shop, Mosser- Wolf Cameras, was sold to Prather and several business partners who opened Photon Cameras, a successful camera retail store and portrait studio that Prather served as an owner- operator of until his leaving Lawrence in 1962.
In 1961, Prather photographed Carnival of Souls, Herk Harvey's Lawrence- produced feature film whose groundbreaking cinematography influenced the horror and science fiction film genres, although the movie did n't really find its audience until 1989.
By the time Carnival of Souls was released in late 1962, Prather had left Lawrence with his wife to work as services coordinator and photographer for Horizon Productions, a small, Kansas City- based nontheatrical film production studio.
In 1967, Prather moved over to Coleman Film Enterprises, another educational film company, which was headquartered in Shawnee Mission, Kansas.
Prather worked there as a photographer until 1977, when he and his wife( who had by this time had two daughters, Anne and Stefanie), moved to California where Prather attempted to give a Hollywood filmmaking career a try.
He had little success.
" My wife and I had lived in California and really did n't feel like moving back there," Prather said in a 2000 interview in Kansas City after the revival of interest in Carnival of Souls.
" I did a lot of movie work and all of the still work for Centron.
I prefer to do still photography.
I came here to Kansas City[ in 1983] and I got out of the motion picture business because it was too expensive.
A lot of the stuff I did was food photography.
I love food photography.
I also did portraits to please myself, not to please the person I was photographing.
You get a little old lady saying,' Make me look like I'm 20 years old.'"
The revival of interest in his old feature film Carnival of Souls during the 1990s was a pleasant surprise for Prather, but for some reason he did not attend the 1989 reunion of the film's cast and crew in Lawrence, even though he was already listed in the advertisements and programs for the event as one of the featured speakers during the ceremonies.
Prather died at the age of 74 on January 9, 2001, at his home in Kansas City, of an unspecified cause, most likely renal failure.
However, Prather will remain well- known and widely praised for his innovative and creative photography in Carnival of Souls, as the film continues to be viewed in homes and theaters and aired on television, amazingly, after nearly forty years, when most black- and- white, low- budget films from the 1960s were long forgotten after less than only two or three years.
The Ship of Souls (film)
The Ship of Souls was a 1925 silent 3- D western, directed by Charles Miller.
It was based on the western novel" The Ship of Souls" by Emerson Hough, published after his death.
It was produced by Max O. Miller, who created the 3- D process used in the film.
Herk Harvey
Harold Arnold" Herk" Harvey( June 3, 1924 – April 3, 1996) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and film producer.
Carnival of Souls (1998 film)
Carnival of Souls( also billed as Wes Craven Presents' Carnival of Souls') is a 1998 American horror film, a remake of Herk Harvey's 1962 horror film of the same name, although it has very little in common with the story of the original.
It stars Bobbie Phillips and comedian Larry Miller, and was directed by Adam Grossman and Ian Kessner.
It was executive produced by Wes Craven.
America: Freedom to Fascism
America: Freedom to Fascism is a 2006 film by filmmaker and activist Aaron Russo, covering a variety of subjects that Russo contends are detrimental to Americans.
Topics include the Internal Revenue Service( IRS), the income tax, Federal Reserve System, national ID cards( REAL ID Act), human- implanted RFID tags, Diebold electronic voting machines, globalization, Big Brother, taser weapons abuse, and the use of terrorism by the government as a means to diminish the citizens' rights.
The film has been criticized for its promotion of conspiracy theories, its copious factual errors, and its repeated misrepresentations of the individuals and views it purports to criticize.
La Bestia humana
La Bestia humana is a 1957 Argentine film whose story is based on the novel" La Bête Humaine" by the French writer Émile Zola.
Freedom to Die
Freedom to Die is a 1961 British crime thriller film directed by Francis Searle.
Carnival of Souls
Carnival of Souls is a 1962 American independent horror film written, produced, and directed by Herk Harvey, and starring Candace Hilligoss.
Its plot follows Mary Henry, a young woman whose life is disturbed after a car accident.
She relocates to a new city, where she finds herself unable to assimilate with the locals, and becomes drawn to the pavilion of an abandoned carnival; director Harvey also appears in the film as a ghoulish stranger who stalks her throughout.
Filmed in Lawrence, Kansas and Salt Lake City, "Carnival of Souls" was shot on a budget of $33,000, and Harvey employed various guerrilla filmmaking techniques to finish the production.
It was Harvey's only feature film, and did not gain widespread attention when originally released as a double feature with "The Devil's Messenger" in 1962.
Set to an organ score by Gene Moore, the film has been contemporarily noted by critics and film scholars for its cinematography and foreboding atmosphere.
The film has a large cult following and is occasionally screened at film and Halloween festivals, and has been cited as a wide-ranging influence on numerous filmmakers, including David Lynch, George A. Romero and even Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel.
Aaron Russo
Aaron Russo( February 14, 1943 – August 24, 2007) was an American entertainment businessman, film producer and director, and political activist.
He was best known for producing such movies as" Trading Places Wise Guys", and" The Rose".
Later in life, he created various Libertarian- leaning political documentaries including" Mad as Hell" and.
After a six- year period with cancer, Russo died on August 24, 2007.
Candace Hilligoss
Mary Candace Hilligoss( born August 14, 1935) is an American actress and former model.
She gained fame for her role as Mary Henry in the independent horror film" Carnival of Souls"( 1962).

Question: Which film whose director is younger, America: Freedom To Fascism or Carnival Of Souls?