Ira Jackson is an escaped slave. Hugh Nixon Shaw is a fire and brimstone preacher without a church. Bootjack Mary is a middle-aged prostitute and John Henry Fairbank is a silver spoon landowner.
They star in Black Gold, an Aaron Huggett written and directed film about the history of the discovery of oil at Black Creek, now called Oil Springs.
"It's about a piece of history that's not centric to crime, but it is very gritty," said Huggett. "These people went through very difficult circumstances coming to basically a swamp where there was potential to make great wealth, but not much else. There was no town, no infrastructure, just natural resources in the 1850s and 1860s. Their innovations and toil is what ignited the Petrochemical industry."
J.H. Fairbank is played by real-life descendant Michael Henry while Edna Fairbanks is played by Madi graves, daughter of hockey star Adam Graves.
Black Gold and another Huggett directed film, Black Donnellys, will be shown January 19 at Sarnia Imperial Theatre, February 1 and 2 at Victoria Hall in Petrolia and February 7 at Kineto Theatre in Forest.
Tickets can be purchased at www.ElectricMotionPictures.com/screenings and the trailer can be seen at www.vimeo.com.
