This page is hosted by JournalNow.com, Web site of the Winston-Salem Journal. This story was originally published Sunday, April 20, 2003.

You may not be familiar with the names of Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. or David Richmond. You may not know Willie Allen, Melvin Croom or Ernie Averett, either.

But each one is a star.

Each man is featured in full-length documentaries being screened later this week at the RiverRun International Film Festival. McNeil, McCain, Blair and Richmond are better known as "the Greensboro Four" - and their story is told in Rebecca Cerese's February One. Allen, Croom and Averett are tobacco farmers whose story is told in Cynthia Hill's Tobacco Money Feeds My Family.

Both of these films were made in North Carolina, and both are about subjects ingrained in the social fabric of the state's history. Hill, in fact, was also a co-producer of February One.

On Feb. 1, 1960, four black students from N.C. A&T State University entered the Woolworth's department store in Greensboro and proceeded to sit down at the lunch counter. Trouble was, the counter was reserved for white customers only.

With the Civil Rights movement simmering nationwide, all eyes soon turned to Greensboro. The four students refused to budge. The store refused to serve them. Although tempers flared, the incident did not result in violence.

"The fact that a nonviolent protest worked is so important," Cerese said. "The four men came in, sat down and made their point - never knowing what would happen - and changed the way things were, without anyone on either side resorting to violence."

The fact that it was a nonviolent protest may be one of the reasons that the Greensboro sit-down has faded from many memories across the nation. It's also possible that people simply don't want to remember. Cerese recalled that one person she spoke to during pre-production accused her of being a "brainwashed, liberal Communist."

"By that point, I knew he probably wasn't going to help us," she recalled with a laugh. The idea for February One began several years ago, according to executive producer Steven Channing.

"The original plan was to do a dramatic film and a documentary," he said, "but the dramatic project got caught up in the travails of development. This was just before the Writers' Guild was to have gone on strike, and a lot of projects fell by the wayside. Unfortunately, this was one of them."

Undaunted, Cerese impressed upon Channing her desire to make the documentary anyway. He admitted that her passion was a major incentive to go forward, and judging by the results, he's glad he did. "She did a magnificent job," Channing said. "She has a voracious appetite for information and a tremendous passion for the job - the hallmarks of a documentary filmmaker."

Having been screened at A&T, at the Full Frame documentary film festival in Durham and now at RiverRun, February One might also serve the secondary purpose of reigniting interest in a dramatic adaptation of the story.

"Thanks to the success of the documentary, we may get it back on track," Channing said. "One thing you learn in this business - there are no dead projects." The stars of the film are the protesters themselves - McNeil, McCain, Blair (now Jibreel Khazan) and the late Richmond. Some scenes have been re-created using professional actors, but Cerese was more interested in letting the surviving members tell their own stories.

"I think they liked it better that way, and I definitely liked it better that way," she said with a laugh. "This is a great story - a piece of North Carolina history with a worldwide impact - and having them tell it themselves serves, I think, as even more of an inspiration than had it been dramatized."

At a recent screening of the film at A&T - where the principals were enrolled - Cerese was shocked to learn that a number of the students were unfamiliar with the legacy of the Greensboro Four.

"This is a piece of North Carolina history that really has been overlooked - and it's frightening how few people know about it," Cerese said. "The hope of the film is to get people talking about race," Cerese said. "With all the stuff going on in the world today, there are still things going on every day that need to be addressed - and we can't be distracted away from them. If February One gets one person thinking or talking about race, then I couldn't be more pleased."

February One will be screened with Ken Wyatt's documentary short Nigger or Not? - a film that examines a different aspect of race relations in the United States. "I think it's a great companion piece," Cerese said, "and I'm very much looking forward to being there for it."

Tobacco Money Feeds My Family takes a look at the other side of the tobacco issue - from the perspective of those who earn their living farming it. For three years, Hill filmed three men - Allen, Croom and Averett - who make their living as tobacco farmers in North Carolina.

"People ask me, 'How can you make a film about tobacco farmers? Isn't it irresponsible not to talk about all the harm that smoking has done?'

"I've struggled with that," said Hill (who doesn't smoke), "and I have to stop apologizing for it and just accept it. We all know the harm that tobacco has done. That story has been told over and over again - and, in fact, we state it more than once in the film. But I wanted to make a film about what I know, about the people I know, and what they know. This is a story that has not been told. This is a little piece of what the South is, and a piece of what the rural South is."

Much of the state's economy, Hill noted, has depended on tobacco to some extent - more or less since the first colonists settled there. In the past few decades, however, that history has been supplanted by the health concerns surrounding tobacco use.

For Allen, Croom and Averett, however, tobacco is a way of life. Facing quotas limiting how much tobacco farmers in the United States can grow, they have been seen their income decline and have also become worried that cigarette manufacturers will turn to foreign growers.

"This isn't just a film about farming tobacco," Hill said. "It's about life, family, survival, agronomy, spiritualism. It's about three men, each of whom I hope people can identify with and sympathize with."

Having spent so much time with her subjects over a three-year period, Hill grew close to them. "They were very open and accepting - and we were grateful that they let us into their lives," she said. "We got to know them and came to care for them. They are who they are, and that comes through for each of them in the film. They are very much like family members now."

Nevertheless, from time to time the subjects needed private time. Hill recalled with a laugh that Allen would sometimes put his hand up and say "Get that Kodak out of my face" whenever he had had enough. "I wouldn't have put up with me," Hill joked.

Tobacco Money Feeds My Family marks Hill's first major undertaking and February One marks Cerese's. Both filmmakers are looking forward to sharing their vision with RiverRun audiences - and catching up with some of the other films.

"It's completely amazing that the festival is highlighting so many local filmmakers," Cerese said, "and a lot of the stories being told have an appeal and an importance that go beyond the 'state line.'" She cited Tobacco Money Feeds My Family.