THE VIDEO DOCUMENTARY program ‘Shack Time’ tells the story of the artist shacks in the dunes of the Cape Cod National Seashore. I produced and directed the 2001 program, which includes two rare Walker Evans photographs: a stunning portrait of shack owner Hazel Hawthorne Werner, and Eugene O’Neill’s Lifesaving Station after it tipped into the Atlantic following a storm.
Shack Time features interviews with shack owner Zara Ofsevit Jackson and late owners Laura Fowler and Ray Wells. Annie Dillard and Cynthia Huntington read from their own works, and there are excerpts from Henry Beston, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, and Henry David Thoreau, among others.
A photograph of Kerouac sitting at a typewriter in the dunes accompanies his letter to the Cape Cod National Seashore urging that the shacks be preserved.
To learn more about the dunes and the program, visit Shack Time.
TO ORDER ‘Shack Time’: Send $14.95 (includes shipping) to: Shack Time, PO Box 41, Hatfield, MA 01038. To order online, email ShackTime@comcast.net.