Biografia
In his career spanning over a decade of provocative independent film making, Stan Armstrong has been exploring issues historic, cultural, and racial in a way that has helped to inform new trends in documentary and academic circles which didn't even exist before he came into the scene. This sounds like hyperbole, but consider that the subject of the Massacre of Fort Pillow, esoteric to the point of taboo amongst mainstream Civil War historians, was in fact first brought to the forefront of recent memory by Stan Armstrong's The Forgotten Battle of Fort Pillow (2000). Mr. Armstrong, an African-American and Choctaw film maker, asks the questions many on all sides of this dicey historical tragedy would avoid, dealing as it does with the slaughter of African-American Union troops by a Confederate General who would later serve as the first Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and, later, as one of its first opponents. History, as the films of Desert Rose Productions show us, is far more complicated, far more human than we can see at first glance.
Born in San Francisco, California on September 26, Stan Armstrong would move back and forth from there to Las Vegas, Nevada, his eventual home where he would graduate from high school in the turbulent 1970's (the subject for his most recent documentary, the hard-hitting The Rancho High School Riots) and later attend UNLV, eventually becoming an instructor in African-American Film and Ethnic Studies at the Inter-Disciplinary Studies Department of his Alma Mater. At UNLV, his studies led him to earn a Communications Degree, with Minors in Film Studies (many students and alumni of the UNLV Film Department have collaborated with him on nearly all of his films) and History. This unique blend of experiences and academics, of the African-American experience and the staggering level of growth and cultural change in Stan Armstrong's home city, Las Vegas is what has driven him for over a decade of work.
As stated above, his first release was The Forgotten Battle of Fort Pillow, which he followed up with Black Confederates: The Forgotten Men in Gray (2001), a semi-sequel to Fort Pillow and what would become the middle of his trilogy of Civil War documentaries concluding with Native Americans of the Civil War (2006). These films approached Civil War history, a sacred subject to American historians, and dared to deal with subjects that were largely unknown (the participation of many Native Americans and some tribes with the Confederacy) or so taboo as to be considered simply unmentionable, namely the military service of some African-Americans on the part of the very government that was keeping millions of their own people in slavery. These subjects can make historians and viewers uncomfortable, to be sure, but that is the point -- to truly understand history is to truly know ourselves, especially in these tragic extremes of war, slavery, and near-genocide. Native Americans of the Civil War would later go on to win the Mercury Film Festival Best Documentary Award for 2007.
The next documentary on the Desert Rose Productions slate would shift gears from the Civil War into the high speed modern era, first with the groundbreaking Invisible Las Vegas (2005), the first comprehensive study of the history of West Las Vegas, its predominantly African-American population and culture prior to and after the end of segregation and Jim Crow laws in Las Vegas. From there, as sort of a sequel, Stan Armstrong would embark on his most ambitious project yet, The Misunderstood Legend of the Las Vegas Moulin Rouge (2011, post-production) a superlative undertaking which covers the history of the first integrated hotel-casino in Las Vegas history, the Moulin Rouge, and the celebrities, scandals, mob associates and hangers on all caught up in her spell. Due to the enormity of this documentary, both in scale and detail, its post-production continues, though a soft preview was held for some of the performers and workers from the era who contributed their voices to this special film. The Misunderstood Legend of the Las Vegas Moulin Rouge would be the first collaboration between Stan Armstrong and Antonio Fargas, himself a legend of African-American cinema, here narrating and starring in the set pieces that frame the film.
In the summer of 2011, while working on the post-production of The Misunderstood Legend of the Las Vegas Moulin Rouge, Stan Armstrong became aware, via the usual social media, that Rancho High School, where he had graduated from in the turbulent 1970's, was having its forty year anniversary of the Class of 1971, one marked by race riots, police storming their campus and lingering trauma and cultural damage. This would lead to the next Desert Rose Productions documentary, The Rancho High School Riots. This project, touching as it does on issues still very raw and very real for those involved marked Stan Armstrong's bravest and most personal work yet. With interviews from subjects as diverse as Memphis Grizzlies Coach Lionel Hollins, a student at Rancho H.S. at the time, to former Black Panthers, even ex-members of White gangs at the time known as "The Gents", Stan Armstrong wanted to bring together as many diverse perspectives on those violent times together to acquire an honest understanding of what happened during those chaotic times, and to see if we have learned anything about ourselves as a nation since then.
For the remainder of 2012, Stan Armstrong will be finishing the production the Moulin Rouge project and beginning pre-production on Invisible Las Vegas Part II, covering the history of modern West Las Vegas, and also The Last Dance: The Late Great Night Clubs of Las Vegas to deal with the glitzy era of after hours entertainment before the modern mega-casinos absorbed them.
The documentaries of Stan Armstrong have been released on DVD and have been shown on the local Las Vegas PBS and Clark County Television, CCTV. The coffee table book, Invisible Las Vegas: The Book written with Desert Rose collaborator Terrence Williams, is a collection of photos, reminiscences, and historical commentary based on the film of the same name. It will be released in 2012 to commemorate the Invisible Las Vegas series, that is, the complete collection including Invisible Las Vegas, The Misunderstood Legend of the Las Vegas Moulin Rouge, The Rancho High School Riots, and Invisible Las Vegas Part II, comprising the only documentary franchise to deal exclusively with the history of African-Americans in Las Vegas, another piece of the growing Desert Rose Productions legacy.
