The first project in any media about Frank Lloyd Wright's Park Inn Hotel

Filmed on location in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, Arizona, and Japan, where we visit Wright's inspirations in Japanese art and architecture,

as they directly relate to The Park Inn.

Photographed on 16mm film and presented in 4K

Period music from original wax cylinder recordings

EMMY NOMINEE: Best Narration Writing for a Documentary

GRAND PRIZE WINNER-BEST DOCUMENTARY - Iowa Motion Picture Association

In 1908, when Frank Lloyd Wright was considered the most innovative architect in Chicago, he traveled to Mason City, Iowa, to design a unique, mixed-use city block - a bank and adjoining hotel facing a park. By 1914, scandal and tragedy would ruin Wright's career. By 1926, The Park Inn Hotel would begin a serious decline, but still standing, it remained one of his last Prairie style structures. Although little known, and vulnerable to the economic changes in Mason City, The Park Inn influenced the Bauhaus Movement and served as inspiration to one of Wright's most famous designs - The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Through rare archival footage, period music and a comparative look at famous Wright structures, The Last Wright offers a provocative, ironic tapestry of an American century, tracing the life, death and rebirth of a Midwest town through the prism of The Park Inn.

During the 20th century, the forgotten Park Inn faced alterations and degradation while Mason City drew unwanted national attention with a Dillinger Bank robbery in the 1930s, an economic downturn in the 1960s and the label Porn City in the 1970s. In an effort to promote heritage tourism, the city struggled to fund renovations of The Park Inn in the 1990s while attempting an economic revival with a $20 million tribute to the musical comedy, The Music Man, based on Meredith Willson's boyhood in Mason City.

Which vision of Mason City history has prevailed?

"An imaginative, absorbing film." - Rob Cowan, The Independent

"An extraordinary documentary!" - Michael Steinberg, San Francisco Orchestra

A rarity! Sumptuous cinematography. Music history that rises above the usual bromides of television documentaries - The Washington Post

On September 26, 1892, when Antonin Dvorak arrived in New York to direct the National Conservatory of Music of America, he was given the daunting task of creating a school of music for a young nation boundlessly confident in its resources, but still looking to Europe for a sense of identity. When Dvorak pronounced that America already had a source for national music - 'based on Negro melodies' - he not only sparked controversy but invigorated an already burgeoning community of African-American musicians.

Through a colorful and provocative mix of film, poignant first-person accounts, priceless archival material and a treasure trove of music, DVORAK AND AMERICA takes us on a surprising journey from Harry T. Burleigh's renderings of plantation songs and the creation of The New World Symphony to the twentieth century and the birth of the Broadway musical with Will Marion Cook's 'In Dahomey'.

Director Lucille Carra combines classical and popular music, Dvorak's original music scores for The New World Symphony and the American Quartet, unpublished personal letters, oral histories, rare wax cylinder recordings, and sumptuously photographed locations in Prague, New York, and the American prairies, to reveal the musical links between cultures.

Produced by Lucille Carra
Directed and Written by Lucille Carra
Co-Producer and Chief Musical Consultant: Maurice Peress
Producer for Czech Television: Radim Smetana
Cinematography by Hiro Narita, Allen Moore, Antonin Chundela
In Dahomey Overture and Swing Along by Will Marion Cook
American Plantation Dances by Maurice Arnold
Conducted and Orchestrated by Maurice Peress
with the Prague Radio Orchestra

Featuring Gerald Early, Jean Snyder, Reid Badger, Josef Svorecky,

Josephine Herrald Love

Mrs. Vera Janova (Granddaughter of Antonin Dvorak)

A Co-Production of Travelfilm Company, Czech Television and AVRO

BEST DOCUMENTARY Hawaii International Film Festival

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EARTHWATCH FILM AWARD

Director's Choice Black Maria Film Festival

TOP TEN FILMS OF THE YEAR Andrew Sarris, New York Observer

Lucille Carra re-creates the lyrical vision of old Japan captured by Donald Richie in his classic travel memoir. The film adaptation combines select passages of Richie's text - romantic, prickly, amused - with original interviews and extended observational sequences playing on the structures of interior monologue and ethnographic cinema. The result observes Richie as a post-World War II expatriate American living in Japan as much as it observes a fading rural culture.

THE INLAND SEA has been screened at over 100 international film festivals, including SUNDANCE, LONDON, SYDNEY, MELBOURNE, AUCKLAND AND WELLINGTON, SAN FRANCISCO, LOS ANGELES, MANNHEIM, LEIPZIG.

Directed and Adapted by Lucille Carra

Produced by Lucille Carra and Brian Cotnoir

Written and Narrated by Donald Richie, based on his book

Cinematography by Hiro Narita, ASC

Music Composed by Toru Takemitsu

© Travelfilm Company