Next weekend, Canadian’s Palace Theatre will host the local premiere of filmmaker Heather Courtney’s For The Record, a documentary that follows five years in the life of The Canadian Record, which was published for 75 years by the Ezzell family.

The 35-minute film will be shown twice: on Saturday, July 15, at 6:30 pm, and on Sunday afternoon, July 16, at 2 pm. Admission is $5/person. All proceeds will go to local non-profits.

For The Record tells the story of The Canadian Record’s struggle to stay alive during an economic downturn and a global pandemic, through the eyes of editor/publisher Laurie Ezzell Brown, business manager Mary Smithee, reporter Cathy Ricketts, and advertising staff Jaquita Adcock and Cheri Smith.

Courtney first filmed with Brown at The Record in summer 2017, when she pitched the idea of doing a documentary about the daily life of a rural newspaper. She filmed here off and on over the next five years as the newspaper staff covered groundbreakings, city and county meetings, football games, ranching stories and rodeos. 

For The Record premiered in February at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, and has since been screened twice in Austin—first, during the International Symposium on Online Journalism hosted by the Knight Center, and again by the Austin Film Society. It was also shown during Detroit’s Freep Film Festival in May, with a special pre-event showing in the Detroit Free Press newsroom, and at the DC/DOX documentary film festival in Washington, DC, the following month.

Heather Courtney is an Emmy-winning filmmaker, and a Guggenheim, Sundance, and Fulbright fellow. Her film, Where Soldiers Come From, was broadcast nationally on the PBS series POV, won an Emmy, an Independent Spirit Award, and a SXSW Jury Award.  She has directed and produced several other documentary films, including award-winners Letters from the Other Side and Los Trabajadores, both broadcast nationally on PBS.

Courtney also co-directed and produced a Ford- and MacArthur-funded feature documentary about undocumented immigrant students in Georgia, called The UnAfraid. It won the Human Rights Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and was broadcast in Fall 2019 on the national PBS series America ReFramed/World Channel.

The Canadian Record published its last print edition on March 2, 2023. Its staff continues to report news of interest to the community online, through its website @canadianrecord.com and on its Facebook page.

PHOTOS BY HEATHER COURTNEY

The Record staff members stuffing inserts in the week's edition on "paper day." From the left, News Editor Cathy Ricketts, Ad Designer Ray Weeks, Sports Editor Peyton Aufill and Business Manager Mary Smithee. 

Editor/Publisher Laurie Ezzell Brown at her typically messy desk.

For The Record poster