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    Still Images

    These stills are from The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth footage. The filming took place on the Ottawa river in 2014. Thank you to: The Ottawa School of Speech & Drama (OSSD) actors and friends that participated.
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    Video

    The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth combines documentary filmmaking with docudrama to recall one of the largest cross-border celebrations of African-Canadian and African-American culture. The story follows the extended family of Walter Perry, the creator of these emancipation celebrations, and explores the family’s historic legacy. Featuring recently sourced material combined with newsreel, family photographs and personal […]
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    Research

    Research for the next documentary film on the Home Child Movement from 1869 to 1930 has begun.
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    Events

  • Our Projects

    A Barnardo Boy

    A Barnardo Boy – documentary in preproduction

    A Barnardo Boy is an independent documentary film about the Home Child Movement in Canada between 1869 and 1930. The story will feature children who came as a ward of Dr. Thomas John Barnardo from Britain to Canada in 1930. RJ Huggins and Orphan Boys Films are currently in the research stage of project.
    Walter Perry

    The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth – documentary released in 2015

    Black faith, community and music take centre stage in The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth, an independent documentary film about the emancipation celebrations organized by Walter Perry in Windsor, Ontario between 1936 and 1968.
  • In the News

    04/28
    The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth receives an Award of Merit Special Mention IMPACT Documentary Award on April 28, 2016. Congratulations team!
    04/05
    RJ Huggins, owner of Orphan Boy Films, makes a donation to the British Home Child Monument. The British Home Children Advocacy & Research Association (BHCARA) in collaboration with the Barnardo offices in the United Kingdom and the Park Lawn Cemetery in Toronto, Ontario, Canada are raising funds to have a monument place at the cemetery near two […]
    03/05
    RJ Huggins attends the Green Bay Film Festival in Wisconsin on March 5, 2016 for the US public debut of The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth documentary.
    02/10
    Very pleased to open Black History Month at the Green Bay Film Festival on February 2, 2016, with The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth documentary.
    08/17
    Ottawa Business Journal writer Tom Pechloff publishes Tech titan taps into artistic side article about Bob Huggins’ documentary film making.
Slave looking to cross river to Canada

Canadian History Understood Through Film

The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth documentary includes a re-enactment of a slave family’s river crossing in the night. The film describes the 1833 British Act of Parliament that began the fleeing of slaves through the Detroit/Windsor border. The Fugitive Slave Acts in 1850 compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves. This law persisted until the beginning of the Civil War (1861-1865).

You’ve got to understand – at the time there was not wide spread familiarity of the Underground Railroad.
— HOWARD McCURDY, Professor and Social Activist

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