The Eagle Peak Media production company is hosting a free screening this Thursday that will feature a teaser-trailer on their new exclusive documentary, Behind the Hedgerow: Eileen Slocum and the Meaning of Newport Society.

The documentary is a look into the private world of the aristocracy of the gilded age, with a significant part of it dedicated to relating the story of the late Eileen Gillespie Slocum, who died in 2008. With exclusive access to Slocum’s numerous archives, director David Bettencourt and writer/producer G. Wayne Miller use 20^th century footage and photographs in compilation with modern images to re-tell the story of a dying age ruled by Vanderbilts and Astors. The film will be released in the summer of next year, followed by national broadcasts on PBS.

Eileen Slocum

In addition to the Behind the Hedgerow trailer, Eagle Peak Media will show On The Lake: Life and Love in a Distant Place, which was featured in the 2009 Rhode Island International Film Festival, for the first time in the first time in Newport. On The Lake is a feature-length documentary about the tuberculosis epidemic that affected America in the early 1900s as well as its impact on the world today. The film, which was written and directed by the same filmmakers of Behind the Hedgerow, was nationally broadcast on PBS earlier this year, where it earned critical acclaims.

The event will begin at 4 p.m. on Thursday, August 13, at the Redwood Library and Athenaeum at 50 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, RI. It will include a discussion with Bettencourt and Miller and will be attended by the family of the late Slocum. The event is free and open to the public.