News
Screenings!
There are two upcoming screenings currently planned:
October 28, 2019 at the Kitchener Public Library (Central Branch) at 7PM
February 26, 2020 at the Kitchener Public Library (Stanley Park Branch) at 7PM
Rob Ring (Director) will be present at both screenings to answer questions, and DVDs will be available at a special discounted price.
Dernier Screening!
After our Premiere on January 11, let’s kick off this amazing run of screenings with a Dernier Screening Bash next weekend! Okay, that’s not really a thing, but let’s make it one! Come out to the Princess Twin for our final local screening, grab a drink at the Café, and and hang out for a bit!
After 10 fantastic screenings, we have one final screening at the Princess Twin Cinemas. It’s been one hell of a run, and I want to thank you all for your overwhelming support of this film. It means the world to me, and is a great testament to Frank Groff’s legacy.
This will be your last chance to see the film on the big screen locally. Let’s go out with a bang! Help us sell out screening # 11!
After the screening, I will be at the Twin with DVDs available for purchase. Come by and say hello!
Get your tickets here:
- Rob Ring, Director
March Matinee Madness!
After a successful run of six SOLD OUT screenings, Care For The Child is returning to the Princess Twin for March Matinee Madness! The film will screen every Saturday in March.
If you haven’t already, come find out why everyone is raving about the Bridgeport General!
Get your tickets here:
Thanks!
I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all those who have supported this film.
Special thanks to the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, The Waterloo Regional Heritage Foundation, Doug Haas, Paul Motz, Ian Ring, and The MacQueens.
When I started this project I was confident that it would resonate with the community, but I could never have predicted just how true that would be. After four sold out screenings, there is one final weekend of encore screenings planned for Feb 17 & 18.
While I can’t say for certain what the life of the film will be, these will be the final screenings that I am organizing locally… and they are selling quickly.
Again, thank you for your support.
Rob Ring, Director
The Bridgeport General finally gets his due on the big screen
by Bob Vrbanac
Waterloo Chronicle
It seems documentary filmmaker Rob Ring wasn’t the only one who wanted to know more about an enigmatic figure known as “The General” who once worked as a crossing guard in the Bridgeport area.
A screening of the film he made to delve into the backstory of Frank Groff, a.k.a. The Bridgeport General, an eccentric resident of the former village who was a volunteer crossing guard at the intersection of Bridge and Lancaster streets for more than three decades was supposed to only be shown once on Jan. 11 at the Princess Twin Cinemas in Waterloo. But demand to see the slice of local history proved to be so popular there were three sold out screenings of the film called Care for the Child: The Story of the Bridgeport General at both theatres, and the plan now is to hold another screening Feb. 17 for those who might have missed it.
“We had a great response,” said Ring, who started the project two years ago to answer some questions that niggled at him ever since he asked his dad about an artist’s print of The General that hung in his family home. “We had three sold out screenings, we’re close to selling out on a fourth and we’ve added a fifth.”
Princess Twin Cinemas owner John Tutt, who has operated the theatre for more than 25 years, said he’s never seen a response to a local film like that, and Ring said he was thrilled to add more bookings.
Ring thinks it connected with audiences because it was both a local story and a story of a time and place that are no more. The story is about the town and the people of Bridgeport that eventually got swallowed up by nearby Kitchener. But to this day people in the community still say they are from Bridgeport and share a sentimental feeling for the community that bounds the Grand River.
“When I first started this I thought the audience was going to be Bridgeport people and Kitchener people from the 1960 and 1970s, and it proved to be very much the case,” said Ring, who made a career of doing video work for art galleries before looking to create some art himself. “Everyone who lived in or near Bridgeport for the last 50 years knows The General and were looking for some answers like I was too.”
But the film has some universal appeal about the characters that once populated small communities and who were not only tolerated but were embraced by the small places they lived before they were swallowed up by suburbia. In The General’s case the story was how the kids in the Bridgeport community rallied around him when he refused to conform to the dress code and carry the crossing sign issued to him by the City of Kitchener.
He much preferred wearing sweater upon sweater held together by a jacket fastened together by safety pins, and a homemade stop sign he created himself. He started safely shepherding kids across the busy intersection of Lancaster and Bridge himself, before the local city council mandated he fit in with their conventions of what a crossing guard should look like.
Ring said he doesn’t want to give away any spoilers, but said Frank Groff was inspired from a horrible tragedy he saw during his own childhood and it drove him to make sure it wouldn’t happen to any local kids on his watch and he aggressively stopped traffic to let kids cross.
The kids he protected responded in kind and eventually won the fight against city hall to have Groff reinstated after a spontaneous protest by them got the politician’s attention. The kids wouldn’t cross using the new crossing guard, and wouldn’t have anybody but Frank handle their safety until he passed away in 1978.
“The guy was a bit of a mystery and everybody had a story or an anecdote about The General,” said Ring, as the documentary premièred 40 years after his death. “Nobody knew much about him, especially his background.
“He was a bit of an enigma. The movie covers Groff’s childhood, when he became a crossing guard, the protests and his death, and the legacy beyond his death,” said Ring.
As for the biggest mystery around why the kids called him The General, Ring said he can’t say for certain but “The consensus seems to be about the coat that he wore, the helmet he would sometimes wear and that he sort of had this military look,” said Ring. “His personality and demeanour just had people starting to call him The General.”
To view the trailer or purchase tickets for the Feb. 17 screening, visit www.bridgeportgeneral.com
CBC Morning Edition
Director Rob Ring sat down with Craig Norris to talk about Care For The Child. Listen here:
CBC Morning Edition, January 11, 2018
Astonishing Response to Made-in-Waterloo Doc
by Martin DeGroot
Waterloo Region Record
I’m happy to be able to start the year with a good news story pertaining to the arts in Waterloo Region — specifically, a media arts story with a strong heritage component:
The long-awaited première of local filmmaker Rob Ring’s feature-length documentary “Care For The Child: The Story of the Bridgeport General” takes place this week Thursday, Jan. 11, starting 7 p.m. at the Princess Twin Cinemas in Waterloo.
That’s the first screening, which was sold out two days after it was first announced back in November. So they added a second — same venue, but next door starting 15 minutes later.
Now both shows are sold out, and a third screening has just been announced for Saturday, Jan. 13, in this case at the Original Princess starting at 2 p.m.
All three sessions will be followed by a Q&A session with members of the production team, and serve as an opportunity to purchase posters, limited edition prints and DVD copies of the film.
Two sold-out houses and the possibility of a third: this is an astonishing response to a made-in-Waterloo film project promoted with little more than a few posters and social media posts.
And yet I’m not all that surprised: The column I wrote about this project in the spring of 2016 drew the biggest reaction from readers I’ve seen in the 20-plus years I’ve been doing this.
Most of the responses were from people who wanted to share memories of “The General” and what he meant to the Bridgeport community.
The première is happening almost exactly 40 years after this remarkable local personality passed away on January 10, 1978.
His story, as I outlined it going on two years ago, begins in 1962. This is when Frank Groff, on his own initiative, began working as a crossing guard for schoolchildren at the busy intersection of Bridge and Lancaster.
Second Screening!
The premiere screening sold out in under three days, so we did the only reasonable thing… we added a second screening! Same date, same venue, just 15 minutes later.
Tickets are available here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/care-for-the-child-the-story-of-the-bridgeport-general-second-screening-tickets-39698720943
… but act now! These are sure to sell quickly!
