USA Films
In 1983, film student Rich Murray was handed $20,000 in a brown paper bag by a hustler named 'Butch.' These were the funds he used to direct his first music video for a local Philly rocker named Alan Mann. That video for the song “Christmas on the Block”, went on to become the first and perhaps only video by an unsigned artist to play on regular rotation on MTV. Using “Christmas on the Block” as a framing device, Murray illuminates Mann’s larger story - and how he could have, should of and almost did make it, but didn’t because of his excesses, and a tragic accidental death. The film also turns the lens sharply on the film’s director (Murray) and how his own excesses might have resulted in the same tragic trajectory, that but for wisdom and luck, did not.
An afflicted soul wanders a wilderness that seems alive with torment—its silence broken only by the whispers of something dark, something ancient. Struggling to distinguish delusion from truth, he’s pulled deeper into a shadowed realm where fear, doubt, and despair close in like fog. As his mind unravels and the world around him bends, fragments of something different—something radiant—begin to break through. A presence. A promise. A choice. The New Creation is a haunting descent into the human soul’s darkest night, and a stirring exploration of the mysterious force that can bring light to even the most forsaken path.
A free spirit girl fell for a medical doctor after drifting through life with an unsettled heart
