The War Between the Streets – The 2013 Director’s Release

THE WAR BETWEEN THE STREETS is a video made from all five years that The City of Bedford, now known as the Town of Bedford, hosted a Civil War reenactment here that they called LIVING LIBERTY. This film was made guerilla-style, as a war correspondent would see it; unrehearsed and edited down for effect. All five years were filmed, on different streets each year that it was filmed, and has been compiled to appear to be the same battle. The years that they had mounted cavalry on the streets are also on the film. There are also a number of staged events out in the actual battlefield, now a field belonging to the Bedford Elks Home, where the actual battle of Liberty was fought in 1864. This is the only place in the entire country that we know of that has such street fighting on the actual modern streets where it took place, with the possible exceptions of Buchanan and Port Republic, a little farther up the valley. And, this is the only video we know of that is available to the public of any such fighting ‘between the streets’… When you watch it, imagine that a ‘ghost battle’ image, like the White Lady herself, appeared for a few hours where it actually took place, and we filmed it… while the real life modern world was still going on all around it, and occasionally interacting with it. There is a slightly gory section at the end where the wounded are being treated, scenes taken from the UNION FIELD HOSPITAL video hosted by the 88th Pennsylvania Medical Unit with Pete Peters from GODS AND GENERALS and FIELD OF LOST SHOES at New Market. Bedford is the home of the D Day Memorial, the Peaks of Otter, with Sharp Top and Flat Top, the side-by-side mountains, coming into view on a number of these shots, and whose peaks were climbed by both General Robert E. Lee and President Thomas Jefferson. It is the home of the Avenel House, where the official documentary PORTRAIT OF A PLANTATION was filmed.