Michael Bavaro
Independent Filmmaker
Other Roles: Director, Producer, Editor
Areas of Focus: Animation, Documentaries, Feature Films, Shorts
Organization: Digital Freeway®
Website: digitalfreeway.com
Biography
Michael Bavaro is the sole proprietor of Digital Freeway® in the Boston area. A natural artist and storyteller, he knows how to capture the essence of a subject and translate it to the screen.
He has produced and directed two highly acclaimed documentaries about historical Boston icons: Rex Trailer and Filene’s Basement. Both films received local Emmy Award nominations, East Coast film festivals selection, and multiple airings on GBH/PBS and WBZ-TV.
Michael’s career began in Boston before moving to Hollywood where he worked creating award-winning promos and main title sequences for Disney, NBC, AFI and other major TV networks and film studios.
He was an early adapter to the digital age and was hired by Verizon’s predecessor, Bell Atlantic Video, as a creative leader in developing the world’s first interactive video-on-demand system over landlines.
In 1998, Michael moved to New York City and worked for Mirimax’s Talk Magazine, GQ “Men of the Year†Awards, and Harlem Village Academies creating digital marketing content for television and the web.
Since 2010, Michael now lives in the Boston area and producing documentary films and is a member of the Massachusetts Colonial Society and is a board director of the Friends of the Longfellow House Washington’s headquarters. He is a freelance digital media consultant at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation.
An expert at most Adobe® Creative Cloud applications and a longtime master of Apple® products, Michael is also a writer, cartoonist, and voice actor.
DigitalFreeway.com
Films
Voices from the Basement (2010)
Role: Director
Voices from the Basement is a documentary film about Boston’s beloved 100-year-old icon – the original Filene’s Basement by filmmaker Michael Bavaro and production partner, psychologist Dr. Susan Edbril.. The film is a journey back to a time when the American Dream was accessible to everyone who walked through the doors of The Basement. The Brahmins of Beacon Hill stood in line with the waitresses from Durgin Park with equal access to the same high-quality, discounted merchandise for which The Basement is best known worldwide.
The film is a collection of stories told by the people who worked and shopped in there. Celebrities, politicians, employees, and loyal shoppers share their passion for this landmark institution that has been one of Boston’s most visited tourist attractions for generations.
The history of Filene’s Basement is captured through newsreels, archival footage, vintage photographs and audio recordings. The founders, Edward and Lincoln Filene, were two of the leading retail pioneers who helped shape many of the social and economic paradigms that have made America great, from employee health care to the formation of credit unions.
Throughout the course of production, the producers were witness to history as it transpired. With the closing of the downtown store in 2007, they were there to capture it all. Sadly, this monument of commerce remained a hole in the ground at the end of the film as Filene’s Basement filed for bankruptcy for the last time.
Rex Trailer's Boomtown (2005)
Role: Independent Filmmaker
Relive an age of innocence, ‘WANTED’ posters, and live one-take TV as Jay Leno, Jimmy Tingle, Mayor Tom Menino, Steven Wright and more than 100 grown-up kids share their memories of ‘Rex Trailer’s Boomtown’ in this Emmy nominated documentary about Boston’s beloved TV cowboy and pioneer of children’s television.
On April 28, 1956 Boomtown premiered on WBZ-TV in Boston. Over the 18 years it was on the air, more than 200,000 kids visited the show and nearly 4 million watched from home.
The documentary and archives are now part of the permanent collection at the Paley Center (Museum of Television & Radio) in New York City. Total runing time is 62 minutes and available on DVD at RexTrailer.com.
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