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Due to unforeseen circumstances, the film premiere and community celebration we planned at Dan & Whit's this Saturday, August 26 has been postponed. However, filmmaker Carla Kimball has released the film online for all to enjoy. Find familiar faces, learn how the store started and got its name, and recall the resilience of the Norwich community during the pandemic in this beautiful short local film celebrating local a hero.
Excerpt of review in ARTFUL, by Susan Apel (8/21/23):
Remember during the darkest of COVID days when Dan Fraser had the idea to hold a mass outdoor haircut fest in Dan & Whit’s parking lot, proceeds to benefit two Norwich hairdressers whose salons had been required to close? ... Carla Kimball, photographer, dancer, and now filmmaker, has documented the story of Dan & Whit’s during those difficult years in 'The Heart of the Town'...
The CBS Evening News’s Steve Hartman found his way to Dan & Whit’s in December, 2021... to bring the country the story of how community members stepped into the breach when Dan Fraser discovered he had lost virtually all of his employees due to COVID restrictions and fears. Kimball’s film interweaves snippets of the CBS footage with interviews of those local residents who “volunteered” to run the cash registers and tend the deli, stock the shelves, and generally keep the doors open and the lights on. Fraser describes it as a modern day equivalent of a barn raising...
"Sometimes it takes a crisis, if you will, to appreciate what you have... I often say it takes a village, and I couldn't think of a better one to be a part of, and I know you agree."
– Dan Fraser
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