Basking Ridge Filmmaker Wins Award For Great Oak Documentary

BASKING RIDGE, NJ—For more than 15 years, Mike Reynolds could see the Great Oak, the 600-year-old tree in the center of town, from his house. He would stare at it and consider the history the tree witnessed, and found a peculiar peace when he sat under its sprawling limbs.

The tree is gone now, but Reynolds ensured its memory will live indefinitely in a 2019 documentary, Under the Great Oak. The film recently won an award at the IMPACT DOCS competition held by the Global Film Awards.

"[the Oak] was such a major symbol of the community," said Reynolds, who directed the film, "we wanted to get some footage before it was gone and then it turned into a movie."

The documentary shows the 2017 removal of the 600-year-old tree and Basking Ridge's response to its death. It was a labor of love for Reynolds, but was not without its challenges for the director, who has working in film and TV for more than a decade.

"It started out that we wanted to make a film about the tree," the filmmaker said, "but it evolved into a story about the people in town."

Reynolds said the citizens of Basking Ridge were essential to the film, which you can see at GreatOakMovie.com, because it's about them as much as the Oak.

"We wanted to capture how people feel when a symbol of a community goes away," Reynolds said, "it's a local story, but it's universal. It's about how a community relates to its past."

The award, the movie's second, has only reinforced the appeal of the Great Oak's story.

"Winning this award proves to us the story of the Great Oak is not just of local or regional interest," the filmmaker said, "but the message translates to communities across our country."

Despite the sadness of losing something so old—it was already several hundred years old when George Washington purportedly met with the Marquis de Lafayette under its tentacle-like limbs during the revolution—Reynolds said the film does the legacy of the Great Oak justice. It also connects him permanently to the giant old tree.

"The process of making Under the Great Oak has been an honor," Reynolds said. "I truly loved the Great Oak and to have any part in preserving its memory and sharing its story with the wider world is intensely gratifying."