Hard Working Man: The Music and Miracles of Danny Brooks is a Strasburg Film Festival documentary film about the life of singer-songwriter Danny Brooks. An entertainer with over 40 years experience in the music industry who performs in a wide variety of forms; as a solo artist, in a duet with his wife Debi and as part of a band. His stage is diverse … bars, clubs, house concerts, churches, prisons and festivals.
A true chameleon … one part street savvy musician; another part born again preacher, Brooks life and career runs the gamut of all spectrum’s of life much like his music which chronicles the good times, the bad times, relationships, heaven, hell and salvation. A man of deep religious belief and conviction Brooks has an uncanny capacity for reaching out and touching the lives of those around him.
Hard Working Man: The Music and Miracles of Danny Brooks will be shown on Friday, November 9th, at 3:25 PM at the Box Office Brewery. Tickets can be found on the film’s event page.
Director Biography
Christopher Darton (director/camera/producer/editor) is a writer and filmmaker from Port Colborne, Ontario who has worked as a freelance writer, photographer and videographer for the past 25 years since graduating from Sheridan College in Film.
Growing up in Fort Erie, Ontario Chris played hockey and read comic books like any normal Canadian kid until the start of the home video revolution in the early 80’s. Owning one of the first beta systems on the market and a fertile imagination Chris began watching 2 or 3 movies a day and shooting his own movies on Super 8mm. “I was fortunate to have a small dedicated group of friends who were artists … or if they didn’t draw or paint or write they acted or built explosives for my movies. It was the height of creativity. If we weren’t drawing or making movies we were listening to albums and making plans for drawing or making movies.”
Attending Sheridan College Chris majored in Illustration for one year … then film studies for three. Studying under the likes of Canadian independent film making maverick Phill Hoffman and documentarian Vladimir Kabelik Chris developed a solid basis in all facets of film from screenwriting to directing; lighting to editing.
After graduating; Chris worked for 5 years in a video store where he immersed himself in films of all
sorts: horror, drama, foreign, action … watching anything he could get his hands on. “On any given night I could watch the new David Lynch film. Followed by something by one of Charles Band’s companies or Troma or Roger Corman … followed by Chuck Norris or Akira Kurosawa. It was great period of immersing myself in cinema of all sorts.”
Chris has written seven feature length films as well as acting as creator/writer of the unproduced TV series Turtle Island Blues.
During the past few years he’s focused his attention on the Blues music field in Canada having written articles for Maple Blues for the Toronto Blues Society, the linear notes of Danny Brooks CD Texasissippi Soul Man as well as shooting photos and video for everybody from Crowbar to Guitar Mikey.
In 2014 Chris completed The Way We Was: The Story of the Kendall Wall Band his feature film debut as director/producer/editor. Hard Working Man: The Music and Miracles of Danny Brooks is his second feature length documentary.
On top of his documentary film work Darton acts as producer for Skeleton Crew Entertainment … the company has released Halloween Baby (2016) and 37% Pure Evil (2017).
