A small boy in a homemade racer is poised at the top of a steep hill. On a dare, he's about to tempt gravity and fate at the bottom. So begins a new movie that one critic calls "A beautifully simple, poignant, unflinching look back at middle American childhood." A five year-old viewer in San Francisco put it more succinctly: "Is this real life? Cool!" For filmmaker Donald Hughes, An American Boy is the outcome of a three-year labor of love: to re-create on the screen his boyhood adventures growing up on Indianapolis' North Side in the late forties and early fifties.

Honored with a theatrical world premiere at the 2005 Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in Birmingham, Alabama, An American Boy has just been released on DVD. It's the true-life story of 12 year-old Don, trying to break out of his solitary ways into active, compassionate friendships. As he does so, his exploits as race driver, commando team member and ballroom dancer bring him face to face with life's joys and disasters.

A "commando raid" in Lilly's Orchard . . . a first crush at Mrs. Gates' dance class . . . the terrors of a boyhood piano recital . . . summer adventures at Pokagon Boys Camp. It's all here, re-enacted at the very locations where the original events took place.

"Rites of passage," Dr. Max Case called these scenes. "It's all the things any normal kid [in that era] had to face from being a child to becoming an adult." Minister of Spirituality and Visual Arts at St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Case said of the film: "It evokes wonder and mystery of 'Why am I here in this big universe?' Don Hughes has a winner here."

Director Donald Hughes has made a variety of movies for many different audiences over thirty years. His films include historical documentaries (Andrew Jackson), theatrical short subjects (Columbia Pictures' Hello Up There), music videos (Jennifer Warnes, Up the Elevator) and national television spots (Julie Harris, First Steps).

Director of Special Projects and Senior Producer at UMCom Productions in Nashville, Tennessee for many years, Hughes is back home in Indiana and now lives in Greenwood. An American Boy is his new production company's third film. Proceeds from its national distribution will be donated to the Pokagon Boys Camp Preservation Fund, an endowment set up to help maintain historic structures at the Lake James site in northeastern Indiana. Summers at Pokagon in the late 1940s provided some of those memorable "rites of passage" in director Hughes' boyhood.

Geared for children aged 5-12 and their parents and grandparents, An American Boy on DVD runs 40 minutes including special features. DVDs can be purchased in the Broad Ripple area at Picture This Gallery, located at 6245 Allisonville Road, and at other selected retailers in the Indianapolis area, including the History Market at Indiana History Center, the Indiana State Museum/IMAX Theater store, and The Laser's Edge Video, located at 770 N. Rangeline Rd. in Carmel .