FROSTBURG UNDERMINED
(1972)

In 1972, while an undergraduate film student at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County Campus), Robert Mugge received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to produce a film about the city of Frostburg, Maryland, a former Appalachian mining town, now largely centered around the presence of Frostburg State College (since renamed Frostburg State University) which Mugge had attended for his first two years as an undergraduate. Although planning to write and direct the film himself, as well as conduct onscreen interviews, Mugge drafted his friend and fellow Screen Arts Dept. assistant, David Insley, to serve as director of photography, co-edit, and co-produce. In addition, he hired fellow students David Stambaugh and Joan Insley (Dave Insley's wife) to serve as sound recordists, David S. to serve as still photographer, and Joan to serve as an assistant editor. (Note: For fun, Joan originally had herself credited as “Teresa Brady.”) Mugge also recruited Screen Arts Dept. head and film professor LeRoy Morais, history professor Dr. James C. Mohr, and English and film professor Dr. Philip J. Landon to serve as project advisors.

The resulting 45-minute film — originally titled simply Frostburg, but later changed to Mugge’s preferred title, Frostburg Undermined — was screened at a few film festivals in late 1972, and then, on March 28, 1973, was broadcast statewide by the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting, preceded three days earlier by a feature story in the Baltimore Sun's Sunday Magazine. After mostly sitting in storage for the next 50 years, it was (to the extent possible) remastered by Mugge in April of 2023.