In what classroom would you find ten-year old children passionately reciting with ease difficult soliloquies from Shakespeare's Richard III? In what school would you witness students re-enacting historical events like the Cuban Missile Crisis? Only in Albert Cullum's classroom.

Regarded by academics as one of the most influential educators of the 1960s and 70s, Albert Cullum has espoused an unorthodox educational philosophy built upon the fervent belief that the only way teachers can be successful with children is to speak directly to their hearts, to their instinctive and largely ignored capacity to quickly understand and identify with great emotions, personalities, and ideas. To that end, Mr. Cullum regularly taught his elementary-school children literary masterpieces, exposed them to great works of art and engaged them in world history. Without leaving the classroom, his students visited King Tut's tomb, attended Joint Sessions of Congress, operated on "bleeding nouns" in his grammar hospital, and clamored to play the timeless roles of Julius Caesar, Lady MacBeth and Hamlet.

A TOUCH OF GREATNESS is a compelling and provocative look at over forty years of profound, unconventional classroom experiences. In the early 1960s, while Mr. Cullum was an elementary school teacher at Midland School in Rye, New York, then unknown filmmaker, Robert Downey, Sr. (the irreverent director of the independent classic, Putney Swope) recorded many of Mr. Cullum's classroom events on film. Virtually none of this footage has been seen publicly. These early films capture, in a most unique way, the work of this extraordinary teacher and the unmatched passion for learning his students embraced.

In one exhilarating scene Mr. Cullum is dressed as old King Oberon of A Midsummer Night's Dream, draped in a long black cape topped with a crown, running outdoors through a sparkling, wintry forest with a passel of children scampering riotously behind him. He gingerly places marshmallows in the open, eager mouths of his elementary school students in order to make them light as fairies.

This one-of-a-kind documentary shows how Mr. Cullum's work produced adults who've had a great impact on society. A TOUCH OF GREATNESS interweaves television broadcasts from these early films and rare archival footage with interviews of Mr. Cullum and his former students, including a public service lawyer and former NYC public school teacher, an emergency-room doctor, a pscho-dramatist, an Emmy-award winning actress now practicing art-therapy, and an AME Zion minister.

What emerges is a portrait of lives transformed by this maverick teacher who enabled children to embrace the "heroic deed" and find their own inner greatness.

"Unusually moving with an authenticity that is rare."—Howard Gardner, Award-Winning Author and Educator

"Shows what extraordinary things can happen [with] a visionary child advocate like Albert Cullum."—Cleveland Plain Dealer