AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS: Film producer Scott F. Carroll, scott_stonecirclefilms@att.net, 781-507-4948

LAKE PLACID, N.Y.  -  Thirty years ago an Adirondack village gave America its greatest Olympic triumphs with the Miracle on Ice and Eric Heiden's five gold medals - and the film that tells the story of that village premieres nationwide on PBS this week, as athletes head to the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver.

Small Town, Big Dreams: Lake Placid's Olympic Story chronicles the rise of Lake Placid from an unknown mountain town to a winter sports capital that hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932 - and again in 1980 when the U.S. hockey team won its historic gold medal and Heiden swept his speedskating events.

"Most people know about Lake Placid and the Miracle on Ice," says Scott F. Carroll, the film's producer. "But most people don't realize that it really was a small town that did this - that it was just a group of people who came together and said, 'Why not?'"

The film blends 1980 footage with rare film footage and audio recordings unearthed from museum collections and private archives to bring alive the story of the small town that hosted two Olympics despite many obstacles.

 "I wanted this film to show what a small town can accomplish when its residents work together to overcome the odds," says writer and director Marc Nathanson. "Lake Placid is the smallest town in the world that everyone has heard of - yet it's a village of less than 3,000 people with only five police cars and three traffic lights."

"In the postwar years every town in America had a softball or bowling league; in Placid it was bobsleds," says Carroll. "And the townspeople still have that commitment." Twelve athletes are on the 2010 U.S. Olympic team heading to Vancouver.

Among those featured in the film are Godfrey Dewey, who almost single-handedly brought the 1932 Olympics to the village; Jack Shea, the hometown hero who won gold at the 1932 Games and began a dynasty of Winter Olympians; J. Bernard Fell, the dynamic Methodist minister and former policeman who helped bring the Olympics back to Lake Placid in 1980; and Mike Eruzione, the captain of the gold medal hockey team.

Small Town, Big Dreams is narrated by New York stage actor Ted Kastenbaum, presented by Mountain Lake PBS and American Public Television, and produced in association with Sundial Pictures. It launches nationwide on more than 250 public television stations this month, with multiple showings across the country on PBS World on Feb. 6.

On Feb. 14, Small Town, Big Dreams will be part of a 30th anniversary celebration and benefit screening at 7 p.m. along with Disney's Miracle at the Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid, site of the 1980 U.S. hockey victory, with the filmmakers in attendance.

Additional information available at http://www.smalltown-bigdreams.com