Bulova Documentary Puts a Spotlight on Brand's Backing of Veterans, Women's Rights and Other Social Initiatives
As New York watch company Bulova celebrates its 150th anniversary, managing director Michael Benavente can point to many milestones and achievements the brand can be proud of, but there is one that stands out.
Speaking following Variety and Golden Globes' screening of Michael Culyba's documentary 'America Telling Time: 150 Years of Bulova' presented by Bulova, Benavente told an audience on Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival that the sequence that made the most emotional impact on him and other audience members he'd chatted with was the one featuring the work done with the Veterans Watchmaker Initiative, which the company supports.
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The non-profit runs a tuition-free school that allows disabled veterans to learn watchmaking skills and offers them a dedicated job placement. In the film, veterans, some of whom had been homeless, explained how it had restored their sense of self-worth, as well as giving them a means to earn a living, despite their physical or mental challenges. For some it had literally been a life saver, as they had been contemplating suicide.
Benavente explained that the Veterans Watchmaker Initiative was set up by Sam Cannan, who was a sniper for a SWAT team in Baltimore.
'He got shot off a three-story building while there was an active shooter, and he fell, and by the grace of God, there was an awning that broke his fall. But immediately he was disabled from the Baltimore Police Department,' Benavente explained. After attending the Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking, Cannan went on to 'have a very illustrious career as a watchmaker. He goes to live in Switzerland for many years, and this project that you saw today is really a work of love for him to give back, because he was in the same place as these guys. So you can see he's very emotional and he's super passionate about it and he's a great guy, and so we're just happy to be able to be with him and support,' Benavente said.
Among other not-for-profit initiatives the company supports that are covered in the film are the Latin Grammys; the Maestro Cares Foundation, co-founded by singer Marc Anthony; and the We Are Family Foundation, which was co-founded by singer-songwriter Nile Rodgers. Both Anthony and Rodgers are brand ambassadors for Bulova, have designed watches for the company, and feature prominently in the film. Anthony's wife Nadia Ferreira, the Paraguayan model and social influencer, also attended the Cannes screening.
The film is broken into themed chapters, rather than following a series of milestones chronologically, and the one that stood out for Culyba was Bulova's impact on women's rights. In the 1970s, for example, the company ran a series of groundbreaking ads in support of equal pay for women.
'I would say that was another exciting part of discovery while I was making the film,' Culyba said. 'I wasn't necessarily aware of their advertising campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment, and that ad is so brave and bold of a company at that time to really take a social and political stand.
'At the time, Bulava really embraced women's rights, and it's a message that I think a lot of people, a lot of women, obviously, and men, can feel still today, through the brand it, it's still there.'
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Elvis and Ann-Margret. Elvis and Nancy Sinatra. Those teams were popular with audiences. But not as popular as Elvis & Lilo & Stitch. Released in 2002, the Disney animated feature film "Lilo & Stitch" introduced audiences to a lonely young Hawaiian girl and Elvis fan, named Lilo, and her new "pet," Stitch, a somewhat dog-esque genetically engineered extraterrestrial who liked to rampage but really yearned for a hug. Together, the duo pursued 'ohana (a Hawaiian term for "family") while playing "Suspicious Minds" on a portable record player and battling space aliens. Like Stitch's stolen spaceship when it crash-landed on the island of Kauaʻi, the movie made an impact. It earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature (it lost to Miyazaki's "Spirited Away," as any movie would), and collected $273 million at the international box office. (In comparison, 1964's "Viva Las Vegas," with Elvis and Ann-Margret, earned the equivalent of $94 million, in 2025 dollars.) 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ELVIS AT 90: Decade-by-decade milestones in the life — and afterlife — of the King The ballyhoo echoed similar fanfare that heralded the release of the first "Lilo & Stitch" 23 years earlier. In 2002, the movie's arrival coincided with Graceland's yearlong commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death; Jack Soden, CEO of Elvis Presley Enterprises, told The Commercial Appeal that the release of an Elvis-connected "classic G-rated Disney flick" would open "a powerful market" for Graceland. In 2002 as in 2025, Disney and Graceland hosted an invitation-only local premiere for "Lilo & Stitch," but the earlier event was more elaborate. The screening of the film at Downtown's now-vanished multiplex, the Muvico Peabody Place 22, was followed by what The Commercial Appeal called a "lavish luau" in front of the ticket pavilion at Graceland, complete with fire dancers, leis made from actual orchids, bamboo huts and costumed movie characters. Testifying to the event's importance, the guest of honor was the nephew of Walt Disney, longtime Disney executive Roy E. Disney, who at the time was vice chairman of the Disney company and chair of Disney Feature Animation. (Roy Disney died in 2009, at 79.) The Los Angeles premiere of the 2002 movie had occurred about a week earlier. Priscilla Presley attended, and told reporters that "Lilo & Stitch" offered "a great message to bring family back together again because really, that's what it's all about. Elvis was very much a family man, regardless of what you hear. He loved family and he always came home." In 2025 as in 2002, Disney and Elvis Presley Enterprises are banking on the appeal of "Lilo & Stitch." The gift shops at Graceland now are stuffed with items from the grandiloquently labeled "Disney Stitch Inspired by Elvis Collection," created by NECA, a pop culture collectibles company. 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The Movie," which — perhaps due to budgetary constraints — licensed only one Elvis song, the thematically appropriate but hardly epochal "Slicin' Sand," from 1963's "Blue Hawaii." The lyrics likely did not give Leiber & Stoller sleepless nights. Encourages Elvis, while serenading a bevy of beauties: "Dance, dance, dance/ 'til your toes get tan/ We're gonna have us a ball on the beach/ Slicin' sand..." This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Lilo & Stitch: Elvis references, Stitch merch and a visit to Graceland
