Director Winston Hall, left, and executive producer Donna Chance interview musician Raymie Moore for the documentary "Unbroken: The Pearl Bluegrass Circle." Film makers Winston Hall and Donna Chance knew they had found a truly passionate group of musicians when they heard bluegrass tunes still floating through the warm summer air at Pearl at 3 a.m. on a Sunday.

The passion of the amateur performers who visit Pearl will be on display today and tomorrow, when Shreveport, La.-based Mystic Films shows its documentary about the western Coryell County community and its music hall. Screening times are today at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. at the Pearl Community Center.

“Unbroken: The Pearl Bluegrass Circle” is based on a weekend spent at the community center, which hosts monthly bluegrass gatherings. The 90-minute documentary includes numerous interviews with Pearl natives and visitors, explains the history of the small community, and features footage of musicians preparing for and playing in a Saturday night bluegrass stage show.

Winston Hall and Donna Chance worked to condense 16 hours of film from a Pearl bluegrass gathering into a 90-minute documentary. “We really tried to highlight the unique characters at Pearl — and there are many,” said Hall, a 2000 Gatesville High School graduate who was raised on Slater Road, about three miles from the Pearl Community Center.

Hall visited Pearl several times as a child for Christmas chorales performed by Baylor University musicians. Bluegrass gatherings started when he was in high school, but Hall said he only truly realized Pearl’s unique atmosphere during his college years at Angelo State University.

“Every time I went home, I began to appreciate more and more how special it was,” he said.

After college, Hall began working in the film industry in Shreveport. There he met unit production manager Gina Fortunato, who had worked with director Oliver Stone. Ms. Fortunato encouraged Hall to gain experience in film making by producing documentaries, which often cost less than feature films.

When Hall joined with Donna Chance, a film costumer with whom he had worked on a few movies, he found the driving force for the documentary.

“Without Donna Chance, this project wouldn’t have happened,” Hall said. “Her involvement is what made this project feasible instead of just a dream. She’s just been an integral part of the project in every aspect.”

A New Orleans native, Ms. Chance brought an “outsider’s” perspective to the filming, Hall said. Consequently, she encouraged Hall to emphasize aspects of Pearl that, because of his familiarity with the venue, he otherwise may have overlooked.

To experience the bluegrass gathering as many participants do, Hall and Ms. Chance’s group rented a recreational vehicle and camped at the Pearl Community Center for four days during an August weekend.

The documentary, Hall said, highlights a unique feature of the Pearl music gatherings: their modesty. Unlike many bluegrass festivals, Hall said, Pearl does not feature professional musicians and has not become commercialized.

“In fact, it was the antithesis of this,” Hall said.

Pearl does, however, attract a wide array of talent, the documentary director and producer said. Among those filmed during the crew’s weekend at Pearl were numerous bluegrass enthusiasts who have been playing for decades, a musician who specializes in Confederate battle tunes and a young teenager who has been playing at Pearl since he was a small child.

In addition, several Pearl participants’ original bluegrass works -- including the title song “Pearl,” written by Clyde Smith of Gatesville — are featured in the music hall documentary.

Help from several Pearl bluegrass participants — including Ino Hall, Sue Knorre, Tim Martin and Pearl Community Center president Ronald Medart — helped make the project a success, Winston Hall added.

“There are some really interesting stories there that not everybody knows about,” he said of Pearl. “It’s this amazingly unique place where everybody is kind of family. We were there one weekend, and we felt like we had known them all forever.”

With hundreds of vehicles packing the community center grounds, Hall and Ms. Chance found plenty of bluegrass lovers to interview. Despite rain the weekend they visited, the team shot 16 hours of footage.

When Hall’s camera operator became ill the day before filming was supposed to begin, Hall called his former high school classmate Jonathan Schaub, the nephew of Lampasas musician and instrument maker Reid Schaub. Jonathan Schaub agreed to drive up from Austin to handle the equipment.

“That’s kind of poetic to have a Schaub in the documentary,” Hall said.

The five-person documentary team arose at 6 a.m. on Saturday, the group’s primary filming day, to shoot footage of the sunrise in Pearl. More than 20 hours later, they still were working, as several Pearl visitors kept playing until early in the morning on Sunday.

“We basically didn’t sleep,” Hall said. “Those musicians jam all night.”

The long work nights did not end when Hall and Ms. Chance left Pearl. Along with editor Matthew Hubbard, the partners waded through 77 pages of notes in their film log and arranged their 16 hours of film in chronological strips in Ms. Chance’s office to help them choose which segments to use.

“It was just a mind-numbingly tedious task,” Hall said.

The labor on a “beans-and-rice” budget of $5,000 to $10,000 is bearing fruit, though, the director and producer said, as the story of Pearl is ready for the screen. After the documentary’s release next month, Hall and Ms. Chance — who received no outside funding for their project — may enter the work in some film festivals if they have the money and the time to travel.

“It’s kind of like Pearl,” Hall said. “You don’t necessarily do it for the fame or fortune but just because it’s a story that needs to be told.”

Hall believes “Unbroken: The Pearl Bluegrass Circle” not only will please Pearl veterans but also will encourage others who never have visited the venue to travel to Central Texas for a bluegrass performance.

“It’s really exciting to know that pretty soon people all over the country will know about Pearl,” Hall said.