The most endearing media projects often engage audiences by inviting them to reflect on their personal family experiences, as meaningful history lessons often live closest to home. The pilot for the new documentary series, ‘Roots & Relics,’ is one such project that encourages viewers to reconsider their individual past events that have carried forward through personal artifacts.

Acclaimed television writer-director, Matthew Avant penned and helmed ‘Roots & Relics.’ He also served as a producer with his wife, Katie Avant. The pilot features actor J.D. Hart.

Focused on personal artifacts passed down through generations, ‘Roots & Relics’ uncovers intimate family histories that have often been overlooked by traditional historical narratives. Each episode is envisioned to use a single object – whether a tool, photograph, letter or keepsake – as a gateway into stories of resilience, identity and the people who quietly helped shape American life.

Rather than centering on famous figures or institutions, ‘Roots & Relics’ celebrates everyday families and the meaningful objects they chose to preserve. In doing so, the series highlights how physical heirlooms serve as tangible connections to memory and legacy in an increasingly digital world.

The show’s pilot will have its World Premiere in the Pilot section of this month’s Dances With Films: NY 2026. In honor of the project’s premiere, Avant generously took the time recently to talk about scribing, directing and producing ‘Roots & Relics’ during an interview over Zoom.

Film Factual (FF): You wrote the pilot for the new television series, ‘Roots & Relics.’ What was your inspiration in creating and penning the show?

Matt Avant (MA): Well, basically I had an interest in personal family histories, personal stories, heirlooms and artifacts. That probably dates back to my dad. Growing up, he was a guy who was very fascinated by genealogy research. So he was always trying to dig into our family history and learn more about us.

That really motivated me as a kid. So we would go around and talk to or interview old family members.

So the kickoff story was that my great-grandfather – his mother’s father – blew up a train and died in the explosion. He was in charge of filling the boilers. They’re from rural Arkansas, so this happened out in the middle of nowhere, back in the 1930s, I believe it was.

It was just the story that he’d always heard, but he never really had any evidence of it. It was just people saying, “Yeah, Grandpa blew up in a train.” So my dad was just very fascinated with the story.

Later on, around the time that I was becoming old enough to have a job, I was working at a TV station. I was very interested in video production and starting to really get that interest.

My dad was like, “Hey, I borrowed a camera from someone. What if we took that camera and go interview some old family members, and ask if they know or remember details about our family? We can ask about the train by going through the Calhoun County records in Arkansas and see if we can find old articles about it.”

So we did, and that was probably in the late ’90s. We went and interviewed older family members. We spoke to his great aunts, and one of them was a great-grandma who was 103-years-old. We just sat and listened to stories and interviewed her about our family.

That was just an interest for us, because my dad wanted to go to the old train depot. He wanted to see these spots where some of this stuff happened.

A part of the story with the train explosion was that pieces of the train blew five miles. So he took me to a site, and was like, “One of the pieces of the train landed here!” He was just so fascinated by it, and it was really interesting.

He also was a big Civil War buff, and he loved to go to Civil War battle sites. As a little kid, it was kind of boring to me, because I thought they were just big empty fields. But he loved that they were real historical places. So being fascinated by that eventually became of interest to me, especially when we heard a lot of these stories from our family.

So that triggered in me this interest when I would go to other people’s houses, or I’d go somewhere and there would be an item or artifact that was unusual. I would ask about it and say, “Well, what is that?” They would say, “Oh my gosh, there’s a great story behind this.” Then you’d hear this really wild story.

It was like, wow, all that really is tied to this item that’s just sitting on the shelf. A lot of times, their own kids didn’t remember or know those stories, which turned out to be the case with my dad.

Years after he died, which was back in 2012, social media became more prevalent. You could research and do more things online. So I would email old family members. I’d say, “Do you guys remember these stories? Dad used to talk about these things.”

They would always say, “No, I don’t remember. Your dad was the historian. He’s the one that knew all that stuff.” So I was like, “I guess I should have interviewed dad for a few hours and gotten all his stories out.” So it was sad that I really didn’t do that.

But as I go through my career and travel and film in all these various places, I meet so many people that have really neat stories. A lot of those stories came about because they had some item or artifact that had been in their family for five or six generations.

They loved our interest in hearing those stories, because a lot of times people don’t care. But there’d be items like an old Victor Victrola (the first consumer phonograph). They were like, “Do you know that this was my grandmother’s talking machine, and my grandfather bought it for her? He paid a dollar a week for it?” So there was just always a really neat story.

So I thought, there are so many neat shows, and I love producing shows; I’ve produced several.

But it always seemed interesting that there really wasn’t a show that was designed to tell the stories of these artifacts. You have ‘Antiques Roadshow,’ which my dad loved. But that was usually more about the value of the item, as much as it was the story of the family.

So that became a long passion for me. It took a long time to gestate into wanting to make the show. But it was always a fascination to me. It finally became something real in my head, where I thought, we should do this.

FF: Speaking about producing the series, you also served as a producer on the project. How did you approach the producing side of the show?

MA: It was really great. So, the host of the show is J.D. Hart, and he’s a really good friend of mine. I met him through another good friend of mine.

I used to work on a show with Debbie Dunning, who was Heidi the Tool Girl on ‘Home Improvement,’ back in the day. We did a show about guest ranches, so we traveled all over the place.

The girl who worked with her is married to J.D. So we’d always talk, and she was like, “He’s an actor and a musician, and he’s all these great things.”

I had never met him. But then we finally met one day. He feels like a big brother to me. We hit it off right away, and we were like, “We should work on something fun.”

He’s a talent actor, but I’m not an in front of the camera guy; I like to write, shoot and edit. People who are interested in being on camera can sometimes be hard to find, depending on your approach.

But he is very interested in being a talent. While he was growing, his grandfather had an antique store, so he kind of had the same thing. We would go back and forth with our stories about things like that.

So I was like, “Man, I’ve always wanted to do this show about antiques and artifacts.” He was like, “I’d love to do something like that.”

So I was like, “Well, how do you feel about doing something?” He immediately agreed.

I met this family a few years earlier in Wolf Creek, Montana. They had a really fascinating story. That story is what we decided to film for the pilot episode.

I’ll just give you the quick backstory on that. They have been out there for five generations. It’s the Riddle family, which is led by Will Riddle and Sandra Riddle, and they own a ranch called the Blacktail Ranch. Back in the day, had been the Riddle Ranch.

Their great-great-grandfather came over from Germany. They lived there and they homesteaded.

Years later, his grandfather, Tag Riddle, found this cave on the property. They were curious kids, so they dug into it and realized there was a massive series of these caverns. Down there were thousand-year-old Native American artifacts. There was an altar with a carved bear on it.

There were all of these things that made them question, “What’s going on?” Over the years, they were exploring and digging into the history of it.

They were carbon dating things. They ultimately found artifacts in bones and tools that dated back 13,000 years. That’s Ice Age artifacts from the Clovis period.

His grandfather was just absolutely blown away by this. Since they were exploring the area, he knew that there were bears, and he found them.

He also made another discovery of a rock and a rusted, broken rifle next to a tree out in the woods. On the rock, looks like there’s carving on it, so he goes to the creek and rinses it off.

The inscription was a man’s last words. It read, “I am Joe Baker. I was attacked by a bear, and my leg is chewed. My rifle is broken.” So he was like, “What the heck?”

There was also the broken rifle, so he thought it was this wild thing. But he suddenly took an interest in their history. He was like, “We need to make this a guest ranch, and let people experience this history.”

So they turned the homestead into a museum. All these artifacts that he’d collected and found over the last 80 years were piled into this room.

So when we went there the first time, we were like, “What is all this?” He was like, “Oh man, there are a million stories that my grandpa could have told you.”

It was just so fascinating. So I said, “One day I’d love to tell your story.” They said, “Sure, anytime, just let us know.”

So I talked to J.D. and he was like, “I’d love to host a show. What should we do?”

I said, “Why don’t I call Will Riddle, and see if they’d let us come out and film there?” So I called Will and Sandra. They were like, “That’s awesome, we’d love it, come on out.”

So we went out and spent two or three days at their place. We had our little ragtag team. We went out there and explored and had fun. I had written some stuff prior, but it was like, let’s go explore, ask questions and talk. Let’s structure this how we want, but let’s also just have fun and learn.

So that’s what we did, and they had a delightful time. We also had a delightful time. It was just so much fun.

FF: How did you ultimately decide which locations to visit, and which artifacts to showcase, on ‘Roots & Relics?’

MA: So we started realizing that the experience was a lot of fun, and people seemed to like the concept. So we then started questioning, what should the project be?

Over the last 25 years, every time I meet somebody or see something interesting, I take pictures with my phone. I usually bring my own gear, including my own camera, with me when I go places. I’ll be like, I need to remember this and hold on to this memory for something later.

So once my wife Katie, who’s also my producing partner, and I both got enthused about this project, I was like, “Let me go back through my archive.” I have a Dropbox folder with about a million pictures.

So I was like, “Let me just go poke around and see if I can remember all these things that we found.” So I spent several days just rooting through old photos because that’s my way of remembering something. I’ll take a picture of it and hold onto it. If I ever need to remember, I’ll look at it.

So that’s what I did. I was going back through old photos, and I went, “Oh yeah, there was that guy in Nebraska and that guy in Louisiana. Oh yeah, there was this old opera house and cliff-dwelling. There was this guy who had an automobile that was connected to paleontologists from the ’30s.”

So I made a list of all these people who I would go back to visit. I would tell all their stories in a perfect world. I then reached out to them, because we’ve only produced the one episode so far. We’re trying to get sponsorship and find a home for it.

But I reached out to a lot of these people. I said, “If I were to have a show spotlighting stuff, like, your artifacts, would you be interested in being on the show?”

Everybody’s been like, “That’d be great, we’d love the idea. We’d love to tell that story.”

So that’s what I did. I’ve collected a dozen or so different places that I’d love to visit again, and people whose stories that I would love to tell.

In the making of our promotional materials and the show, it’s not fully scripted, but we do have some scripted elements to it. One of the funniest parts for me, in the way we structured the show, was adding cinematic, dramatic reenactments.

But on this show, that was being done by the host, J.D. He does the reenactment because to me, it’s like his imagination. He’s picturing himself in that situation the way that you would as a kid, if you put on a coonskin cap and you pretend to be Daniel Boone, or you have a sword and you pretend to be a pirate.

It’s like this artifact is giving his imagination this fun space to play in. That was another thing that was great about J.D. – he’s not only a perfect host, he also does this sort of thing. He does narrative audiobooks and pitchman stuff, like car dealership sales. He’s also a musician and does dramatic acting.

So he loved the notion of doing the show. He said, “I can kind of host and also explore, but I can also act.” So it gives him several elements of his own talents that he can use to tell that story.

So we compiled all that together, and shot some reenactments. He grew out his beard. We also covered them in blood and put him in a bear coat, and had him run around the woods to be chased by a bear.

He loved it, and we loved it. It really gave us a chance to kind of get out of our comfort zone. A lot of the work we had done was typically standard documentary stuff, including interviews and walk-alongs. But this project gave us a chance to flex a new muscle. I think we all had a lot of fun with that.

FF: You also served as the director on the series. What was your approach to helming the project?

MA: Directing was really fun because it’s something I also love to do as a writer. I write screenplays, so I’ve always written fictional stories, too, on the side.

But this was the first time, in a long time, that I directed this type of project. I directed (the 2010) independent film, ‘Lunopolis.’ It was a science fiction, found footage story about time traveling people who live on the moon and control our destiny. So we had fun in that space.

It was a directing job for me, but we were all involved in the process. It was me and my friends, and we were all in directing. We had a lot of fun with it.

We even got a deal for the movie, and it was distributed on Netflix and Amazon. We were so excited.

After that, I was like, man, one day I’d love to direct again the way we did on that film. The movie was also told in documentary-style, to a degree, as well as in narrative-style.

So on this project, it was the first time in several years that I was able to actually work with an actor who was giving me what I needed. We’re pouring blood in his mouth because he’s attacked by a bear! So he’s sputtering blood and turning and looking around. We’re framing it and picking our shots.

That was so much fun, because it’s been a long time since I’ve structured things that way. We were in charge of how we were doing it.

We were not only capturing, but also creating. A lot of times in the documentary space, you’re just capturing what happens, and you don’t really get to dictate it.

Whereas, in this space, you can control it. To have somebody give you a performance, and then do it again and again, was really cool. It took this imagination that we had, and showed it to us in real life.

That whole time, I was picturing things, and thought, this would be cool. We could have him run, cock the gun and turn his head. You picture it in your head and storyboard it.

But then when you get out there, not only are you working with really great cinematographers who know how to shoot the story, but they’re also helping. They’re contributing and giving you this wonderful look from all these angles on the story you’re telling.

Then to also have a performer who knows exactly what you want, and can be in that moment, is amazing, especially when it’s an intense moment. The other reenactments we’ll do may not be as intense as being attacked by a bear. But it felt very like ‘The Revenant.’ All of a sudden, we’re like, Leo DiCaprio couldn’t pull this off! (Avant laughs.)

We had a lot of fun with that, which was just a delight. What a joy to get out there and play with talented people and tools like fake blood and fake wounds.

Another thing is that his wife, Cherokee, another dear friend of mine, is a makeup artist and a wardrobe specialist. So she was able to create this bloody look on him. It was great! We were throwing blood and mud on him, and it was just so much fun.

FF: Throughout your career, you’ve also served as an editor on both other television shows and movies. How did that experience influence the way you approached putting this project together?

MA: That experience helped so much, because it feels like 30 years of practice to finally kind of get what you want. I’ve always said that when you’re a creator of any kind, especially when you’re an editor and you put something together, you’re making decisions on pacing and style.

You’re also making decisions about tone and music. You also ask yourself, where are the emotional beats, and where are the moments to breeze through? So you do this over and over again.

Then every time you do it, everyone gives you their opinion. So if you do something and it’s too fast, they’re like, “That’s too fast.” If you do it too slow, they’re like, “That’s too slow.”

People are always giving you feedback on what you’re doing. So you can mold your work until it feels right.

I’ve made hundreds of episodes of television content. I’ve also made a film, I used to make commercials, so I’ve made a thousand local TV ads for various companies, from car dealerships to museums. (Avant laughs)

In the end, all of that experience starts to inform you and give you a pattern. It’s like riding a bike. Eventually you just know the routine. You know when and where and how audiences are going to dial in and out.

As an editor, I think I have a good sense of hitting a moment where go, “We need another beat here, you know. We’re going to lose the audience if we keep them too long, or we need a music shift here. We need a scene change here. I know that we need to keep this punchy.”

This isn’t a children’s show, but in my head, it almost feels like it’s a kid’s show. I want young people to be interested. For instance, my brother has an 11-year-old son, and he was fascinated. He was watching this and was just totally into it, so he stayed with it, in almost a ‘Sesame Street’ kind of way.

You’re like, you have to keep it going. That way, by the time they get to the end, they want more. They’re like, “That was a half an hour already?” That’s such a better way to have somebody let a half an hour go by, and they don’t realize that that much time passed, versus where they’re going, “How long is this thing?”

So we tried to find that balance. As an editor, I feel like I got a good 30-year practice run to try and pace this the way that I hope that it works best.

FF: ‘Roots & Relics’ is having its World Premiere in the Pilots Block 6 on Saturday, January 17 during Dances With Films: NYC. What does it mean to you that the project is premiering at the festival?

MA: I am unbelievably excited about it. I’m honored. They really seem to have their stuff together. They’re so incredibly organized and procedural. They really seem to give a lot of effort to it, and they seem to care a lot about the storytelling.

They’ve been very vocal about their support for how much they love all of our projects, and how unique they think we are as filmmakers. They really try to curate a collection of things that they felt were good. I used curate like a museum term, but that’s what it feels like.

It’s actually a huge honor, and I’m extremely excited. I’d love to have done the one in L.A., too. I know they’d been doing the L.A. version for years.

But premiering in New York City, to me, is amazing. I know it’s not on Broadway, but it feels like Broadway! I’m like, “We’re really getting a premiere in New York City!”

There aren’t really many other places that you would think would be that much fun to go to and say, “We’re premiering work that we’ve done here. It’s our passion, heart and story. This isn’t someone else’s story.”

For many years of my life, I’ve put out work for others that really was not for me; it was more of me just cranking out work for someone else.

This was the first time that I was able to say to others, “Let’s take our heart and our passion, and let’s tell our own story our own way.” So for me to be able to start the year for 2026 by having a world premiere of this story in New York City is amazing. I’m beside myself.

Even though we don’t have a network home yet, or a purchase order for 12 episodes, it’s still amazing to be able to say, “Here’s what we got.” We put in a lot of effort into this, so to be able to finally let audiences that aren’t just friends and family, is amazing. It’s a very humbling honor, and it makes me emotional. (laughs)

‘Roots & Relics’ will screen during Pilots Blk 6 on Saturday, January 17 at 3pm EST at the Regal Union Square during Dances With Films: NYC. For more information on the screening, including how to purchase tickets, visit the show’s and Pilots Blk 6’s pages on the festival’s official website.