Want a real blast before July 4th? Don't miss Rozzi: The First Family of Fireworks, a new documentary about the fourth-generation Symmes Township pyrotechnics family airing three times this week on WCET-TV. (It premieres 7:30 p.m. Tuesday).

IF YOU GO

• Rozzi: The First Family of Fireworks: On Channel 48 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday; 11 p.m. Wednesday and 7:30 p.m. Thursday.   • Nova: Fireworks!: 8 p.m. Tuesday on Channels 48, 54, 16; 8 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 14.   • Ultimate Guide: Fireworks: 9 p.m and midnight Wednesday, Discovery Channel.

        And check out the Rozzi's fireworks display to the “William Tell Overture” on the Discovery Channel's Ultimate Guide: Fireworks (9 p.m. Wednesday).

        The local film, the first TV show produced by Iacono Productions downtown, offers a rare look inside the Rozzi's Famous Fireworks plant that produces 100,000 handmade shells that entertain millions at Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Paramount's Kings Island, Cincinnati Reds games, Riverfest and other events.

        Nine members of The First Family of Fireworks speak on the show, which also includes old family photographs and home movies.

        Did I mention the fireworks? About half the show is film shot from the barges and bridges during Riverfest. It's a great way to practice your “oohs” and “aahs” for Independence Day.
Consuming passion

        Mike Iacono and creative director Greg Heister could have called the show All in the Family or Family Affair. Another title could have been Passions.

        What emerges from the half-hour film is the profile of a family that has been totally consumed by fireworks since Paul Rozzi sailed from southern Italy in 1895. His son, Arthur, settled in Cincinnati in 1931 to light up the sky for Coney Island.

        The Rozzis are still doing it much the same way 107 years later. That's what makes them famous. The film shows family members and employees assembling and rolling the paper cylinders by hand inside the 100 small white buildings on 40 acres north of Loveland.

        “It's one of the few old-fashioned things that's still around. Most things are made by machine now,” says John Rozzi, who was 10 when he started working with his father, Joe Sr. His brothers and sisters all worked for the family business in the spring and early summer preparing for July 4.

        “My friends wouldn't see me. They didn't bother to call. They knew where we were,” says his sister, Angela Rozzi-Burns.

Backstage at Riverfest

        Rozzi: The First Family of Fireworks shows the week-long preparation for the Labor Day weekend Riverfest, the company's biggest show. Viewers will see the mortar shell racks being packed into 10 tons of sand on barges and being anchored to the Ohio River bridges.

        Some of the fireworks' aerial footage is from WCPO-TV (Channel 9), which hasn't broadcast the WEBN-FM Riverfest pyrotechnics since 1999. The documentary has been in the works that long. (Film narrator Moe Rouse says patriarch Joe Rozzi Sr. is 78. He celebrated his 80th birthday in December.)

        “Mike and I always wanted to do a documentary and were looking for a subject,” says Mr. Heister, the film producer and director. “Joe (Rozzi) was telling me about his family one day, and I asked him if we could do a film about the company.”

        Iacono Productions uses Rozzi's Famous Fireworks when staging business meetings, its primary line of work. Iacono builds sets, and provides graphics, video, film, animation and indoor pyrotechnics for businesses. They call it “corporate theater.”

        Mr. Heister shot more than 30 hours of film with the Rozzis. He tried to get them to talk about how they make the different fireworks designs and colors, but the Rozzis let the fireworks do the talking.

Some secrets revealed

        For the Discovery Channel, the Rozzis do give away some trade secrets. Art Rozzi, company vice president, explains how aerial bombs are fired from long fiberglass mortar tubes buried in sand.

        In the Paramount's Kings Island parking lot one night last winter, Art Rozzi demonstrated for Ultimate Guide how computers synchronize music to fireworks by choreographing an aerial show to the “William Tell Overture,” says Dan Erdeljohn, his brother-in-law.

        Those who watch Rozzi: The First Family of Fireworks on Tuesday should stay tuned for Nova (8 p.m.), which repeats its “Fireworks!” program. Nova explains the science of fireworks, and how they make different shapes and colors.

        The Rozzi documentary ends with an old-fashioned display at Coney Island from a few years ago, when the Rozzis lit flares and wooden-frame pinwheels by hand flares. Believe it or not, that's how the first Riverfest shows in the late 1970s were ignited. Some of the 40 Rozzi's fireworks shows on Thursday will be done by hand, not computers, Mr. Erdeljohn says.

        “I don't think people in this country realize what the Fourth of July is to fireworks people,” says Joe Rozzi Sr. in the Channel 48 show. “Fireworks people live a whole year for that one day.”

        No matter how they do it, one thing is certain: Rozzi's Famous Fireworks are always a blast.

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