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Friday, December 5, 7 p.m.
Certificate in Documentary Studies Final Projects
FOUR STUDENT PRESENTATIONS & RECEPTION
Center for Documentary Studies Auditorium
DIRECTIONS: http://cds.aas.duke.edu/about/here.html
The Certificate in Documentary Studies Program is offered by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in conjunction with Duke Continuing Studies. For more information, see statements from April Walton and Jim Haverkamp below, or check the web: http://cds.aas.duke.edu/courses/conted.html.
CERTIFICATE IN DOCUMENTARY STUDIES GRADUATES
Final Projects, Fall 2008
Liisa Bozinovic
Making Connections [Video]
Recent studies indicate that half or more of all people living in assisted-living residences have Alzheimer’s disease or some other kind of dementia. One of the most recent studies, completed in 2003, shows that about 60 percent of those residents with dementia are in the moderate to severe stages of Alzheimer’s.
What must it be like for professionals who care for assisted-living residents in the advanced stages of a debilitating disease like Alzheimer’s? While these are people with training and on-the-job experience, they often have little to no insight into the essence of the person they are working with, as so much of that person has disappeared. They simply know that the person in their care is not the same person he or she was just a few years ago, let alone a lifetime ago. They watch as family members come to visit less and less, and they must imagine that there are probably other family members living far away, or perhaps even living nearby, who have never set foot through the building’s doors.
Making Connections is about creating a window into that essential person, about understanding an Alzheimer’s patient as a mother, an uncle, a sister, or a brother.
Liisa Bozinovic has a career in accounting. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, four daughters, a son, and their dog. She has past and current experience with long-distance family members living with varying stages of Alzheimer’s. With her documentary, she hopes to create a model that can be used for families trying to provide care for loved ones with dementia. Her larger ambition is to make documentaries that can positively affect the world. Special thanks to Goran, Kesten, Kaya, Noah, Sail, and Zoe for adjusting their already crazy schedules to help make the Certificate in Documentary Studies a reality.
Rhonda Klevansky
Welcome to My Paradise [Video]
The beachfront in Durban, South Africa, is a vibrant place where many cultures intersect. On any day its visitors include tourists, fishermen, surfers, Zulu healers, Baptists, and Hindu celebrants. For a number of years, groups of sand artists have populated the long stretches of white sandy beach. Each day, they construct beautiful and elaborate sculptures out of sand and seawater in the hope of receiving spare change from passersby on the boardwalk.
Welcome to My Paradise is the story of the partnership of Xolani Sibiya and Silvio Joao Benjamin. Xolani, a South African AIDS orphan, uses his share of the daily collections to gain entrance to a homeless shelter, and for food and clothing. Silvio, a migrant from Mozambique, sends most of his very small income back to his native country for the care of his young son. He sleeps on the beach every night to guard their sculptures from destruction by competitors or drunken revelers.
Rhonda Klevansky is a photographer, writer, and filmmaker. She has worked on documentary films for various broadcasters, including the BBC, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Television New Zealand, and the Discovery Channel. Her still images have been exhibited in Great Britain, South Africa, and Chile, and she contributes photographs to Getty Images and the Nature Picture Library. She has also written numerous magazine articles as well as a nonfiction children's book. Klevansky, who is from Durban, frequently visits her hometown, and for years she walked past the sand sculptures and thought what a great subject. This year she got her husband, a medical physician, to be her assistant and co-producer, and has at last made the documentary. Klevansky has been living in Durham, North Carolina, for the past seven years. She is currently working on a documentary about the Hillside Hornets, a local high school marching band. More of her work can be seen at www.rhondaklevansky.com.
Carol Laurey
Leaving Home [Video]
Leaving Home follows the stories of four older couples as they make the decision to move to a continuing care retirement community (CCRC). The film focuses on the reasons that motivate people to consider moving to a CCRC, their feelings about leaving their homes for new living arrangements, and the interpersonal dynamics between aging parents and their adult children as they make this decision. Although the couples move to different facilities, their experiences have much in common. Sam Stone, a longtime director and surveyor of nonprofit continuing care retirement communities, provides insight into the way these communities function. Dr. Brenda Rogers, the co-producer and on-screen interviewer, tells her personal story of helping her parents move into a CCRC.
The documentary was filmed over eighteen months in the lives of the four families. A pair of twin sisters, who remained in their home with a lot of help from their community, are also featured.
Leaving Home provides a realistic look at these lives in transition and can help to inform the decision-making process of people who are considering this kind of move or those who are concerned about the living situations of older family members.
In 2002 Carol Laurey and her husband retired and returned to Chapel Hill after living in New Jersey and Minnesota for over twenty years. A former financial analyst with IBM, Laurey has also published a junior tennis and golf magazine and served as a volunteer for many organizations, most recently as a tutor at North Chatham School. She started taking classes at CDS soon after moving back to North Carolina. She has completed films for private individuals as well as one for Chatham County Habitat. While at a Christmas party in 2006, she found the subject for her final project. A friend, Brenda Rogers, related the very emotional experience of helping her parents move from the home they had lived in forty-one years to a continuing care retirement community. Leaving Home is the result of that conversation; Brenda Rogers is the co-producer of the documentary.
Brett Walters
Sight/Site of Men of Maize, 2001–2007 [Photography]
In 2001 Walters first traveled to Guatemala to act as an observer for a human rights nonprofit organization that assists returned refugee communities. Jakalteca Mayans are one of the groups that formed the community of Nueva Esperanza, or Chaculá, a town that sits in remote highlands near the border with Mexico. This collection of images provides a small glimpse into the lives of campesinos [subsistence farmers] and poor ciudadanos [city dwellers]: their homes, their activities, their environments. Jakaltecans are the uniting thread throughout these photographs, as their story of loss, movement, and perseverance is emblematic of the life of the campesino in Guatemala.
Brett Walters was born in Durham, North Carolina. After spending time in locales near and far, he now resides a short mile from his birthplace. Walters, a graduate of Appalachian State University, first came to understand the intense and complex relationship of the United States with its southern neighbors as a student of Latin American history, then as an owner of a landscaping company, and later as a human rights volunteer in Central America.
More of his work can be viewed at http://www.brettwalters.com.
FROM APRIL WALTON, CDS Learning Outreach Director:
These students have not only completed a total of ninety-six credit hours of coursework but a substantial documentary project as well, and we celebrate the work and time the graduates have invested (often years) in their projects. Most of the students in the certificate program are working adults, which means they have undertaken and completed this work in addition to their already busy professional lives.
The continuing studies courses at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) are open to all community members. This openness brings diversity to our classes, and creates a unique, hybrid space within the university where Duke students and the community can meet and get to know each other.
From students to retirees, recent graduates to educators, activists to business people to journalistspeople from all walks of life come together at CDS around the common belief in the power of documentary work. Some are novices in a particular medium; others have been filming, photographing, and writing on various topics for years.
These classes tend to be small, with often no more than twelve students, and are taught by professional photographers, audio producers, folklorists, and filmmakers who are generous supporters of their students and provide them with resources and connections well beyond the classroom. The intimate setting also tends to foster a cooperative atmosphere where students share advice as well as give their time and loan their equipment to help each other with their projects.
In addition to congratulating our graduates, I would like to thank Jim Haverkamp, who taught the final seminar course, and all of the instructors, without whom none of these courses would be possible. I would also like to thank Dionne Greenlee, CDS’s Learning Outreach coordinator, and our colleagues at Duke Continuing Studies, especially Garry Crites, director of evening and weekend courses, and the registration team. We value their partnership in our program and appreciate their contributions to its success.
If you are interested in learning more about our classes and other programs, please be in touch. I encourage you to sign up for our mailing list and to visit the CDS Web site ( http://cds.aas.duke.edu/courses/conted.html) to find out about upcoming events as well as become a Friend of CDS.
FROM JIM HAVERKAMP, CDS Final Seminar Instructor:
Over the past few months, it has become clear to me that we often hang a veil of otherness between ourselves and people we don’t understand. We sometimes find it easier to dismiss those with opposing viewpoints by labeling them as “liberal” or “conservative,” “red” or “blue.” It all adds up to “other.”
A story is what makes the other a person who is more real, more fully understood, more human to us. This is precisely why documentaries are so compelling and so essential. For without knowing the stories happening all around us, how can we hope to begin to understand our changing world and the people we share it with?
The projects you will see tonight provide diverse examples of the documentary impulse. They were born out of the unique passions and deeply individual interests of the people who made them. These are stories found close to home and halfway around the world. While the creators envision distinctly different uses for their videos and photographs, these projects have all been made in the hope of pulling back the veil and making the subjects come alive for us.
If the documentarians did their jobs right, you will leave here with new insights and questions to think about on your way home. If they really did their jobs right, you’ll still be thinking about some of these things tomorrow morning.
Thank you for supporting these artists, and congratulations to them for their inspiring work.
banner image:
Professor Alex Harris during a slide lecture accompanying the fall
2003 exhibition, Walker Evans
at 100. Photograph by Christopher
Sims.
Center for Documentary Studies
1317 W. Pettigrew Street
Durham, NC 27705
telephone: (919) 660-3663
fax: (919) 681-7600
email: docstudies@duke.edu
See: directions to the Center for Documentary
Studies
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