THE DOCUMENTARY HAPPENING HAS BEEN RENAMED THE DOCUARTS INSTITUTE. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE FEBRUARY 7–10, 2008 DOCUARTS INSTITUTE.
Highlights
from Past Happenings
2006 FEATURED PRESENTER—ANDREW
GARRISON
Andrew Garrison is a documentary and fiction filmmaker. In 1975
he co-founded the Dayton Community Media Workshop, a media production
group that made neighborhood-based documentaries as well as conducted
national work. He then went to work with Appalshop Films, the renowned
documentary group in Eastern Kentucky. Garrison now lives in Austin,
Texas, where he teaches production at the University of Texas and
makes his own films.
Garrison’s films have received awards, have been broadcast
on PBS, and have been selected for screening in festivals around
the world. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim
and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts,
and the American Film Institute. His current documentary, Third
Ward TX, is about the work of a group of artists in inner-city
Houston who have successfully been revitalizing their neighborhood
with art as the engine.
Garrison is the founder of the East Austin Stories documentary project,
an on-going collaboration between University of Texas student filmmakers
and residents and businesses in communities in East Austin. You
can see the work at www.EastAustinStories.org.
Friday, March 3, 7 p.m.
Featured Presentation: Shared
Pathways: Collaboration and Community Documentary Work
Richard White Lecture Hall, East Campus, Duke University
See and hear selections of audio and video documentaries from three
different organizations: Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky; the
Center for Documentary Studies; and the University of Texas, each
presenting their own interpretations of community documentary work.
The focus of the evening will be on the work itself, with brief
context provided by members of each of the organizations. There
will be a chance to learn more about Appalshop’s Appalachian
Media Institute and UT-Austin’s East Austin Stories during
the workshops and presentations on Saturday.
Saturday, March 4, 1–2:30
p.m.
Workshops: Session Two
Andrew Garrison: East Austin
Stories
CDS Auditorium
www.eastaustinstories.org
Feature Article on the University of Texas-Austin Web site: http://www.utexas.edu/features/2005/eas/
Since 2001, undergraduate students in Andrew Garrison’s UT–Austin
film courses have collaborated with East Austin residents, businesspeople,
and patrons to create a visual record of the community through dozens
of documentary shorts. The five- to seven-minute films are seen
by hundreds of audience members at local screenings and are available
on the East Austin Stories Web site. For Austinites and people across
the country, the documentaries provide a glimpse into the city’s
most culturally diverse and rapidly changing neighborhoods.
“I wanted my students to get off the forty acres, to see the
city and meet other people,” says Garrison. “I wanted
to do that too. But I also wanted to build a collection of stories
that could be useful for the people in the communities from where
they came. I’d like the stories to help strengthen communities.”
East Austin Stories
provide a historical and contemporary record of an evolving community.
Each semester, screenings take place in various East Austin locations,
including cultural and recreation centers, nightclubs, open courtyards,
and churches. In addition to the public screenings, there is also
a Web site where, presently, ninety of the East Austin Stories short
documentaries are streamed in real time. The documentaries are available
on the site at any time by anyone with on-line access. The films
can be streamed for both high and low bandwidth and will also be
made available free through podcasts.
In previous semesters Garrison’s students have also worked
with media classes in an Austin high school and screened the students’
work as part of the public presentations.
Saturday, March 4, 8 p.m.
Evening Presentation
Andrew Garrison
Third Ward TX: A Work in Progress
Richard White Lecture Hall, East Campus, Duke University
In my neighborhood where I
was raised it looks like a bomb had been dropped down in there.
The house that I was born in… torn down, the house that I
was raised in for like fourteen years is torn down, the house that
I lived in…torn down —
Jerome Washington
In the early nineties, a step ahead of city demolition crews, a
group of African American artists took over a block of abandoned,
condemned row houses in Houston’s Third Ward. They wanted
to start a dialog on conditions in the neighborhood by bringing
attention to this forlorn, crime-infested site. What they had in
mind was a temporary “drive-by” exhibition. But what
they actually set in motion is an unprecedented model for community
and personal renewal that has gained international notice. Naming
their venture “Project Row Houses,” they have transformed
a debased symbol of poverty and hopelessness into a beacon of strength
and imagination. It is a passionate and committed experiment in
living based on a mixture of art, historical consciousness, education,
and the creation of low-income housing.
“Project Row Houses is a blood transfusion; it has given life
to this community,” says Reverend Robert McGee, pastor of
the oldest African American church in Houston. But that new life
has come with a price, as the changes have attracted developers
who have begun driving up prices in the once-neglected area. A decade
after it began, Project Row Houses is still a pressure cooker of
creative ideas. Will it survive what seems an irresistible pattern
of gentrification playing out in Houston as across America?
2006 HAPPENING—A LETTER
FROM THE HAPPENING CO-DIRECTOR
Making It Happen
The Challenges and Pleasures of Community Documentary Work
In a 2001 issue of Document,
a publication of the Center for Documentary Studies, Director Tom
Rankin shared his thoughts on the responsibility of documentary
artists to “act locally”:
I often contend that those of us who do documentary work have no
business conducting fieldwork, making films, assembling groups of
images of communities “away” from home if we’re
not able to adequately share our vision within our own local communities.
I read those words when I began working at CDS more than five years
ago, and they have stayed with me since, as I coordinated public
programming and then moved into focusing on community educational
programs. I often say that if CDS has a canonical text (and if you
spend much time here, you know the diversity of opinions and personalities
that make this statement extraordinary), it’s Elizabeth Barrett’s
Stranger with a Camera,
a complex examination of the impetus to do documentary work and
the stakes involved when representing a community, and a personal
exploration of the responsibilities of the documentary artist. It’s
hardly possible to earn an undergraduate or continuing studies Certificate
in Documentary Studies from CDS without seeing Stranger
with a Camera at least once.
Elizabeth Barrett—whose work at Appalshop, a multidisciplinary
arts and education center in the heart of Appalachia, is an essential
element of Stranger with a
Camera—was the featured filmmaker
at the fifth annual Documentary Happening. For our tenth Happening,
we’re excited to welcome Andrew Garrison, an Appalshop alum
who has been active in community documentary work for more than
thirty years. His current projects include East
Austin Stories, an on-going collaboration
between University of Texas student filmmakers and the residents
and businesses in communities in East Austin, and the documentary-in-progress
Third Ward TX,
which portrays the economic and creative redemption of a traditionally
African American neighborhood in decline, through the efforts of
a group of local artists, residents, and volunteers.
Using documentary work as a way to connect with the Durham community
has been an integral part of the CDS mission since the organization’s
inception. Duke students are sent off campus to find and tell stories
of individuals and communities; for many students, this is one of
the first times they have been encouraged to look beyond the university’s
walls. The Center’s award-winning youth and educational programs—Literacy
Through Photography, Youth
Document Durham, Youth Noise
Network, and the Neighborhoods
Project—engage young people from kindergarten through
high school in explorations of their communities through the documentary
tools of audio, photography, and writing. In 2001 the Home Made
Visible project identified traditional artists in Durham County
and highlighted their work as symbols of community identity.
In the past year, CDS and the Southwest Central Durham Quality of
Life (QOL) Project have collaborated on Shared
Pathways: Collaboration and Community in Southwest Central Durham.
Since the late 1990s, CDS has worked with residents and organizations
in Southwest Central Durham on a variety of documentary projects.
Last spring, CDS began discussing a new idea that would involve
its continuing studies students with the QOL project, which for
the past five years has been addressing community concerns in six
local neighborhoods. As a result, students in CDS summer audio and
video institutes connected with residents of Southwest Central Durham
and produced twenty-six documentaries about the community, then
distributed them to individuals and organizations in Durham.
Barbara Lau, CDS community programs director, has worked with Mayme
Webb-Bledsoe of Duke’s Office of Community Affairs for many
years to develop the community relationships that are the foundation
of Shared Pathways.
My work with Barbara has permanently fixed this question in my brain
when considering any form of documentary work: What are we giving
back—to the individual, organization, and/or community? Another
way of thinking about the issues involved is to ask, “Why
should he, she, or they talk to us?” Stories are sacred, and
they are things that are truly one’s own.
Some of the lessons we’ve learned at CDS about taking a collaborative
approach to community documentary work are:
• It’s hard.
• It takes a lot longer to make decisions.
• It can take years to build trust.
• It’s critical to listen; it’s really tempting
to think you know what’s best for the community.
• It involves uncomfortable conversations, and challenging
one’s own assumptions about the goals of documentary work
and about the community being documented.
• Everyone involved will have strong feelings.
• The process is as important as the product.
• It’s tricky to balance the goals of the artist with
the needs of the community, but the work is most powerful when it
meets both objectives.
• It’s very important to return the work to the community;
it’s both a responsibility of the documentarian and an occasion
for celebration.
• The relationships we build can be powerful and moving.
• Documentary work can tell complicated stories of community;
it can reflect a community to itself in exciting and complicated
ways.
• It’s an opportunity to record and share stories that
might have otherwise disappeared.
• It is absolutely, positively worth it.
This year’s Happening is an opportunity for CDS share the
films and audio documentaries from Shared
Pathways and to hear work from Youth
Noise Network, the CDS youth audio project. We’re also eager
to learn how other individuals and organizations address this messy,
glorious idea of community documentary work. We’ll hear from
Andy Garrison about how they do things down in Texas, and from Rebecca
O’Doherty (a Duke and CDS alum) and youth involved with the
Appalachian Media Institute, a program of Appalshop, to learn more
about how “place-based” documentary work can encourage
young people to address community problems, tell accurate stories,
and come up with alternative solutions, while becoming community
leaders in the process.
All that said, you’re going to be treated to some wonderful
documentary work; you’re welcome to suspend the myriad of
issues I’ve just laid out and sink into your chair, and watch
and listen. Come and join us, and step into the wonderful, wacky
world of the Happening, where we unabashedly express our love for
documentary work, share our dreams and frustrations, and hopefully,
leave with lots to think about, but most importantly, the inspiration
to go forth and do.
Best,
Dawn Dreyer
Learning Outreach Director
Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
2006 HAPPENING—FEATURED
PRESENTATION
Shared Pathways: Collaboration
and Community Documentary Work
See and hear selections of audio and video documentaries from three
different organizations: Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky; the
Center for Documentary Studies; and the University of Texas, each
presenting their own interpretations of community documentary work.
The focus of the evening will be on the work itself, with brief
context provided by members of each of the organizations. There
will be a chance to learn more about Appalshop’s Appalachian
Media Institute and UT-Austin’s East Austin Stories during
the workshops and presentations on Saturday.
Appalshop
Appalachian
Media Institute (AMI) teaches young people in central
Appalachia learn how to use video cameras and audio equipment to
document the unique traditions and complex issues of their mountain
communities. AMI is a program of Appalshop, a community-based arts
and education center in the coalfields of Kentucky. Based in the
community media model and the artistic resources of Appalshop, AMI
offers an intensive summer institute and year-round media production
training with youth, teachers, and community groups in central Appalachia.
Center for Documentary Studies
Youth Noise Network (YNN)
is an after-school program of the Center for Documentary Studies.
YNN participants are high school students who have completed documentary
work in Youth Document Durham, a summer program at CDS. YNN students
produce audio, writing, and photographs that address current issues
of particular concern to young people.
Shared Pathways: Collaboration and Community in Southwest
Central Durham is a project of the Southwest Central Durham
Quality of Life (QOL) Project and the Center for Documentary Studies.
Students in the CDS Continuing Studies program are paired with community
members to create short audio and video documentaries to support
the goals of the QOL project: safe and secure neighborhoods, home
ownership, sustainable wealth creation, and preservation of history
and cultural traditions.
University of Texas at Austin:
Andrew Garrison
East Austin Stories
is a series of short documentaries made as collaboration between
University of Texas students and residents of East Austin. The films
provide a historical and contemporary record. As a growing body
of work, the ninety-plus documentaries are a community resource
and an evolving portrait of the diverse communities and people of
East Austin.
2006 HAPPENING—SCREENINGS
Banjo Pickin’ Girl
Machlyn Blair, Stacie Sexton, Halley Watts
Banjo Pickin’ Girl
is the story of a young woman from eastern Kentucky who struggles
with the death of her father and the pressure of carrying forward
the old-time musical legacy and traditions of her family. (Video
13:00)
McGuirk’s Quirks
Ann Taylor
A bright and encouraging story for the artist in all of us. Leslie
McGuirk is an internationally successful artist and children’s
book author and illustrator whose pre-success story includes multiple
predictions of her failure and over 150 rejections from publishers.
(Video 9:30)
Bowl Digger
Kristy Higby
A loving story about octogenarians Maxie and Hilton Eades, rural
South Carolinians who create wooden bowls and dough trays as durable
as they are. We experience the couple’s strong character through
their own words and see their artistic process, from felling the
trees to turning and carving the bowls. (Video 10:00)
Enough: A Kid’s Perspective
Zoe Greenberg
Greenberg interviewed kids, from ages five to seventeen and from
a variety of economic backgrounds, about their ideas on wealth,
poverty, and what is enough. The result is a portrait of American
ideals expressed through the youngest generation. (Video 11:00)
High School Principal by Day/ Hip-Hop Rapper by Night
Cami Kinahan
Mervin stared rhyming in the seventh grade and dreamed of going
to New York City to be a professional rapper; instead, he became
an assistant high school principal in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Just when he thought he had given up rap for good, one of his students
told him about a club with an underground rap scene. He took the
mic that first night and never looked back. Mervin began by rapping
at local clubs and large concert venues. Then one of his songs catapulted
on to the Billboard Top 100 Singles Chart. Mervin Jenkins, aka Spectac,
is rap’s first high school principal. (Audio 10:00)
Playing for X
Amara G. Hark-Weber
Several months ago, Hark-Weber received a ukulele from a close friend.
This piece explores how the friendship has changed over the years,
and the importance of this particular gift. (Video 6:00)
Bridging Rails to Trails:
Stories of the American Tobacco Trail
Carol Thomson
The American Tobacco Trail is a rail-to-trail project that is reclaiming
twenty-two miles of abandoned rail corridor in the Research Triangle
area of North Carolina. The trail corridor’s history reflects
the rise and fall of Durham’s tobacco industry, and the region’s
evolution toward a healthier, more people-focused community in the
twenty-first century. This interactive documentary explores the
communities of the railway and trail spanning the past hundred years.
(Multimedia 10:00)
Unscripted
Lance Brown
Unscripted looks at one night in the life of an improvisation class
for improving presentation skills. The film reveals the students’
vulnerabilities and their struggles as they work to unleash their
creativity. The film also explores the views of the instructor,
Greg Hohn, on what improv can mean to people. These views are eloquently
illustrated by the people in the class as they discover their creativity,
and boundaries, through improvisational exercises. (Video 10:00)
Banana Pudding
Bria Dolnick
Banana Pudding is an audio portrait of Hazel Ladd, a longtime vegetable
cook and banana pudding chef in Durham, North Carolina. In this
piece we hear Hazel’s outlook on cooking, including the best
way to make pudding, and how it relates to her life. (Audio 5:00)
Poet Son
Sandra Jacobi
Poet Son explores the struggle of spoken word artist and teacher
Dasan Ahanu, son of a teen mother and the product of an abusive
a relationship. Through his powerful performance of “Brown
Bag Daddy,” Ahanu forces his father to confront how and why
he abandoned his child. (Video 14:00)
Carol and Joel (Work-in-Progress)
V. Millington and Shea Shackelford
Carol gave up her son for adoption at nineteen and spent the next
twenty years in a preoccupied state, connected to her son by the
most fragile of ties—a Polaroid snapshot, the letter she left
for him, and the hope that he might someday search for her. During
their time apart, Carol remained in the same city, never changed
her name, and stayed in the same job. She learned how to love in
absence—if she remembered her son and was available for him,
she was a mother. (Audio 5:30)
New Era Veterans
Emma Raynes
As a result of Raynes’s feelings about the current war in
Iraq and rumors of plans to close the VA hospital in Manhattan,
she began researching issues concerning veterans and their experiences
after returning from service. New Era Veterans is a housing facility
for previously homeless veterans who are struggling with post-traumatic
stress syndrome and other psychological or physical disabilities.
Raynes started interviewing and photographing at New Era in November
2005. This work in progress is a mixed-media project that combines
black-and-white stills with sound. (Multimedia 14:00)
A Line of Work
Ryan O’Hara Theisen
North Carolina is home to a variety of the country’s top corporations,
but some of them get talked about more than others. This short walks
us through PHE, an adult mail-order company based in Hillsborough,
North Carolina. We meet a chief technology officer, a marketing
manager, and a writer who show us what happens during an average
workday. (Video 10:00)
Ten Days in Sri Lanka
Rebekah A. Meek
Last March Meek went to tsunami-affected areas of Galle, Sri Lanka,
to establish relief projects. She look a video camera with her and
was shocked by how many people just wanted someone to listen to
their stories. Meek created this piece so that she could share the
intensity and immediacy of these stories as well as the hope and
strength of the storytellers. (Video 8:00)
Hawaii: A Voice for Sovereignty
Catherine Bauknight
In this pilot documentary, Bauknight, an award-winning photojournalist,
captures intimate interviews with the indigenous people of Hawaii
as they express their concern for the imminent loss of their culture
and land as a result of aggressive and unchecked commercial development
occurring on their islands since the take over by the U.S. government
in 1893. (Video 8:30)
Full Court Press
Jeff Parrish and Lee Morris
Victory is more than just a winning score. From August to March
twelve individuals come together from different worlds to play basketball
and form bonds that transcend victory or defeat. (Video 9:00)
Geeks
Drew Burriss
Geeks are resilient people. They will associate with others they
don’t even like to find a certain level of sanctuary in their
shared interests and beliefs. This film explores the challenges
and pressures people face as they form collective bonds. (Video
9:00)
Prescribed Vegan
Kim Boone
The filmmaker steps from the world of traditional American fare
into the borderline militant world of the raw foodist and vegan.
Prescribed Vegan explores the culture of meat and the challenges
raw foodists face. (Video 9:00)
Searching for #1
Thom Kay
A childhood hero is revealed to be merely human when Kay confronts
his view of what it is to be successful in a culture where personal
achievement is everything. (Video 9:00)
MicroGravity
William Judge
When the shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry the world
not only lost seven astronauts, it lost seven amazing souls. They
were moms, dads, husbands, and wives, and they were heroes. For
Anne Cabrera, a classically trained musician, this tragic loss was
more than a passing headline—having recently lost her father,
who was a space pioneer in the early days of NASA, she immediately
identified with the families of the astronauts. This was the beginning
of a musical tribute that would look at the lives and accomplishments
of the seven incredible people aboard the Columbia and their successful
scientific mission. (Video 17:00)
The 9th Ward
Shea Sizemore
The 9th Ward, destroyed by one of the collapsing levees during Hurricane
Katrina, had one of the highest murder rates in the United States.
This documentary tells the story of survivors of not only a catastrophic
natural disaster but of a hard way of life where only the strong
survive. (Multimedia 15:30)
Third Ward TX: A Work in
Progress
Andrew Garrison
In my neighborhood where I
was raised it looks like a bomb had been dropped down in there.
The house that I was born in… torn down, the house that I
was raised in for like fourteen years is torn down, the house that
I lived in…torn down —Jerome
Washington
In the early nineties, a step ahead of city demolition crews, a
group of African American artists took over a block of abandoned,
condemned row houses in Houston’s Third Ward. They wanted
to start a dialog on conditions in the neighborhood by bringing
attention to this forlorn, crime-infested site. What they had in
mind was a temporary “drive-by” exhibition. But what
they actually set in motion is an unprecedented model for community
and personal renewal that has gained international notice. Naming
their venture “Project Row Houses,” they have transformed
a debased symbol of poverty and hopelessness into a beacon of strength
and imagination. It is a passionate and committed experiment in
living based on a mixture of art, historical consciousness, education,
and the creation of low-income housing.
“Project Row Houses is a blood transfusion; it has given life
to this community,” says Reverend Robert McGee, pastor of
the oldest African American church in Houston. But that new life
has come with a price, as the changes have attracted developers
who have begun driving up prices in the once-neglected area. A decade
after it began, Project Row Houses is still a pressure cooker of
creative ideas. Will it survive what seems an irresistible pattern
of gentrification playing out in Houston as across America?
2006 HAPPENING—WORKSHOPS
Publishing Video on the Web
Carol Thomson
You’ve made your short video doc and now you want people to
see it! The Internet is an emerging medium for viewing video, an
opportunity to share your story with a vast audience. But you’re
not a Webmaster, and you don’t know where to start. Learn
the basics of preparing video for the Web, loading video to a Web
page, and establishing a low-cost Web presence.
Carol Thomson has been creating Websites and multimedia
works since 2000 when she began her documentary studies in Australia.
Carol completed her Certificate in Documentary Studies at the Center
for Documentary Studies at Duke University in 2005. She is working
on a multimedia documentary Bridging Rails to Trails: Stories
of the American Tobacco Trail that will be published on the
Web and as a CD-ROM. A work-in-progress version can be seen at http://bridgingrailstotrails.com.
Carol is a Web and multimedia developer for FireStream Media, LLC,
in downtown Durham.
Incorporating Found Footage
Tanya Olson
This workshop will discuss two ways documentarians have traditionally
incorporated found footage—either by fictionalizing it or
using it to build narrative. Looking at the examples House
of Leaves and Grizzly
Man, we will discuss issues and techniques
of using found footage from a variety of sources.
Tanya Olson
is a poet who is a frequent performer on the Triangle scene. You
may have seen her at Stammer, the Regulator, Basement Studios, or
the St. Andrews Writers Forum, among other places. She is a member
of the Black Socks poetry group, the 2005 winner of the Independent
poetry contest, and has new work forthcoming in the
Crucible and
Southern Cultures.
For Love and (Sometimes) Money:
Getting Your Audio Docs Heard
Shea Shackelford
Connecting good audio with good listeners is fun, hard work. If
you’re producing audio documentaries, public radio and community
stations are the primary outlets. They’ve got the biggest
audiences and some of the best paychecks, but they’re not
the only games in town for getting your work heard (and sometimes
even paid for). We’ll listen to some great and innovative
work being done both inside and outside the audio mainstream. From
NPR to theaters to the Internet, we’ll talk about creative
strategies producers are using to get their work, and the work of
other producers, heard.
Shea Shackelford
is a freelance producer living in Washington, D.C., where he has
been producing short audio documentaries and features for public
radio; co-curating the Big Shed, audiodoc
podcast with Durham producer Jennifer Deer; promoting public audio
forums; and teaching radio at the D.C. Latin American Youth Center’s
Art & Media House. Since attending the Salt Institute for Documentary
Studies in Maine, Shea has been enjoying the mystery and anxiety
of charting a new career in audio.
Andrew Garrison: East Austin Stories
Andrew Garrison
Since 2001, undergraduate students in Andrew Garrison’s UT–Austin
film courses have collaborated with East Austin residents, businesspeople,
and patrons to create a visual record of the community through dozens
of documentary shorts. The five- to seven-minute films are seen
by hundreds of audience members at local screenings and are available
on the East Austin Stories Web site. For Austinites and people across
the country, the documentaries provide a glimpse into the city’s
most culturally diverse and rapidly changing neighborhoods.
“I wanted my students to get off the forty
acres, to see the city and meet other people,” says Garrison.
“I wanted to do that too. But I also wanted to build a collection
of stories that could be useful for the people in the communities
from where they came. I’d like the stories to help strengthen
communities.”
East Austin Stories provide a historical and contemporary
record of an evolving community. Each semester, screenings take
place in various East Austin locations, including cultural and recreation
centers, nightclubs, open courtyards, and churches. In addition
to the public screenings, there is also a Web site where, presently,
ninety of the East Austin Stories short documentaries are streamed
in real time. The documentaries are available on the site at any
time by anyone with on-line access. The films can be streamed for
both high and low bandwidth and will also be made available free
through podcasts.
In previous semesters Garrison’s students have also worked
with media classes in an Austin high school and screened the students’
work as part of the public presentations.
For more information, see: www.eastaustinstories.org
and http://www.utexas.edu/features/2005/eas/
Andrew Garrison: More East Austin
Stories
Andrew Garrison
This workshop is an opportunity to continue in conversation with
our featured documentary artist, Andrew Garrison.
Appalachian Media Institute (AMI)
Amy Brashears, Machlyn Blair, TJ Caudill, and Autumn Campbell, with
AMI director Rebecca O’Doherty
In this workshop, you will learn about AMI’s approach to producing
community-based social media with young people. AMI youth producers
and director Rebecca O’Doherty will talk about the community
impact of AMI projects, how to produce media that leverages existing
cultural and community assets, and the experience of producing media
about sensitive and difficult topics with youth. The workshop will
explore two examples of AMI work:
Without a Cause: Sickness in
the Community of Eolia, Kentucky
Without a Cause
investigates the unexplained and unusually high incidence of serious
illness within the small and seemingly peaceful mountain community
of Eolia, Kentucky. Residents speak about what it’s like to
have a sickness no one can name as well as the quietly agreed upon
but not officially acknowledged notion that these diseases are rooted
in environmental pollution.
Through Their Eyes: Stories
of Gays and Lesbians in the Mountains
The significance of family, community, and supportive relationships
for gays and lesbians who live in rural Kentucky are highlighted
in these rare discussions of life experiences in the region. The
video explores the tensions between remaining connected to family
and community roots while also remaining true to one’s sexual
identity.
Through the Appalachian
Media Institute, a program of Appalshop, young people
in central Appalachia learn how to use video cameras and audio equipment
to document the unique traditions and complex issues of their mountain
communities. AMI offers an intensive summer institute and year-round
media production training with youth, teachers, and community groups
in central Appalachia. AMI’s goals are to develop the critical
and creative skills of young people in central Appalachia and to
involve them in their communities and the world by making and sharing
media. Our participants share their work through local screenings
with community members of all ages and through exchanges with young
media makers from across the country.
Sampling Animation
Sandra Jacobi
After an introduction to basic animation techniques, this workshop
will view several examples of animation in films, recognizing the
uses of this creative tool for documentary work.
Sandra Jacobi
in an independent documentary video producer. She began course work
in video and film in 1997 and had the opportunity to study with
animator Francesca Talenti in 2004.
Digging Up the Ground in Our Own
Backyard
Barbara Lau and Dawn Dreyer
Why does CDS—or anyone—dive into the complicated and
challenging world of community documentary work in their own town?
What does it mean to live in the community you are documenting,
or to use the documentary process to step outside of your immediate
circle to learn more about local communities you might not connect
with otherwise? In this workshop, we'll talk a little about CDS's
work in the Durham community, but mostly we'll focus on all our
varied motivations and passions and the challenges we face documenting
the worlds closest to home.
Barbara Lau is the Community Documentary Projects
Director at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.
A folklorist, oral historian, curator, radio producer, and arts
consultant, Lau has more than twenty years of professional experience
in the creation and coordination of cultural programs for public
presentation. Lau recently served as guest curator at the Greensboro
Historical Museum on the collaborative exhibition From
Cambodia to Greensboro: Tracing the Journeys of New North Carolinians.
Dawn Dreyer is the Learning Outreach Director at
the Center for Documentary Studies and the board president of the
Southern Documentary Fund, serving on the project selection committee.
With an extensive background in writing and editing, she has worked
with a number of documentary artists to develop ideas and refine
proposals.
Bagels and Bucks: First Bucks
Presented by the Southern
Documentary Fund (SDF)
You may be working on your first, second, or third project, but
if it’s the first time you’ve tried to raise money to
support your work, this is the session for you. SDF project directors
with their first grant application fresh in their minds will share
their stories (and maybe copies of those first grant proposals).
We’ll also talk about foundations that are friendly to new
producers—and that dreaded first budget.
Participants:
Rhonda Klevansky, One Band
Indivisible
Carol Thomson, Bridging Rails
to Trails
Diana Newton, Two Forms of
ID
April Walton, Standing at the
Crossroads
Dawn Dreyer, SDF board president, facilitator
In 2002, a collective of North
Carolina–based media artists and their supporters came together
to create the Southern Documentary Fund (SDF). The primary goal
of the SDF is to serve as a fiscal sponsor for independent documentary
projects produced within or about the American South. In addition
to fiscal sponsorship, one of the organization’s long-term
objectives is to provide documentary artists with access to resources
that will assist them in the production of their media projects.
The SDF is committed to helping independent documentary artists
produce work in sound, writing, film, and video, photography, and
interactive media. Working with SDF members, the organization seeks
to connect regional resources in order to increase visibility and
expand audiences for documentary projects.
For more information, see: http://southerndocumentaryfund.org
banner image:
Illustration by Keith Norval
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