Document Spring 2010

DOCUM

ENT REALITY RADIO

New CDS Book

CDS FILMMAKER AWARDRobin Hessman’s My Perestroika

LEHMAN BRADY VISITING

PROFESSORMike Wiley on Documentary Theater

CERTIFICATE IN

DOCUMENTARY STUDIESSpring 2010 Graduates and Projects

ON EXHIBITThe Jazz Loft Project in New York

CONTINUING EDUCATIONFall 2010 Highlights

+ Workshops

Friends oF Cds

DUKE UNIVERSITYCENTER FOR DOCUMENTARY STUDIES SPRING 2010

PEOPLE

EVENTS

AWARDS

MORE

Exhibitions

Visit on the CDS Porch, our news blog, at www.cdsporch.org

spring 2010

Document® a Publication of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University

1317 West Pettigrew Street | Durham, NC 27705919-660-3663 | Fax: 919-681-7600 | E-mail: [email protected] | http://cds.aas.duke.edu

CDS Director: Tom Rankin | CDS Associate Director for Programs & Communications: Lynn McKnightDocument® is edited by Alexa Dilworth and designed by Bonnie Campbell

The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University teaches, engages in, and presents documentary work grounded in collaborative partnerships and extended fieldwork that uses photography, film/video, audio, and narrative writing to capture and convey contemporary memory, life, and culture. CDS values documentary work that balances community goals with individual artistic expression. CDS promotes documentary work that cultivates progressive change by amplifying voices, advancing human dignity, engendering respect among individuals, breaking down barriers to understanding, and illuminating social injustices. CDS conducts its work for local, regional, national, and international audiences.

All photographs appearing in Document® are copyright by the artist.

Document® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

REALITY RADIO 3CDS Book Featured in Chicago

About the Book

Kitchen Sisters Coming to Durham

FILM 5CDS Filmmaker Award

In My Mind

Pelada

Brother Towns / Pueblos Hermanos

Blood Done Sign My Name

PEOPLE 7Lehman Brady Visiting Professor Mike Wiley

Certificate in Documentary Studies Graduates

Julia Harper Day Award Winner Kevin Tolson

EXHIBITIONS 11The Jazz Loft Project

Still Point of the Turning World, Photographs by Frank Hunter

Literacy Through Photography: Arusha, Tanzania

Three Hours

The Ripple Effect

COURSES & WORKSHOPS 14Undergraduate Program

2010 Undergraduate Summer Course

Continuing Education Highlights

OTHER NEWS 15Paul Kwilecki Remembered

Documentary Narrative Speaker Series

2010 Hutchins Lecture Series: Tom Rankin

CDS Awards Deadlines

FRIENDS OF CDS 15

CALENDAR 16

contentscontents contents

COVER, top to bottom: 1) Borya and Mark watching home movies of Borya’s childhood during the 1970s in the USSR. From the film My Perestroika by Robin Hessman. Courtesy of Red Square Productions. 2) Gwendolyn in Uyuni, Bolivia. Still from the film Pelada. 3) Bolivar County, Mississippi, 2010. Photograph by Tom Rankin. 4) Still with Jason Moran (foreground) and his band, from the film In My Mind, directed by Gary Hawkins.

DOCUM

ENT

RIGHT: Cell phone photograph by Tom Rankin.

CDSThe Center for

Documentary StuDieSat Duke University

Find Out More about CDS at http://cds.aas.duke.edu

DO

CU

ME

NT

3

REALITY RADIOCDS Book Featured at Chicago Audio Festival

The new book Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound, edited by John Biewen and coedited by Alexa Dilworth of the Center for

Documentary Studies, is the first collection of its kind, a personally crafted study of what makes today’s audio documentaries some of the most compelling storytelling to be found. The book’s essays, by innovative practitioners from the United States and abroad, reveal the interior creative landscape of sound artists whose medium of choice makes particular demands upon the imagination, and offers insights applicable to any form of documentary impulse and expression. This spring the book is being featured at events in Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., followed by summer events in Durham and, tenta-tively, San Francisco.

In March, the Third Coast Filmless Festival’s “Words on Sound” book launch event for Reality Radio at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art was part of a full day of listening to well-constructed, sound-rich audio features made by some of the most influential producers work-ing today. The sold-out evening event to celebrate the publication of the book kicked off with an interview of coeditors John Biewen and Alexa Dilworth by Re:sound’s Gwen Macsai, followed by performances by Reality Radio contributors Ira Glass (This American Life), the Kitchen Sisters (Hidden Kitchens, Lost & Found Sound), and Joe Richman (Radio Diaries).

Singer-songwriter Abraham Levitan’s compositions, written and performed on the spot, followed each speaker. The song he wrote after hearing Macsai’s conversation with Biewen and Dilworth (“It’s a Book About Sound”) can be heard on the Reality Radio website.

A sell-out book signing capped the evening.

In April, a hugely successful book event and signing, held at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, featured contributors Jad Abumrad (RadioLab), Emily Botein (independent producer), Ira Glass (This American Life), Karen Michel (independent producer), and Joe Richman (Radio Diaries) in a conversa-tion with John Biewen about doing audio documentary work.

ABOUT THE BOOKOver the last few decades, the radio documentary has developed into a strikingly vibrant form of creative expres-sion. Millions of listeners hear arresting, intimate storytell-ing from an ever-widening array of producers on programs including This American Life, StoryCorps, and Radio Lab;

online through such sites as Transom, the Public Radio Exchange, Hearing Voices, and Soundprint; and through a growing collection of podcasts.

Reality Radio celebrates today’s best audio documen-tary work by bringing together some of the most influen-tial and innovative practitioners from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In these twenty essays, documentary makers tell—and demon-strate, through stories and transcripts—how they make radio the way they do, and why.

Whether the contributors to the volume call them-selves journalists, storytellers, even audio artists—and although their essays are just as diverse in content and approach—all use sound to tell true stories, artfully.

With essays by Jad Abumrad, Jay Allison, damali ayo, John Biewen, Emily Botein, Chris Brookes, Scott Carrier, Katie Davis, Sherre DeLys, Lena Eckert-Erdheim, Ira Glass, Alan Hall, Natalie Kestecher, The Kitchen Sisters, Maria Martin, Karen Michel, Rick Moody, Joe Richman, Dmae Roberts, Stephen Smith, and Sandy Tolan.

John Biewen is audio program director at the Center for Documentary Studies, where he teaches and produces documentary work for NPR, PRI, American Public Media, and other public radio audiences. Alexa Dilworth is pub-lishing director at the Center for Documentary Studies.

In the series Documentary Arts and CulturePublished by the University of North Carolina Press and CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies224 pages / $22.95 paperback / ISBN 078-0-8078-7102-7 Available at bookstores or from the University of North Carolina Press

y http://realityradiobook.org

DO

CU

ME

NT

3

DO

CU

ME

NT

3NEWS

ABOVE: Editor John Biewen with Gwen Macsai at the launch of Reality Radio in Chicago, March 2010. Photograph by Emily Johnston Anderson.

DOCUM

ENT

HEARING THE DOCUMENTARIES“The essayists in Reality Radio were asked to do a hard thing: describe a sonic craft for the mute page. It’s an enterprise that could bring to mind the line, probably first uttered by Elvis Costello, ‘Writing about music is like dancing about architec-ture. It’s a really stupid thing to want to do.’ Clearly, I don’t think it’s stupid to write about documentary radio. (For that matter, a dance about architecture is something I’d like to see.) But throughout the book our contributors describe and explicate radio pieces, and those pieces ought to be heard. Rather than include with the book a CD that could hold only short audio slices from nineteen producers, we’ve posted samples of our essayists’ works on a website. There you can hear substantial excerpts and complete works by the Reality Radio contributors. The site also offers links to more audio documentary work, by our essayists and other producers—including podcasts.”—John Biewen, from the Editor’s Note

y http://realityradiobook.org/hearing-the-documentaries

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

“The essays in this book were written by people thinking with their ears.”—Rick Moody, from the Foreword

“A powerful and illuminating anthology about our most powerful and intimate medium. Reality Radio is a must-read for anyone who feels called to make documentary work or whose imagina-tion and heart are stirred by the sounds of nonfiction storytell-ing on the radio. A wonderful book!”—Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps and Sound Portraits Productions

“The producers who wrote these essays prove that there’s noth-ing more moving than real, truthful radio. I read a lot of the book in bed and soon heard the voices whispering in my ear: ‘Get up. Go record something. Now.’ You will feel the same.” —Neenah Ellis, independent radio producer and author of If I Live to Be 100: Lessons from the Centenarians

“Reality Radio is a collection of masterful essays by radio’s best producers; I feel as though I’ve had a personal, one-on-one con-versation with many of the medium’s contemporary heroes. This book will stoke the ‘radio fire’ in the bellies of its readers.” —Rob Rosenthal, independent radio producer and director of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies radio program

“Radio has suffered corporate deadening just like other ‘tradi-tional’ media, yet it retains an edge thanks to public, community, and college stations and the popularity of radio documentaries. Biewen, audio program director for Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, offers a lively history of creative unex-

DO

CU

ME

NT

4


pectedly moving essays by innovative audio journalists and artists who ‘use sound to tell true stories artfully.’ Such artists include the Kitchen Sisters, who write about their ‘deep need to bear witness and try to heal the culture through stories and rev-elations,’ and Ira Glass, who generously reveals just how much patience, effort, and luck are involved in creating This American Life. Jad Abumrad’s description of his work with Robert Krulwich on the wacky Radio Lab series is matched by provocative accounts of radio diaries and bold audio performance art and Katie Davis’ beautiful essay about her collaborations with Washington, D.C., teens in Neighborhood Stories and the prac-tice of ‘deeper listening.’ Invaluable and many-faceted coverage of a thriving, populist, and mind-expanding art form.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist

KITCHEN SISTERS, FEATURED IN REALITY RADIO, TO VISIT CDSIn conjunction with Hearing Is Believing, a CDS summer institutePublic Event: Monday, July 26, 7 p.m.Bay 7, American Tobacco Complex, Durham, North Carolina

The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, are award-winning National Public Radio producers. They are the creators of the Hidden Kitchens series on Morning Edition, the Lost & Found Sound series, and the post–9-11 Sonic Memorial Project, co-produced by Jay Allison. They are dedicated to creating intimate, provocative, and sound-rich documentaries that bring seldom-heard voices to the air, to mentoring young producers, and to building community through storytelling. They are currently producing the NPR series The Hidden World of Girls—Girls and the Women They Become.

U P C O M I NG EV E N T S

Saturday, May 15, 6 p.m.

Reality Radio: Talk and Book SigningJohn Biewen with Bob Edwards and contributors Katie Davis and Joe RichmanPolitics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NWWashington, D.C.

Monday, July 26, 7 p.m.

Reality Radio Performance and Book SigningThe Kitchen SistersBay 7, American Tobacco ComplexDurham, North Carolina

TOP, left: Nikki Silva, Ira Glass, and Joe Richman at the Reality Radio book event in Chicago, March 2010. Photograph by Alix Lowrey Blair. ABOVE: From Andrew O’Connor’s installation Frequent Mutilations at the Third Coast Filmless Festival in Chicago, March 2010. Photograph by Alix Lowrey Blair. LEFT: The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson (left) and Nikki Silva. Photograph courtesy of the Kitchen Sisters. OPPOSITE, top: Jason Moran. Still from the film In My Mind, directed by Gary Hawkins. OPPOSITE, below: Filmmaker Robin Hessman filming Ruslan. Courtesy of Red Square Productions. D

OCUM

ENT

CDS FILMMAKER

AWARDMy Perestroika

by Robin Hessman

My Perestroika, directed and produced by Robin Hessman, is the winner of the 2010 CDS Filmmaker Award, presented in April at the

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. Without “talking head” historians, expert wit-nesses, or an omniscient narrator telling viewers how to interpret events, My Perestroika lets five former school-mates—part of the last generation of Soviet children brought up behind the Iron Curtain—share their own per-sonal stories.

The film interweaves their contemporary world with rare home movie footage from the 1970s and ’80s in the USSR, along with official Soviet propaganda films that sur-rounded them at the time. Their memories and opinions sometimes complement and sometimes contradict each other, but together they paint a complex picture of the chal-lenges, dreams, and disillusionment of this generation in Moscow today.

Robin Hessman graduated from Brown University with a dual degree in Russian and film. She received her graduate degree in film directing from the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. She received an Academy Award in 1994, with co-director James Longley, for their student film, Portrait of Boy with Dog. During her eight years in Russia, Hessman worked for the Children’s Television Workshop as the on-site producer of the original Russian-language Sesame Street.

In the U.S., Hessman co-produced the documentary Tupperware!, which received the Peabody Award in 2005. She also co-produced the PBS biography of Julia Child, Julia! America’s Favorite Chef. In 2004, she founded Red Square Productions and was granted the position of Filmmaker in Residence at Boston’s PBS affiliate, WGBH, to develop My Perestroika.

My Perestroika will be broadcast on PBS on the inde-pendent series POV in their 2011 season and is a co-production of Red Square Productions, Bungalow Town Productions, and ITVS International.

The CDS Filmmaker Award, which comes with a $7,500 prize, recognizes documentary films that combine original-

ity and creativity with firsthand experience in examin-ing central issues of contemporary life and culture. In keeping with the CDS mission, the award was created to honor and support documentary artists whose works are potential catalysts for education and change.

In My Mind Director: Gary Hawkins Producer: Emily LaDueExecutive Producer: Tom Rankin

The new documentary film In My Mind is a creative study of the making and performance of jazz pianist Jason Moran’s composition of the same name in its February 2009 premiere at New York City’s Town Hall. Moran’s IN MY MIND brings together an eight-piece band, The Big Bandwagon, for a full-length, multimedia piece inspired by Thelonious Monk’s legendary 1959 concert at Town Hall, the first time Monk’s music was performed by a big band. Moran’s composition incor-porates audio recordings and images made by noted photographer W. Eugene Smith, who lived and worked in the loft building where Monk and his collaborator Hall Overton, and then the entire band, toiled away arranging and rehearsing the music in 1959. IN MY MIND grew out of Moran’s artist’s residency with Duke Performances and the Jazz Loft Project at the Center for Documentary Studies, a ten-year initiative researching the stories from the loft building where Smith captured the late-night jazz scene. (See www.jazzloftproject.org.)

The February 2009 performance of IN MY MIND was documented by Center for Documentary Studies instructors Gary Hawkins and Emily LaDue, with stu-dents from their Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking


DO

CU

ME

NT

5

DOCUM

ENT FILM

ABOVE: A Jacalteco Maya family pictured in front of their home and store, Jacaltenango, Guatemala, 2009. The four brothers pictured here tell their stories in Brother Towns, as does one additional brother living in Jupiter, Florida. Photograph by Charles D. Thompson Jr. OPPOSITE, top: Mike Wiley. Photograph by Steve Exum. OPPOSITE, below: Mike Wiley introducing his students’ work in progress, a play about the Freedom Riders, April 2010. Photograph by Bonnie Campbell. DOCUM

ENTcourse. The film contains concert footage, as well as behind-

the-scenes action and interviews. Staying true to Monk’s ingenuity, Moran makes his own rules combining improvisa-tion, collaboration, performance art, multimedia, and history to reinvent a legendary show, while retaining the integrity of the original music. The film does the same, using Moran’s performance as the bass-line for a jazz story spanning fifty years. The film brings viewers intimately on stage and into the spaces and minds of the performers.

In April, In My Mind premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and also screened at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, in conjunction with The Jazz Loft Project exhibition.

y�http://www.duke.edu/~el13/in_my_mind/ IN MY MIND OPENING.mov

PeladaDirectors: Luke Boughen, Rebekah Fergusson, Gwendolyn Oxenham, Ryan White Producers: Ryan White and Francis Gasparini

Away from professional stadiums, bright lights, and mani-cured fields, there’s another side of soccer. Tucked away on alleys, side streets, and concrete courts, people play in improvised games. Every country has a different word for it. In the United States, it’s “pick-up soccer.” In Trinidad, it’s “taking a sweat.” In England, it’s “having a kick-about.” In Brazil, the word is “pelada,” which literally means “naked”—the game stripped down to its core. It’s the version of the game played by anyone, anywhere—and it’s a window into lives all around the world.

Pelada is a documentary following Luke and Gwendolyn, two former college soccer stars who didn’t quite make it to the pros. Not ready for it to be over, they take off, chasing the game. From prisoners in Bolivia to moonshine brewers in Kenya, from freestylers in China to women who play in hijab in Iran, Pelada is the story of the people who play.

Pelada, directed by former CDS students Rebekah Fergusson, Gwendolyn Oxenham, and Ryan White, along with Luke Boughen, had its world premiere in March 2010 at the SXSW film festival in Austin, Texas, and was featured in a spe-cial screening at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, in April. International rights to the film have been sold to PBS.

y http://www.pelada-movie.com/

DO

CU

ME

NT

6


Brother Towns/Pueblos HermanosDirectors: Charles D. Thompson Jr. and Michael DaveyAssociate Director : Margaret MoralesA Project of the Center for Documentary Studies

The documentary film Brother Towns / Pueblos Hermanos is a story of two towns linked by immigration, family, and work: Jacaltenango, a highland Maya town in Guatemala; and Jupiter, a coastal resort town in Florida where many Jacaltecos have settled in Florida.

Brother Towns chronicles a story of how and why people migrate across borders, how people make and remake their communities when they travel thousands of miles from home, and how people maintain families despite their travels. Because we are all immigrants, this is a universal human story, and a quintessentially American one.

Brother Towns is also a story of local and international controversy. News of undocumented immigrants is familiar in nearly every community across the U.S., and citizens must choose how they respond. The film includes voices

We weren’t just looking for the game; we were looking for the stories of the people who played the game. In the most notorious men’s prison in Bolivia, an inmate tells us, “Here we have nothing. Our life is to play.” In Sao Paulo, we meet a former female professional player who now paints Shrek dolls at a toy factory but still plays with the guys at her neighborhood court: “Somebody will say, ‘Who’s she; what’s she doing out here?’ But somebody will say, ‘That’s Nene,’ and they’ll tell my story.” In Mathare Valley, the largest slum in Africa, players bet twenty shillings on Saturday games. The field, which used to be a garbage dump, is at the center of the slum, and everyone comes to watch. A moonshine brewer confides, “Down here, everybody thinks you’re just another drunkard, but then when you get to the field, people say, ‘Oh, that person can play.’”

Over the past three years, we’ve slept in twenty-five countries, navigated fifteen languages, reversed down two main highways, gotten attacked by a baboon in Kenya, detained in Israel, and reported to the Iranian government. We drank warm post-game Fanta in a villa in Argentina, sipped tea with Egyptians, and shared beers with eighty-year-old Brazilians who play barefoot on Sunday mornings. We juggled the ball on the cobble-stone streets of Paris with a man wearing dress shoes, slacks, and an Angora sweater; we juggled the ball with the Togolese border control; we juggled the ball with two female security guards in Iran. We came away awed by the game the entire world plays.

As a teammate told us in Iran, “It doesn’t matter what religion you are or what country you come from, when you see a game in an alley, you can say ‘I want to play,’ and in the spirit of friendship they’ll invite you to play.” This sentiment is at the center of our film.

— Excerpted from The Naked Truth Behind ‘Pelada’ by Gwendolyn Oxenham, courtesy of Moving Pictures magazine

Close-Up

DOCUM

ENT of those opposed to undocumented immigrants as well

as advocates helping migrants who seek work and hope, whether documented or not.

In February 2009, the film debuted in Jacaltenango before an audience of over 300 people at the Fiesta of Candelaria, the town’s patron saint. Screenings in the U.S. began in January 2010.

y http://www.brothertowns.com/

Blood Done Sign My NameDirector: Jeb Stuart Based on the book by CDS professor Tim Tyson

Blood Done Sign My Name, an epic Civil Rights drama based on the acclaimed book of the same name by prize-winning author and scholar Timothy B. Tyson, opened in select theaters nationwide on February 19, 2010. The film, which takes place in Oxford, North Carolina, in the 1970s, explores the racial upheaval—and ensuing social change—provoked by the acquittal of a white father and son accused of murdering a black man in cold blood and in full public view.

Part autobiography and part history of the civil rights movement in the South, Tyson’s book has sold more than 150,000 copies since its publication in 2004. Hailed as a “riveting story” by the Chicago Tribune and “one of the most powerful meditations on race in America” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, it recounts the small-town murder of Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old black Vietnam veteran who was shot and beaten to death by a prominent white businessman and his grown sons.

In response, many young, African American men took to the streets, engaging in riots and vandalism. However, Ben Chavis, Marrow’s cousin, decided that the best way to protest the government’s unwillingness to end segrega-tion would be to organize a peaceful march on the state capitol. What began as a small group of Marrow’s out-raged friends and relatives grew to a crowd of thousands over the three-day, 50-mile trek.

Ten years old at the time, Tim Tyson watched as his father, pastor of the all-white Methodist church, tried in vain to get his congregation to reconcile with their African American neighbors. It was already too late; the black citizens of this small Southern town had decided to take matters into their own hands.

Tim Tyson is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies and Visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture at Duke Divinity School.

y http://www.cdsporch.org/?p=1604

Lehman BradyVisiting Professor

An Interview with Mike Wiley: Documentary Theater

Playwright and actor Mike Wiley, who has more than twelve years of credits in theater for young audiences and in film, television, and regional the-

ater, is the Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke and UNC–Chapel Hill in spring and fall 2010. The Center for Documentary Studies coordinates the Lehman Brady Chair professor-ship, which brings distinguished writers, photographers, filmmakers, and other practitioners and scholars of the documentary arts to Duke and UNC to teach courses on both campuses and engage in lectures, screenings, and other events for students, faculty, and the general public.

Wiley’s work focuses on expanding cultural awareness through dynamic portrayals based on pivotal moments in African American history. In doing so, he hopes to unveil a richer picture of the total American experience. His expanding repertoire of original productions displays his acclaimed ability to bring to life multiple intertwined char-acters, with Wiley often portraying more than two dozen persons in a single “one-man” drama.

In Wiley’s spring 2010 courses at Duke and UNC, stu-dents are learning about the history and methodology of documentary theater and engaging in their own fieldwork in order to research, write, and perform a play focusing on the Freedom Riders of 1961. These Civil Rights activ-ists boarded buses and traveled through the South to challenge widespread segregation on public transporta-tion, which had supposedly been outlawed by the 1960 Boynton v. Virginia Supreme Court decision. The Freedom Riders provoked violent reactions and many were arrested and served sentences.

As part of their research, Wiley’s students are read-ing archival materials, such as journals and letters, and watching and listening to film and audio recordings. Some students are conducting oral history interviews with surviv-ing Freedom Riders. Wiley will spend the summer working with Tim Tyson, Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies, to edit the final play, based on stu-dents’ research, writings, and in-class improvisations. In the fall, the play will be performed at Duke and UNC. The play will also travel to Mississippi, where it will be staged at various churches during spring break 2011, and in May 2011, the play will travel to Jackson, Mississippi, during the 50th anniversary celebration of the Freedom Rides.


DO

CU

ME

NT

7

people

The following excerpt Is edited from a longer interview with Mike Wiley, conducted by Lauren Hart of CDS.LH: Describe your class and the project your students are working on.

MW: Each time we meet, we discuss different points of history dealing with the Freedom Riders. In doing that, we do impro-visations, which is really my own personal style of writing. It’s taking a bit of research that I’ve done and improv’ing interest-ing parts from it to see what I think would be dramatic, to see what I think would work well on stage, and then fine-tuning that. Eventually it becomes a scene, or perhaps even an entire play. But the idea is to take these improvs and use them as, for lack of a better term, spitball ideas, that can eventually make their way into a fully dramatic piece. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I’m really teaching these students how to go about doing it from the ground up.

LH: How do you conduct research for a historical play?

MW: Archive research, oral histories, diaries, journals, film, audio recordings, anything we can get our hands on to fully flesh out the piece, because the idea, especially with docu-mentary theater, is to get multiple versions of the truth. This goes without saying; it’s really hard to get to the truth of many pieces of history, especially Civil Rights history. And so, with documentary theater, especially the way that I do it, and sev-eral other folks in the field do it, you take multiple versions of the truth and you put them on stage. You give the audience the opportunity to decide, what is the truth and what is not. As Peter Brook says, there are three versions of the truth: my truth, your truth, and the truth, and by putting the multiple ver-sions of the truth onstage, maybe, somewhere in the middle we find what the actual truth is.

LH: What do you think makes documentary theater, as a medi-um, different from other forms of documentary work?

MW: The first thing that pops into my head is the audience, the immediate audience feedback that a piece of theater can incite. There is no dividing wall, because it’s live theater, and typically this kind of theater, documentary theater, is devel-oped to incite some sort of social change, some change within the audience, within society, within ourselves, the performers on stage. Documentary photography and film and other medi-ums, they do provide that in certain ways, but unlike documen-tary theater, that stuff stops at the footlights. They can’t really reach out and—physically sometimes—grab an audience. With documentary theater, you have the opportunity every night to hone your craft, to move an audience in a different way. You can change a performance to change somebody’s heart.

LH: How did you get into this type of theater?

MW: I came to it out of my love for history, out of the neces-sity to employ myself as an artist, out of, specifically, my inter-est in the subject matter I typically focus on: the Civil Rights movement, or African American history. I started doing pre-dominantly that because I felt that school audiences, that is, elementary, middle, high school, college audiences, just were not versed in multiple versions of the truth. I was reading and seeing that students were coming away from classes with one particular idea of who led the Civil Rights movement, one par-ticular idea of what slavery life was like. And I thought, that’s not what history is. . . . There are multiple stories from multiple individuals and to deny one story is to deny everyone’s story.

LH: Can you talk about your goals for the Freedom Riders proj-ect, in addition to touring the play?

MW: My main focus is to produce the play and make it a tour-ing entity, whether it’s students [performing] in the spring or whether it’s professional actors. My hope is that it will be students. So that not only are they doing good work because they’re doing the work of truth and reconciliation, but they’re getting something that very few artists, especially actors, get the opportunity to do while they’re in school, and that is to perform professionally in front of audiences that aren’t other students. And they’re doing it in multiple locations, so they’re getting the opportunity, the experience, to be true touring actors. Very, very seldom do students get that opportunity. It’s just one thing that’s not focused on, unfortunately, in schools.

DO

CU

ME

NT

8


Certificate in Documentary Studies

GRADUATESSpring 2010The Certificate in Documentary Studies at Duke University is a program of study involving undergraduate students in community-based research using photography, filmmaking, oral history, and other documentary fieldwork methods. To receive the certificate, students must complete a minimum of six courses and a documentary project that they exhibit, present, publish, or otherwise disseminate to the public. The certificate program allows students to connect their educational experiences and creative expression to broader community life and to examine the representational and ethical issues related to this work.

Certificate students work in one or more documentary mediums—photography, filmmaking, writing, audio, com-munity-based performance, among others—while exploring a particular issue, community, family, or individual. In addi-tion to introductory courses in documentary mediums, the program also features special topics courses and a large number of cross-listed courses in other departments.

Twelve students completed their final projects in the Spring 2010 Capstone Seminar. They presented their projects at CDS on Sunday, April 25, during an afternoon celebration and BBQ.

The Students and Their ProjectsBeginning in September 2009, Cat Crumpler documented the growth of the East Durham Children’s Initiative with still photography in order to raise community awareness of the organization’s work and goals. The EDCI offers programs that aid in closing the achievement gap in schools and sup-port families in surrounding neighborhoods as they take part in these efforts. A public policy studies major, with a minor in earth and ocean sciences, Crumpler will teach elementary school in the Mississippi Delta for Teach for America after she graduates in May 2010.

DOCUM

ENT

ABOVE and OPPOSITE: From Certificate in Documentary Studies student projects. ABOVE, top to bottom: Images from final capstone projects by Emily Robertson, Fei Lian, Jennifer Kozin. OPPOSITE: From a project by Kaitlin Rogers.

DOCUM

ENT Graduating from college can bring to the surface a wide

range of conflicting emotions. For her senior Documentary Studies project, Michelle Fang took a closer look at Duke culture and the Class of 2010 in its final moments at Duke. Through instant photography, she sought to capture a wide range of answers to the question: “What do you want to do before you graduate?”

Hoping to become the next Jacques Cousteau, biology major Kate Findlay-Shirras also is completing Certificates in Documentary Studies and Marine Conservation. Her fas-cination with, and passion for, the natural world led her to look closer to home, where she discovered the mystery of the wild dogs of Duke’s campus, the focus of her final film project.

Victoria Fleischer, a graduating senior from New York City, majored in public policy. Fascinated by questions of defin-ing and adapting identity, her past documentary projects examined the influence of place and space on self-defini-tion. She conducted a photographic investigation of the transition of Martha, a young Zimbabwean mother living in Durham. She also created a film about the Umbon’omhle theater group of Cape Townian youth, who use poetry and song to overcome their difficult surroundings. Working with film for her capstone documentary project, Victoria explored the lives of Bhutanese refugees who recently moved to North Carolina. Next year, she will be in Boston on a Lewis Hine Documentary Fellowship.

Mary Ashton Inglis, a senior from Travelers Rest, South Carolina, majored in music. Working with photography and audio, she has completed documentary projects on a house concert venue for traditional music and the Carrboro Community Garden. For her capstone project, “Eating from the Garden,” she worked with second- and fifth-graders at Lakewood Elementary on a photography and writing project about the school garden. She compiled a cookbook with student photos and writing samples and garden-centered recipes. After graduation, Mary Ashton plans to work on her Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, make a banjo, learn enough fiddle tunes to play a contradance, and audition for conservatory graduate school.

Jennifer Kozin, a public policy major, studied both black-and-white film and digital color photography in the Documentary Studies program. She also participated in service-learning courses that involved teaching photogra-phy to fourth-graders at a local elementary school and a terminally ill child in the Duke Hospital. For her final project, she used digital photography to document the late-night culture of Duke students. She concentrated on explor-ing the variety of light sources that illuminate individuals between the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. The series con-sists of solitary portraits intended to emphasize the eeri-ness and emptiness that often characterize the nocturnal lifestyle of college students.

Lindsay Kunkle, a psychology major, worked for three years with the Literacy Through Photography (LTP) meth-odology through CDS, involving students in a wide vari-ety of projects in Durham and in Arusha, Tanzania. As a culmination of her LTP experience, Lindsay worked after school with four select fourth- and fifth-graders from Club Boulevard Elementary on a project titled “My Other Half.” With Lindsay the students explored new ways of express-ing themselves through photographs and writing. Lindsay is particularly interested in examining the way in which children choose to creatively express themselves, but she also hopes that her documentation of the LTP process will provide more in-depth analysis of the methodology.

Fei Lian majored in biology and minored in chemistry. As a freshman, he worked as a staff photographer for The Chanticleer, Duke’s award-winning yearbook, and later served as editor of photography and co-editor of sports. His photographs have been exhibited at UNC’s Hanes Art Center and featured inside Duke Chapel. He also won the 2009 NANPA College Scholarship for nature photography. His certificate project, “The Art of the Surgery,” funded in part by a an Undergraduate Research Support Grant, is a two-year photo-documentary of surgical procedures in oper-ating rooms from Fushan, China, to Durham, North Carolina. It is a project intended to demystify procedures while focus-ing on the artistry, the accomplishments, and the stories of the doctors behind them. After graduation, Fei will be attending medical school.

Aishlinn O’Connor, a junior from Kansas City, is major-ing in political science and pursuing a Certificate in Policy Journalism and Media Studies and a Certificate in Documentary Studies. On a DukeEngage grant, Aishlinn spent the summer of 2009 in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, where she lived with a Bosnian family and worked with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network following the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of BiH. She


DO

CU

ME

NT

9

ABOVE: Still from The Sweet Science, a film by Kevin Tolson. TOP: Kevin Tolson. Photograph by Harlan Campbell. OPPOSITE: The Jazz Loft Project exhibition, Lincoln Center, February 2010. Photograph by Tom Rankin.

was fascinated not only by what she learned about recon-struction, transitional justice, and the Bosnian people, but also by her own role as a visitor to and participant in this soci-ety. Her documentary writing piece, “A Sarajevan Summer,” seeks to tie her personal experiences crossing the cultural border with the stories of the people and places she came to know.

Emily Robertson, a public policy major, connected her inter-ests in education issues and documentary photography with a Literacy Through Photography project that she carried out in Muhuru Bay, Kenya, and Durham, North Carolina, in 2009 and 2010. With this project, she taught children to use pho-tography as a means of exploring their world and expressing their own perspectives. The students, many of whom had never held a camera, found a new voice. When viewed togeth-er, the writings and photos these students produced create a cross-cultural dialogue about the world and the students themselves.

For her final documentary project, psychology major Kaitlin Rogers completed a study of family photographs, looking at the stories they tell and the weight they carry. Her love and appreciation for children have always directed the photo-graphs she makes, and her intention as a photographer is to play with, capture, and honor the fleeting moments of child-hood and to document family relationships as they grow and evolve. “During my time at Duke, I have studied to do this as both a documentary and portrait photographer, and the differ-ences between these two styles intrigue me. As a documen-tarian I strive to capture the raw, quiet, ‘typical’ moments of daily life. As a child and family portrait photographer, families hire me to document and make fine art out of their intimate relationships and unique personalities. Considering the dif-ferences of these photographic approaches has made me wonder: How do some images reflect how individuals live their lives while others reflect what individuals want to remember about the lives they live? Do some images do both?”

The Sweet Science: The Story of NBS Boxing Gym is a docu-mentary film by Kevin Tolson, a political science major who graduated with distinction with a Certificate in Documentary Studies. The Sweet Science highlights the story of a boxing gym in Raleigh, North Carolina, and its young fighters. The boxing portion of the gym, led by two female boxing trainers, Mandy and Amy, is occupied by a host of fighters, each with his own story and reason why he fights. The Sweet Science explores the story of boxing in an effort to explain a sport that has fallen far from the national spotlight. Beyond the competi-tion, the film reveals the life lessons taught at the gym, and we see that the sport develops not just stronger fighters, but also stronger women and men.

DO

CU

ME

NT

10


2010 Julia HarperDay Award Winner

KEVIN TOLSONThe Julia Harper Day Award was created in 1992 by the Center for Documentary Studies in memory of the young woman who was the Center’s first staff member and who, herself, was a photographer and writer of real accomplish-ment. This award of $500 recognizes a graduating Duke senior who has demonstrated excellence in documentary studies and has contributed significantly to CDS programs.

This year’s award winner is Kevin Tolson of Baltimore, Maryland. A political science major, with a focus in American government and politics, Kevin is graduating with Distinction in Documentary Studies with a final project titled, The Sweet Science: The Story of NBS Boxing Gym, a film that highlights the story of a boxing gym in Raleigh, North Carolina, and its young fighters. He is among the first students at Duke to graduate with distinction in an arts-based program outside his major.

In addition to his involvement with the Center for Documentary Studies, Kevin is the Director of Finances for the Black Student Alliance and the Chaplain for the Kappa Omicron Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. After graduation, he will be working full-time as a sales analyst with Unilever in their Chicago office.

“I have worked on film and documentary work since high school and I plan to continue to do so as a hobby going for-ward,” he says.

Kevin’s active work as a documentary artist is only part of what recommended him highly for the award. He sought out CDS as a freshman and has been involved throughout his four years at Duke. He has made invaluable contribu-tions to a number of CDS programs. Kevin was a significant member of the Face Up team, a lengthy community-based project involving the creation of fourteen permanent murals around Durham. He participated in residency work-shops, shot and logged video, and helped with video edit-ing. He also was instrumental in the creation of the Five Farms exhibition, part of a national radio project. He used technical skills learned at CDS to create an all-important multimedia component at the center of the exhibit. In addition, Kevin has been a significant ambassador to the undergraduate community at Duke, introducing CDS to many new students who now take Documentary Studies courses.

DOCUM

ENT

DOCUM

ENT

In 1957 W. Eugene Smith, a celebrated former Life magazine photographer, left the home he shared with his wife and four children in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, and moved

into a dilapidated, five-story loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue in New York City’s wholesale flower district. The loft was a late-night haunt of musicians, including count-less underground characters and some of the biggest names in jazz—Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk, among them.

From 1957 to 1965 Smith exposed 1,447 rolls of film at the loft, making roughly 40,000 pictures, the largest body of work in his career. He photographed the noctur-nal jazz scene as well as life on the streets as seen from his fourth-floor window. He also wired the building, creat-ing a surreptitious recording studio, and made 1,740 reels (4,000 hours) of stereo and mono audiotapes, capturing more than 300 musicians and a fascinating array of radio and TV programs that enhance the odd and poignant kaleidoscope of time and place framed by the four walls of 821 Sixth Avenue.

The Jazz Loft Project, based at the Center for Documentary Studies, has assembled the first-ever public presentation of Smith’s vintage prints and audio record-ings. The project also includes oral history interviews with hundreds of participants in the original loft scene. A book authored by project director Sam Stephenson and pub-lished by Alfred A. Knopf accompanies this exhibition, as does an ambitious public radio series produced by WNYC and the Center for Documentary Studies.

The exhibition—curated by Sam Stephenson and Courtney Reid-Eaton, exhibitions director at the Center for Documentary Studies, with Jazz Loft Project research associate Dan Partridge and program coordinator Lauren Hart—includes more than 200 images and several hours of audio.

After the exhibit closes at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on May 22, 2010, it will travel to other U.S. venues, including a stop at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

y www.jazzloftproject.org


DO

CU

ME

NT

11

EXHIBITIONS

The Jazz Loft ProjectThrough May 22, 2010 | The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts | Lincoln Center, New York City

T OU R S C H E DU L E

July 17–September 25, 2010Chicago Cultural CenterChicago, Illinois

February 3–May 22, 2011Nasher Museum of Art at Duke UniversityDurham, North Carolina

May 19–October 7, 2012Museum of Photographic ArtsSan Diego, California

Other venues are being considered. The exhibition will close at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in 2013.

ABOVE, top: Tape box from the collection of W. Eugene Smith, courtesy of the W. Eugene Smith Archive, Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona and ©The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith. ABOVE, right: Nature, Asheville, North Carolina. Photograph by Frank Hunter. OPPOSITE, top: To hear; an image made for science class by third-grade students at Arusha School. From the Literacy Through Photography project in Arusha, Tanzania. OPPOSITE, below: An opponent of the Wake County Board of Education’s changes to its diversity policy is removed from a protest. Photograph by Teri Saylor. From the exhibition The Ripple Effect.

DO

CU

ME

NT

12


Still Point of the Turning WorldPhotographs by Frank HunterThrough June 30, 2010Second Floor Gallery, Allen Building, Duke’s West Campus

Frank Hunter, a native of El Paso, Texas, grew up in the desert Southwest and received an M.A. in communica-tions from the University of Colorado and an M.F.A. in photography from Ohio University. Hunter teaches the fundamentals of photography and courses in nineteenth-century photographic processes in Art and Documentary Studies at Duke University. His hand-coated platinum/pal-ladium photographs, made with an 8 x 10 view camera, portray the cultural landscape with a singular lyricism.

Garlic and sapphires in the mud Clot the bedded axle-tree. The trilling wire in the blood Sings below inveterate scars Appeasing long forgotten wars. The dance along the artery The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars Ascend to summer in the tree We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf And hear upon the sodden floor Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before But reconciled among the stars. At the still point of the turning world.

—T. S. Eliot, from “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets

DOCUM

ENT

Heard on W. Eugene Smith’s Tapes Featured in The Jazz Loft Project ExhibitionJanuary 1959Thelonious Monk and Hall Overton prepare for Monk’s historic big band concert at Town Hall on February 28, 1959. Before bringing the entire band into the loft for rehearsals, Monk and Overton met many times to dis-cuss and arrange the tunes one by one, a private process recorded by Smith.

Monk: That’s three arrangements. You know, all of them are crazy, all of them are cool, you know, so far. They sound all right to me, they sound all right to you?

Overton: Pardon me?

Monk: All three of them sound all right, like they are.

Overton: Crazy, yeah. It’s very clear to me, yeah. “Friday the 13th,” “Monk’s Mood,” and “Crepuscule with Nellie” . . . “Thelonious”. . .

Monk: “Crepuscule with Nellie,” all we need is about two choruses on that. We end up everything with that or something, end the set with that. You know, there ain’t too much you could do with that, you know; it’s just the melody and the sound, you know, a couple of choruses.

Overton: Yeah, well, how do you want to do that, Monk?

Monk: I’ll play the first chorus. Let the band come in and play the second chorus and finish that. And then we get up, you know, and get our bread and quit [laughter].

Telegram from W. Eugene Smith to the Long John Nebel late-night radio show on WOR, circa 1960Nebel: All right, this is good, this is from Gene Smith, one of the greatest photographers. (Reading from Smith’s telegram): “While my cats for various reasons record Dr. King, and all, I’m busy photographing out of my window and within the building, adding to a present 9,000 or so photographs. Some are fuzzy, and so am I. But I still find the challenge exciting. As usual I’m enjoying and arguing the show. Personal regards, Gene Smith.”

Close-Up

DOCUM

ENT

In CDS GalleriesLiteracy Through PhotographyArusha, TanzaniaJune 14, 2010–January 8, 2011Kreps and Lyndhurst Galleries

Literacy Through Photography (LTP), an innovative arts and education program developed twenty years ago by artist Wendy Ewald at the Center for Documentary Studies in conjunction with the Durham Public Schools, challenges children to explore the world by photograph-ing scenes from their lives and using their own images as catalysts for verbal and written expression. Framed around the themes of self-portrait, community, family, and dreams, LTP builds on the knowledge that young people naturally possess and connects them with broader perspectives and ways of communicating.

The LTP project in Arusha, Tanzania, began in 2004 when Sister Cities of Durham brought two Tanzanian teachers to the Center for Documentary Studies to attend an LTP workshop. Building on these connections, LTP staff traveled to Arusha in 2007, 2008, and 2009 to offer workshops to hundreds of primary school teach-ers, from all over the district, and to co-teach lessons that involved more than 2,000 students. The summer of 2010 marks the third year that the DukeEngage program has supported Duke University students in their work with the LTP project in Arusha.

These experiences culminated with public exhibitions of children’s work in Arusha, some of which is included in this exhibition. Also on display will be photographs that document the collaborative LTP process.

Three Hours. West Main and Broad Streets.Through April 17, 2010 Porch Gallery

On September 26, 2009, students enrolled in Meg Daniels’ Visual Storytelling workshop at CDS photo-graphed the NC Pride Parade, an LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) event held just beyond CDS’s doors. People in the parade were members of fami-lies, local business organizations, and churches. As

expected, people exercised their First Amendment rights, and debates became heated at times. Law enforcement officials discreetly monitored the events. The students documented these multiple perspectives.

y http://www.cdsporch.org/?p=1712

The Ripple Effect: A Visual Response to the Contemporary Civil Rights AgendaApril 15–May 21, 2010University Gallery

Works in progress by students in the Spring 2010 Continuing Education course Asking Why: Approaches to Social Documentary Photography, taught by Sheila Turner at the Center for Documentary Studies


DO

CU

ME

NT

13

Calendar late spring/sUMMer 2010

April 19, 5:30 p.m.Film ScreeningIn My Mind—Directed by Gary Hawkins New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, New York

April 21, 6:30 p.m.Film ScreeningBrother Towns / Pueblos Hermanos—Directed by Charles D. Thompson Jr.Griffith Film Theater, Bryan Center

April 23, 7 p.m.Documentary Narrative Speaker Series: Wells TowerWells Tower, author of the much-acclaimed book of short stories Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned and many other stories and articles, on the affinities between fiction and nonfictionCDS Auditorium

April 25, 4–7 p.m.Undergraduate Student Documentary Showcase and BBQPresented by Duke students completing the Certificate in Documentary StudiesCenter for Documentary Studies

April 28, 7 p.m.Film ScreeningAria del Africa—Directed by by Roger LuceyTwo young singers make their way from the townships of South Africa to the opera stageCDS Auditorium

April 30, 7 p.m.Doxita III: Life Is a ProgressA traveling festival of documentary short films curated by Karen CirilloCDS Auditorium

May 6, 6:30 p.m.Hine Fellow Artist Talk“The Red Room: Making Music Out of Life,” with Christina WegsThe Urbano Project Gallery, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

May 10–14Advanced Documentary Photography: Vision and CraftAn intensive workshop for intermediate and advanced photographers taught by Alex HarrisSmith Warehouse and the Center for Documentary Studies

May 11, 7 p.m.Picture Paradise: The Vision and Work of W. Eugene SmithSam Stephenson on Eugene SmithUlrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Kansas

May 15, 12 p.m. Undergraduate Certificate GraduationStudents completing the Certificate in Documentary StudiesCenter for Documentary Studies

May 15, 6 p.m.Reality Radio: Talk and Book SigningWith John Biewen and contributors Katie Davis and Joe Richman, and special guest Bob EdwardsPolitics and Prose, Washington, DC

May 21, 7 p.m.Continuing Education Certificate PresentationsContinuing Education students completing the Certificate in Documentary Arts present final projectsCDS Auditorium

June 6–11Intensive Introduction to Documentary StudiesA summer institute open to students of all levels of expertiseCenter for Documentary Studies

June 19–26 Documentary Video InstituteAn immersion in the process of documentary filmmakingCenter for Documentary Studies

July 17The Jazz Loft Project Exhibition OpensChicago Cultural Center, through September 25, 2010Chicago, Illinois

July 24–31 Hearing Is Believing IWork with a fellow student to produce and edit a short audio documentaryCenter for Documentary Studies

August 9–14Hearing Is Believing II: Making It SingFor students who have gathered sound and are ready to produce a four- to ten-minute audio documentaryCenter for Documentary Studies

All events are on the Duke University campus unless otherwise noted.

Please check the CDS calendar on the web for updates to this events listing y http://cds.aas.duke.edu/events/index.html

1317 West Pettigrew

StreetD

urham, N

C 27705

CD SThe Center forDocum

entary StuDieSat D

uke University

Nonprofit Organization

U.S. PostageP

AID

Durham

, North Carolina

Permit N

umber 60

DOCUM

ENT

a P

ub

lica

tio

n o

f the

Ce

nte

r fo

r D

oc

um

en

tar

y S

tud

ies

at D

uk

e U

niv

er

sity

| Sp

rin

g 2

01

0

DOCUM

ENT

Document Spring 2010

Documents

Transcript of Document Spring 2010