“There is a middle ground in the documentary terrain: taking two (contrasting) impulses – the rigorously journalistic and the lyrically experimental – and bringing them together.”
Doc Talk with Peter Hutton
“Cinema has become such a commodified form of information and entertainment that it’s morphed into something that disengages the viewer from their visual discipline and the fact that you can find pleasure in just looking at something. I’m doing something that’s perhaps in opposition to the whole tradition of cinema, which is about condensing our experiences.” Continue reading “Doc Talk with Peter Hutton”
Doc Talk with Nina Davenport
About the form of first-person cinema, Davenport says: “The ‘off-the-cuff’ intimacy of personal documentaries makes them look easy, but from the cadence and delivery of the voiceover to the creation of a persona, it’s actually extremely difficult to get it just right.”
Doc Talk with Zelimir Zilnik
“I do not hide my camera. I do not hide the fact that I am making a film.
The hidden camera is a scam. It is all right to use in films on timid animals,
but it has no place in films with people. “
— Zelimir Zilnik
Doc Talk with Maya Mumma
Which Way Is The Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington
Doc Studies graduate and editor Maya Mumma discusses the making of the HBO documentary on photographer Tim Hetherington, who was killed in Libya shortly after the release of his 2011 Oscar-nominated film Restrepo. Maya describes her role in the researching, shooting and editing of Which Way Is The Frontline From Here?, a tribute to Hetherington’s singular work by his close friend and Restrepo co-director Sebastian Junger.
Doc Talk: Su Friederich (2013)
“I think you have to start at home,” says Su Friedrich about her avant-garde body of work in which the personal becomes political and universal. In her new documentary film Gut Renovation, Friedrich’s ‘at home’ attitude extends to her neighborhood of Williamsburg where she takes gentrification personally in a fierce, provocative, oppositional look at the effect of real estate development on a once traditional working-class community and artists’ turf.
A formally elegant filmmaker, known for her wit and visceral imagery, Friedrich is the recipient of numerous awards including Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the Grand prix at the Melbourne Film Festival and retrospectives worldwide. She is the writer, cinematographer, director and editor of all but one of her eighteen works. Among her most celebrated are Sink or Swim, The Ties That Bind and First Comes Love.
The New School Doc Studies 