Archive for the ‘Documentary’ Category

The Evocative Power of Sound at DOC NYC

Posted on: November 1st, 2010 by admin No Comments

I want to make sure you know about something that’s happening this Sunday, November 7, because you may want to be there. And I’m hoping it sells out. So this means I strongly recommend you buy your tickets now.

What it is
I’m curating and presenting a listening experience at the new DOC NYC – New York’s Documentary Festival, which makes its inaugural launch this week in Manhattan. (Details here.) The festival is kind of a big deal. Werner Herzog will be there. Errol Morris will be there. It’s outstanding that the organizers have carved out space for radio documentaries.

Why I think it could sell out
WNYC Radio, which is sponsoring the event I’m hosting, will be blanketing the airwaves with announcements. We know that public radio listeners attend this kind of thing in droves.

Late breaking extra special cool thing
The centerpiece of this event is Joe Richman’s documentary Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair, which on Saturday took the silver prize at the Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago.

The important thing is this
Here’s the link to buy tickets. I hope it sells out, and I hope to see you there, too.

Best to you,
Dean

New Documentary Festival in New York City

Posted on: October 4th, 2010 by admin No Comments

And it’s big.

Coming the first weekend in November, it’s the DOC NYC festival. Read all about it here.

I was very pleased to be asked to sit on the board of advisers. Festival organizers Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen are insisting that the festival not be restricted only to film/video. And this is of course a terrific thing, since there is so much good work being done in sound alone.

Which brings me to my next point: I’m curating and presenting a public listening event Sunday, November 7 at 1:45pm in NYU’s Kimmel Center. More details about time and place as the date approaches. To whet your appetite, here’s the description:

The Medium Formerly Known as Radio: The Evocative Power of Sound
Media Sponsor: WNYC
Sit in a darkened theater, close your eyes, and see the best pictures of all―because you made them yourself. This public listening event features a sampler of stories told only in sound that have a way of going directly from the ear to the heart. With special guest Joe Richman, who will present his award-winning documentary Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair.

I hope you can make it.

Today in History

Posted on: October 1st, 2010 by admin 1 Comment

Today is the tenth anniversary of The Next Big Thing’s debut on WNYC.

What’s The Next Big Thing? Here’s how I defined it once a week (most weeks): “It’s a visit to places you didn’t know existed, even though you go by them every day. It’s new ideas in an old medium. The next big thing is going out and finding interesting people and putting them on the radio.”

As it happens, AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio, has launched a wiki, called the Sounds of Silence, to commemorate cancelled public radio programs.

And so on this bittersweet anniversary I have made my contribution to that wiki and posted it at The End of the Dial, a site that I hereby revive on this most auspicious of days. Keep checking back from time to time (indeed, why not subscribe to the associated blog’s RSS feed?) to see what happens on this site devoted to the medium formerly known as radio.

Some things to look forward to in the near future at The End of the Dial:

  1. news about the inaugural DOC NYC festival coming up the first weekend in November (I’ll be presenting a listening session of documentary sound work that I curated)
  2. radio and sound art worth listening to
  3. the sound of surprise

Future writing about radio and related matters is hereby migrating over to theendofthedial.com and I hope you can stop by now and then.

Hopper: Painting the Loneliness on BBC Radio 4

Posted on: May 31st, 2010 by admin No Comments

There are many reasons to love BBC Radio.

I’m not talking about the World Service, which is how most Americans hear the Beeb on public radio over here. That’s boring. I’m talking about the domestic channels intended for listeners in the U.K. and which I hear over the Internet.

Radio 4 is the closest thing to NPR. During drive time, they air news programs akin to Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the rest of the day and night, instead of filling the time with excruciating talk shows, they air weird kinds of stuff that used to be on the radio here but which disappeared long ago.

The quiz shows, such as I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, are old-fashioned and demented in the best possible way. I find the Shipping Forecast mesmerizing.

On Tuesday, June 1, my first piece for the BBC will air. Called Painting the Loneliness, it’s a half hour program about Edward Hopper’s iconic painting Nighthawks that I co-produced with Judith Kampfner. Half of it consists of documentary interviews – with New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, Whitney curator Barbara Haskell and author Gordon Theisen (who wrote a smart book about the painting). That material is interleaved with dramatic monologues. I imagined what was going through the minds of the figures in the painting. Playwright Michael Dowling wrote the script and acted, along with Jim Frangione and Sara Paul. I directed their performances “on location” at Haven Cafe and Bakery in Lenox, Massachusetts. (My BBC contact noted the “depth of the atmosphere” and noted how different it felt from standard sound effects.)

You can listen to the program when it streams live on Tuesday, 11:30am London time, (click here for live stream) or else on demand for the seven days following.

Hope for the Future

Posted on: May 26th, 2010 by admin No Comments

More and more, filmmakers are absorbing lessons from the DIY ethic that has helped to make music a viable livelihood. This post from John Bradburn is one example of the kind of case study that appears with some regularity on the blog Truly Free Film, which is one of film producer Ted Hope’s sites I have been studying closely along with the writings of Seth Godin. I envision a day – arriving soon, I hope – where we can start applying this model to the medium formerly known as radio.

It Needed to Be Said

Posted on: April 20th, 2010 by admin No Comments

As mentioned previously, I am jazzed to serve on the advisory board of the new DOC NYC festival. A previous commitment kept me from attending a breakfast held last Friday at the IFC Center to solicit input from influential documentarians. I was happy to to read in filmmakermagazine.com this important reminder from Jem Cohen: “There is a pressure to equate documentary with storytelling, but they are not synonymous.”

This Is a Big Effing Deal, Too

Posted on: April 6th, 2010 by admin No Comments

Just days before I head down to Durham, North Carolina, for the Full Frame documentary film festival, I’m excited to report I’m serving on the advisory board of DOC NYC.

It’s a new festival of documentary storytelling – film, radio and beyond – that will launch this fall in New York City.

Read all about it here.