We both grew up around farms – Catherine was raised on a small farm in the outskirts of Charlottesville, VA, and Elena grew up in rural Iowa. But not until this project did we truly understand the challenges and hardships that family farmers have faced and continue to face in the U.S. Through the stories of …
The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University honored Sam Pollard, John Cohen, the Kitchen Sisters, and Natasha Tretheway for their outstanding contributions to the world of documentary filmmaking, photography, audio storytelling and poetry. The awards were given as part of the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) 25th anniversary celebration and national forum Documentary 2015: Origins and Inventions. We partnered with …
This April Elena served on the Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award committee for the 2016 Full Frame Film Festival and watched all the films in the New Docs category. There were several amazing documentaries in this pool, but one film stood out to all the committee members: Sonita. This unique, inspiring and brave film follows …
After the 2015 fall semester, Elena was recognized along with fellow CDS instructor Tim Tyson for having course evaluations among the top 5 percent of all undergraduate instructors at Duke. http://www.cdsporch.org/archives/25512
Photographer Latoya Ruby Frazier speaks to Madeliene Pron during her interview with the Fellows. Photo by Shelia Huggins It was a long and exhausting weekend, but Documentary 2015: Origins and Inventions was a success. Documentary 2015 was a national forum, hosted by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, celebrating documentary today. Eight outstanding …
When we present ourselves as a filmmaking duo, we are occasionally met with confusion. In the media world people are often working alone or as part of a larger team. For whatever reason, two-person teams are rare. You can imagine our delight when we got a chance to meet Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva (The …
We are thrilled to announce that we will be running a fellows program in conjunction with the 2015 Documentary forum being hosted by the Center for Documentary Studies. The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University will host a 25th Anniversary celebration and national forum on November 20–22, 2015, in Durham, North Carolina. Documentary 2015: …
Documentary 2015 – Origins and Inventions Fellows Program Read More »
We love teaching this workshop. Through teaching a variety of video storytelling courses and workshops, we’ve found that often people get hung up on cameras, software, and all the technical aspects of producing videos (which is understandable, there’s a lot to remember!) The problem is, when you’re distracted by cameras, microphones, and editing software, you …
Workshops // Crafting Video Stories That Move People Read More »
By popular demand, we will be teaching a one-day workshop on Video Storytelling for Social Change at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University this spring! Video is everywhere, but effective storytelling is rare. How can people working on social change issues use video stories to connect to a target audience on an emotional level? …
Workshops /// Video Storytelling for Social Change Read More »
Homeplace Under Fire is the story of American farm advocates and their thirty-year fight to keep family farmers on the land. The Farm Crisis of the 1980s drove hundreds of thousands of family farmers into foreclosure. Out of that crisis came a group of courageous farm advocates, many of them women, who stood up …