Director's Note: April-May, 2016

The MDOCS academic year wrapped up with a field trip to New York City on April 23 to celebrate the Tribeca screening of Assistant Professor of English Cecilia Aldarondo's first film, Memories of a Penitent Heart and student showcases of audio, video exhibition and multimedia documentary storytelling at the Tang, on WSPN, at Academic Festival and at independent screenings. 

For the field trip, the operative word really was "collaborative."  MDOCS, English, Media and Film Studies, and Project Vis faculty, staff and students worked in concert to get the bus on the road, the amazing panelists to a wonderful screening room at the School of the Visual Arts (thanks, Masters in Social Documentary program!), and the tickets to Tribeca. The process was smooth and effective thanks in large part to the indefatigable Jesse Wakeman, MDOCS' program coordinator, who in less than six months has become indispensable, and student assistant Sam Grant, who documented the trip. The energy and enthusiasm that supported us as we pulled together an engaging one-of-a-kind experience as soon as Aldarondo heard the good news is a sign of the ways in which we are building meaningful opportunities and networks to serve a range of constituents. From having alumni in NYC as well as our friends Yvonne Welbon and YouthFX join us, to learning about the many "nos" a documentarian might hear on the way to "yesses" in funding and distribution to the alternate career paths in teaching and community outreach, to the nuts and bolts of festivalgoing behavior. What more could we have asked for?

It turns out the answer is: support for MDOCS students to try their hand at festival organizing. We asked, and with the help of a crowdfunding initiative organized by Skidmore's Office of Advancement, we received generous support from alumni, students and a few anonymous donors and quickly reached our goal. With funds in hand, we are recruiting a festival programmer to teach a new fall class to introduce the theory and practice of getting started and support students as they get their own festival off the ground in spring 2017.

But it's not fall yet. 

In the past two weeks, MDOCS Student Showcases highlighted students present individual and collaborative projects to a range of audiences, from film screenings to "Tangwaves" site-specific audio presentations to Skidmore's Academic Festival, where students working on the Skidmore-Saratoga Memory Project Sixty Years Young capped off a year and a half of work. Incarceration Project students (history) presented separately, discussing how conducting oral histories with people connected to the former Mount McGregor prison reshaped their understanding of crime and punishment.

As exam week wraps up, seniors get ready to fling caps in the air and the rest of the community prepares for a dynamic Saratoga Springs summer or scatters to internships and jobs from here to Bhutan. MDOCS storytelling students and faculty are refining research, setting up interviews and experimenting with visual tools and technologies. We all anticipate an amazing Storytellers' Institute in June; an overview of scheduled evemts is included here, along with our amazing banner poster designed by Michael Zhou '17.

Look for a Storytellers' newsletter in your inbox shortly with details on our upcoming events this June. First up: June 2, Fact or Fiction?: Adapting Reality for Stage and Screen, a conversation with filmmaker Chip Duncan; Dan Markley, Broadway producer and basis for a musical character; and festival founder Jonathan Burkhart followed by a screening of Duncan's 2015 film Tolkien & Lewis: Myth, Imagination & The Quest for Meaning.

Many thanks to the faculty, staff, students, community partners and donors who are continuing to help MDOCS thrive and develop on a campus increasingly rife with evidence-based, research-driven, creative, energetic, and innovative storytelling.

 Jordana Dym
 Director