Director's Note: April/May 2018
MDOCS Summer is here, with the 2018 Storytellers' Institute underway, and the Forum weekend focused on the annual theme, Surveil/Surveilled ready to inspire, connect and challenge under the leadership of Sarah Friedland.
In addition to the Institute's five visiting fellows, seven students (including some 2018 graduates) and two faculty members back on campus to participate in the Institute, MDOCS summer internships, projects and collaborations are underway near and far.
For the third year, the Collaborative has provided seed money for summer independent student experiences and internships. We reviewed requests to fund ten summer experiences from a very compelling group. MDOCS funded two students, Lorenzo Brogi-Skoskiewicz, '21, and Iona Herriott, '20. We look forward to hearing about Brogi-Skoskiewicz' internship with Ark Media in New York City, and Herriott's project to share the stories of the Skidmore Opportunity Program family of students in the fall. Another four applicants -- Clara-Sophia Daly, '19 (audio); Eleanor Green, '18 (video/photo); Monica Hamilton, '18 (photo); and Adam Simon, '19 (community radio) -- were funded by Skidmore's See Beyond program and Career Development Center Summer Experience Fund. Not bad!
While the Institute is the heart of MDOCS summer, classes, workshops and support for communtiy partners continue. This year, MDOCS and Storytellers' Institute have organized two summer workshops for faculty, staff, and community partners to skill up in doc film and oral history. Thanks to a Skidmore Arts Planning Grant, three former Storytellers will also be on campus this June. 2016 Visiting Fellow Aggie Bazaz, and student fellows Emily Rizzo, '18 and Ele Martínez, '18, will be working with the Visión Project of the Saratoga Economic Opportunity Council (EOC) on photography workshops that include experimentation with a 360 degree camera.
Brimmer, Johnson, Karp and
Scarce in DocLab
Prof. Rik Scarce and Mary Brimmer, '19 (both Storytellers' Institute 2017), continue through summer collaborative research work on a documentary film on restorative justice with Prof. David Karp (Sociology), and I am looking forward to a month of planning and hunting local stories in the archives with Jillian Seigel (History), '18 as the Skidmore-Saratoga Memory Project and History Department will lead Skidmore's participation in the 2018-2020 Humanitites Action Lab project, which focuses on Environmental Justice. Be on the lookout for conversations starting next year about how a partnership with Sustainable Saratoga will take a new look at the ways the community has historically accessed transportation, housing and green spaces.
As we welcome our summer visitors and bid a temporary farewell to graduating seniors, this newsletter looks back on the year in pictures, celebrates spring Doc Studies classes that push the boundaries, and peeks behind the scenes to find how MDOCS resources have been adopted, adapted and applied across campus and even in a First Year Experience course in London.
Looking beyond campus, MDOCS faculty have also been engaged in exciting conversations and advancing their own projects. Sarah Friedland and I organized a panel session, Communities on Display: Ethical and Practical Considerations for Public Humanities and Documentary Storymaking, with Margarita Sánchez of Wagner College, at Our (Digital) Humanity. We were heartened to be joined at our session -- and at many throughout a wonderful new event hosted at Lehigh University-- by makers, scholars, digital technologists, librarians, activists, students, and community members. Friedland and her Palestinian filmmaking partners participated in the Film Market and first ever Palestine pavilion at Cannes, sharing Lyd in Exile, their work in progress and building ties to global documentary film. Cecilia Aldarondo has been fundraising and filming for a project on the aftermath of Hurricane María in Puerto Rico. Adam Tinkle is organizing a September campus visit by The Moth Radio Hour, which will include workshops and opportunities for dozens of student storytellers to create and perform their own stories, with support from Eric and Lisa Green P'20, as well as preparing a July 14 installation at Community Arts in Phoenixville (PA) as part of BLOBfest, an annual celebration of the on-location filming of the 1958 horror classic The Blob.
In the personal milestone department, thanks to the Communications department, this
archival storyteller was even able to try out the role of film producer for a day
with Jake DeNicola,'15 (Storytellers' Fellow) on May 20, helping pick shots, set up
on-the-spot interviews and even break out the Spanish as he filmed material for an
upcoming video highlighting the Give and Go event for which Sustainability Office volunteers collect and sort donated items from students moving out and deliver them
to the Backstretch Employees Service Team (BEST) and Goodwill.
It has been four full years since I assumed the directorship of what promised to be an innovative, exciting new program and collaboration at Skidmore. Four years means that MDOCS is graduating along with the class of 2018. This class will be the only cohort of Skidmore students who will be able to boast that they helped build the program and were able to take advantage of its classes, public events, DocLab workshops, industry insights from professionals in film, sound, exhibition, experimental media, web and map storytelling, and academic year and summer programming, networking events and field trips.
What MDOCS 'first' graduates have accomplished and will continue to accomplish is striking. The students have grown alongside the program -- or perhaps more accurately stated, the program has grown with and for the students as we put down one plank after another in response to their appetite for more and more advanced classes, deeper engagement with makers and better understanding of documentary outside academia, whether in museums, at festivals, or in business.
How did this journey culminate? With the Skids Choice Awards on May 7. This evening
replaced the end of semester student showcase with a celebration complete with green
carpet (sustainability!), "Golden Acorn" awards, and works recommended by students
and faculty.
Looking back and forward this year has led to some rich conversations among members of the Advisory Board, faculty, and staff. We have begun thinking about space and equipment needs for a program whose eight-to-ten classes plus half-a-dozen workshops and individual project support each semester is straining DocLab and attic capacity, working with a New York architectural firm on "someday" ideas. The Advisory Board has taken a new look at student end-of-semester projects, and teaching faculty came up with guidelines for Toolkit Course learning objectives in an end-of-semester retreat, providing insights and guidance of a maturing program with committed stakeholders.
With this graduation also comes a transition in leadership. Adam Tinkle, who has been teaching with MDOCS and the Storytellers' Institute since the beginning, and who is as comfortable in scholarship as he is in artistic making, has accepted appointment as MDOCS Director for 2018-2019.
MDOCS Faculty and DocLab - from top left:
Paul Hembree,Marc Woodworth, Jordana Dym,
Nicole Coady, Ron Taylor,Martha Wiseman,
Adam Tinkle, Nicole Buck, and Jesse O'Connell.
Missing: C. Aldarondo, S. Friedland, D. Harris,
T. Hart, and V. Riley.
MDOCS is in great hands for this transition. With a fully staffed, richly talented, and ambitious core team in Friedland, Tinkle, Program Coordinator and DocLab co-director Jesse O'Connell and Administrative Assistant Nicole Buck; a wise and hardworking advisory board; dedicated professionals based on campus and in the community teaching Doc Studies classes; the support of Skidmore's leadership; and a growing national and international network of friends, partners and alumni, we are poised for a fantastic 'post-grad' experience in year five.
It has been my pleasure and privilege to work with so many Skidmore colleagues, meet and build connections to inspiring alumni and parents, Saratoga community organizations, and national academic and documentary programs. My particular thanks to those who have had faith since the outset, gone above and beyond on numerous occasions, taken phone calls, answered emails, provided brainstorming, good cheer, insight, corrections and leadership along the way, whether managing up or down, in alphabetical order: Beau Breslin, Michael Casey, Bill Duffy, Lori Eastman, Laura Eastwood, Corey Freeman-Gallant, Deb Hall, Wes Hogan, Tom Lewis, Chris Moore, Crystal Moore, Tillman Nechtman, Jesse O'Connell, Barry Pritzker, Vickie Riley, Jeff Segrave, Ron Seyb, and Yvonne Welbon. Most particularly, warm thanks to Jim and Sue Towne, whose vision and generosity to this program as to so many others, helps us chart a just course.
