Year: 2017
The School of Visual Arts’ MFA Social Documentary Film program teaches the artistic skills and techniques needed to tell compelling true stories that stimulate meaningful dialogue. SocDoc not only teaches the fundamentals of great storytelling, but guides students toward a career in the thriving documentary industry. The award winning-faculty is helmed by producer Maro Chermayeff (Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present), and includes Deborah Dickson (Lalee’s Kin), E. Donna Shepherd (Soundbreaking), Richard Hankin (The Jinx), Kirsten Johnson (Citizenfour), Ross Kauffman (E-Team) and Sam Pollard (Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me Maynard).
SVA’s showcase includes: The Keeper of Earth and Time (USA, 11 min., Tiantian Wang) profiles a curator of a room filled with dirt, operator of one of the oldest clock towers in New York City and an abstract artist in his own right. After 30 years in NYC, an experimental musician goes back to nature to find inner peace and bring ideas of silence to her music in Sound Fever (USA, 11 min., Ziyu Tang). This Girl Blinks (USA, 15 min., Lifei Diao) profiles the designer of some of NYC’s most unusual jewelry. In Time Relationship (USA, 7 min., Bailin Li), a young Chinese barber runs a stylized vintage barbershop in Flushing, Queens. A filmmaker explores What Could Have Been (USA, 12 min., Hanna Nordenswan), had hearts not been broken in the past. Fighting to protect clean water, the women of Oceti Sakowin Camp call White Buffalo Calf Woman (USA, 5 min., Jessie Adler), a sacred Lakota omen of change, in a prayer walk to the Dakota Access Pipeline police blockade.