In this eight-day intensive institute, students are fully immersed in the process of documentary filmmaking. They collaborate with a partner to direct, shoot, edit and screen a documentary short. This year’s institute was produced in collaboration with The Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, and each project focused on an environmental theme.
Continuing Education Certificate student Kim Best in front of the screening of her final project "Better Late Than Never." Photograph by Maggie Smith. May 21, 2010.
continuing education certificate graduation and reception photos
May 21, 2010
Throughout the year, CDS offers continuing education courses in the documentary arts for the general public. These courses, taught by working professionals, are designed to help students of all ages and backgrounds gain the skills they need to explore doing documentary work on their own terms. Over the past eleven years, students in the certificate program have produced photography, film and video, audio, multimedia, and writing projects on a diverse range of topics. These projects often move out into the world to larger audiences in the form of exhibits, installations, websites, and other creative artworks. This event showcases the latest of these final certificate projects, completed in the Final Seminar in Documentary Studies, taught this spring by Nancy Kalow.
Students ready their final projects for the 2010 CDS Documentary Video Institute. iPhone photograph by Christopher Sims.
Please join us Saturday, June 26, 2010 for the screening of a dozen short films on environmental themes created by students in the CDS Documentary Video Institute.
CDS Auditorium
Center for Documentary Studies
10:30 a.m.
A light lunch on the lawn will follow
This year’s institute is produced in collaboration with The Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.
Installation photograph of the exhibition "The Ripple Effect: A Visual Response to the Contemporary Civil Rights Agenda" in the University Gallery
friday, may 21, 2010
cds continuing education reception & presentations
reception: 5-6:30 p.m. center for documentary studies at duke university
In conjunction with the exhibition The Ripple Effect: A Visual Response to the Contemporary Civil Rights Agenda (through May 21, University Gallery), works in progress by students in the Spring 2010 Continuing Education course Asking Why: Approaches to Social Documentary Photography, taught by Sheila Turner
The reception will also honor the Spring 2010 graduates of the Certificate in Documentary Arts program at the Center for Documentary Studies.
certificate final project presentations: 7 p.m. richard white auditorium, east campus, duke university
Throughout the year, CDS offers continuing education courses in the documentary arts for the general public. These courses, taught by working professionals, are designed to help students of all ages and backgrounds gain the skills they need to explore doing documentary work on their own terms. Over the past eleven years, students in the certificate program have produced photography, film and video, audio, multimedia, and writing projects on a diverse range of topics. These projects often move out into the world to larger audiences in the form of exhibits, installations, websites, and other creative artworks. This event showcases the latest of these final certificate projects, completed in the Final Seminar in Documentary Studies, taught this spring by Nancy Kalow.
exhibition opening three hours. west main and broad streets. photographs by students in the visual storytelling workshop
Reception: Wednesday, March 10, 5–7 p.m.
Exhibition runs February 27–April 17, 2010
Still documentary photographs are worth a thousand negotiated meanings: They seek to explain how things are, while at the same time offer a photographer’s interpretation of the world. Documentary photography is not objective because photographers are human—subjectivity is inevitable. Photographers and viewers both may become politically engaged, educated, or emotionally involved by creating and/or experiencing these kinds of images.
On September 26, 2009, students enrolled in my Visual Storytelling workshop through the Continuing Education program at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) photographed the N.C. Pride Parade, a North Carolina–based LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) event held on West Main and Broad Streets, just beyond CDS’s doors. For some, the art of making documentary photographs was new; for others, it was not. But all of the students, regardless of their level of experience, applied the techniques we had reviewed in the two-day workshop when making their images of participants, bystanders, and (a few, but vocal) protesters. People in the parade were members of families, high school and college student groups, local business organizations, and church groups. And as expected, people exercised their First Amendment rights, and debates became heated at times. Law enforcement officials discreetly monitored the events. My students documented these multiple perspectives.
certificate in documentary arts graduates
final projects presentation, fall 2009
Friday, December 11
7 p.m., CDS Auditorium
Students in the Final Seminar in Documentary Studies, taught this fall by Randy Benson, will present their photography, audio, and video projects to a public audience on Friday, December 11, at 7 p.m. in the CDS Auditorium. A reception will follow the presentations. These students are completing the Certificate in Documentary Arts program, a series of continuing education courses offered by the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University.
In conjunction with this event, CDS presents an exhibition of the photographs of Certificate program graduate Pac McLaurin. Walls That Do Speak will be on view in the University Gallery at CDS from December 11, 2009, to February 27, 2010. (See the project description below.)
This summer the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University collaborated with Watts Hospital-Hillandale residents to create short video and audio documentaries about the Durham neighborhood. Two CDS summer institutes—one in June, focused on video, and another in July, focused on audio—brought continuing education students from across the country to work intensively for a week on fieldwork projects that resulted in documentary features about the Watts Hospital-Hillandale neighborhood.
A biography of Watts Hospital, anchor of the Watts Hospital-Hillandale neighborhood since 1909. It closed in 1976 amid controversy over racial integration, and is now the site of the North Carolina School of Science and Math. By Laura Valencia and Enrique Vega.
Graduating CDS Continuing Education students, spring 2009 (from left): Lisa Marie Albert, Jennifer Carpenter, Jamara Knight, Margaret Morales, Jean Parker, Marcia Sutherland, Anne Weber. Also pictured (far right): April Walton, Learning Outreach Director. Composite photograph by Christopher Sims.
continuing education presentations and graduation May 15, 2009
Lisa Marie Albert, Jennifer Carpenter, Jamara Knight, Margaret Morales, Jean Parker, Marcia Sutherland, Anne Weber
Work from The Civil Ceremony Project will be included in the exhibition Forever Hold Your Peace this summer at the New Orleans Photo Alliance. Anne Weber will be a Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow in the Boston area beginning this fall. For more information about Anne Weber and her projects, please visit her Web site. » Continue Reading…
