in my mind
Director: Gary Hawkins, Producer: Emily LaDue, Executive Producer: Tom Rankin
In My Mind, a new film from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, traces the creation and performance of jazz pianist Jason Moran’s original interpretation of Thelonious Monk’s legendary performance at New York City’s Town Hall in 1959. Deeply inspired by Monk’s performance, Moran created IN MY MIND, a vivid visual and acoustic tribute to the infamous jazz icon. IN MY MIND brings together an eight-piece band, The Big Bandwagon, for a full-length, multimedia performance incorporating audio recordings and images made by noted photographer W. Eugene Smith. Smith’s involvement is especially noteworthy because he lived and worked in the loft building where Monk, his collaborator Hall Overton, and the entire band, toiled away arranging music and endlessly rehearsing.
The Julia Harper Day Award was created in 1992 by the Center for Documentary Studies in memory of the young woman who was the Center’s first staff member and who, herself, was a photographer and writer of significant accomplishment. This award of $500 recognizes a graduating Duke senior who has demonstrated excellence in documentary studies and has contributed significantly to CDS programs.
This year’s 2010 Julia Harper Day award is senior Kevin Tolson of Baltimore, Maryland. A political science major, with a focus in American government and politics, Kevin is graduating with Distinction in Documentary Studies. For his final project in documentary studies Kevin created, The Sweet Science: The Story of NBS Boxing Gym, a film that highlights the story of a boxing gym in Raleigh, North Carolina, and its young fighters. He is among the first students at Duke to graduate with distinction in an arts-based program outside his major.
Award winning National Public Radio producers, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva of The Kitchen Sisters, began their collaboration within documentary arts over twenty-five years ago. Their renowned partnership has been responsible for some of the most intimate, provocative, and sound-rich documentary work to date. Hidden Kitchens, their duPont Award winning radio series, reveals a world of legendary meals, curious eating habits and long forgotten tradition. Lost & Found Sound series, heard on NPR’s All Things Considered, reveals a tapestry of richly layered audio artifact. Seeking out seldom-heard voices of Americans all across the county, the Kitchen Sisters weave together a sound-score that concerns itself with how sound shapes history and how history has been shaped by sound. They are currently producing NPR series The Hidden World of Girls - Girls and the Women They Become, an in-depth exploration of coming of age rituals, hidden identities, and portraits of extraordinary ordinary women.
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.
2008 CDS / Honickman First Book Prize in Photography winner Jennette Williams talks about her process of making the photographs in The Bathers, and Prize Judge Mary Ellen Mark explains what attracted her to Jennette’s work, and the importance of a first book in a photographer’s life.
"To hear; an image made for science class by third-grade students at Arusha School." From the Literacy Through Photography project in Arusha, Tanzania.
literacy through photography - arusha, tanzania exhibition june 28, 2010 - january 8, 2011
opening reception: thursday, october 21st, 6 - 9 p.m. talk by katie hyde: 7 p.m
panel discussion: thursday, november 4th, 7 p.m.
The Literacy Through Photography program at CDS will present an exhibition of photographs documenting its long-term involvement with the schools and students in Arusha, Tanzania.
The LTP Project in Arusha, Tanzania, began in 2004 when Sister Cities of Durham brought two Tanzanian teachers to the Center for Documentary Studies to attend an LTP workshop. Building on these connections, LTP staff traveled to Arusha in 2007, 2008, and 2009 to offer workshops to hundreds of primary school teachers, from all over the district, and to co-teach lessons that involved more than 2,000 students. The summer of 2010 marks the third year that the DukeEngage program has supported Duke University students in their work with the LTP project in Arusha.
These experiences culminated with public exhibitions of children’s work in Arusha, some of which is included in this exhibition. Also on display will be photographs that document the collaborative LTP process.
Download the Spring 2010 issue of Document
Document is a quarterly publication that features some of the best documentary work supported and produced by the Center for Documentary Studies. Each issue of Document includes a range of stories; for example, engaging interviews with photographers and other documentarians working locally, in their own communities, and on projects across the United States and abroad; compelling images and writing by young people documenting what’s important in their own lives; excerpts from books and exhibitions produced by CDS; a sampling of documentary film projects from around the world; ideas for creating your own documentary projects; and much more.
