Welcome to our resource center for documentary lovers and filmmakers. The Library @ NW Doc includes a collection of non-fiction films, books, and this lovely blog. The library and resource center was established to support and promote NW Documentary's mission to encourage and inspire those with a love for storytelling.
Sites we like Tag Cloud
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
PAM wants in on this storytelling thing
The Portland Art Museum has jumped on the storytelling wagon with their own version of Story Corps-style documenting of personal stories. Object Stories invites participants to tell the silly, sentimental, and heart-felt stories behind their favorite objects. The museum has set up a nice website that features information on the exhibit and showcases photographs and audio from these storytelling sessions. It is nice stuff and definitely worth checking out.
If you want to visit the museum to tell your own Object Story you can make reservations on their website. The museum will be hosting an accompanying storytelling event on April, 22 at 7pm. Local famous people will be in attendance.
The photograph above is of Jake France and his Spotted Owls. Hear his story here.
Here it is folks, our next big and, yes, very exciting library program. We are fortunate enough to be collaborating with Bitch Media this time around to bring you an afternoon of friends and storytelling. It’s going to be a good one. Please send me an email if you are interested in attending or if you have any questions.
shhhh! Listen
Very good, now this is me encouraging you to set aside one hour of your time to listen. Just to listen. Story Corp’s National Day of Listening, which falls on November 27th, was established to encourage each and every one of you to sit down and record a conversation with someone who is important to you. Story Corps offers a free, downloadable, Do-It-Yourself Instruction Guide to help you prepare your interview questions, record your interview, and guide you towards resources for sharing your stories. This is an amazing opportunity to spend time with a friend or family member, hear new stories, and preserve those stories for future listeners. Story Corps’ National Day of Listening website offers resources to get you started and showcases stories collected from participants across the United States. I would also encourage you to visit the Story Corps website to hear additional stories and learn about the largest oral history project, of its kind, in the world.
Quilt and Quiltmaking in America 1978-1996 is a collection of 229 digitized photographs and 181 sound recordings from two Library of Congress American Folklife Center collections, the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection (1978) and the “All-American Quilt Contest”.
This collection is part of the American Memory Project, a website created by the Library of Congress with the intent of providing, “free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.”
Quilt and Quiltmaking in America is just one of the wonderful collections available through this website and highly recommend taking some time to poke around. The collections are browsable by subject, material, time period, or region.
If you are interested in using photographs, recordings, or other materials featured on the American Memory Project website in your personal projects please read this first.
Featured in this audio clip:
Interviewer: Geraldine N, Johnson
Quiltmaker: Zenna Todd
Alice Elliott began producing documentary films in her mid 40s after over twenty years of acting in feature films, commercials, and television. Elliott’s film The Collector of Bedford Street was nominated for an Academy Award and she is currently in production for several documentaries including, Two Weddings and a Future about the Christian and Hindu weddings of Carrie and Sujeet Desai, a couple with Down Syndrome. In this audio clip Alice discusses how she chooses her subjects, or more accurately, how her subjects choose her, with NPR’s John Kalish.
(If this clip won’t play click here to hear the story on NPR’s website)
