Blueprint for Documentaries
Scribe Video Center (4212 Chestnut Street, 3 Floor) presents Blueprint for Documentaries a workshop with Louis Massiah. Turn your documentary idea into a workable shooting script. This workshop covers research, developing and visualizing ideas, scripting and storytelling techniques. Participants must submit a one-page description of their project prior to the first session. Mondays, November 3, 10, 17, December 8, and 15. Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm. Cost: $125
Louis Massiah is a documentary filmmaker and the founder/director of Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, a media arts center that provides training and equipment access to community groups and the independent film/video community. His innovative approach to documentary filmmaking and community media have earned him numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship “genius grant”, two Rockefeller/Tribeca fellowships and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. His award-winning documentaries, The Bombing of Osage Avenue, W.E.B. Du Bois – A Biography in in Four Voices, two films for the Eyes on the Prize II series, and A is for Anarchist, B is for Brown, have been broadcast on PBS and screened at festivals and museums throughout the US, Europe and Africa. He has also created installation works, including the five channel permanent video installation for the National Park Service’s President’s House historic site.
Through Scribe, Massiah has designed and launched the Precious Places Community History project, composed of 73 short documentaries produced collaboratively with neighborhood groups in Philadelphia, Chester, PA, and Camden, NJ. He also is completing the Muslim Voices of Philadelphia community history project. In 2015, he will be embarking on the Great Migration community history project, to explore and celebrate the centenary of the beginning of the first mass movement of African-Americans to Philadelphia at the start of the First World War. A graduate of Cornell University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massiah has been a guest artist and visiting faculty member at Swarthmore College, Temple, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University.
