Certificate in Documentary Studies Program
Final Projects
May 30, 2008
Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in Conjunction with Duke Continuing Studies

For more information about the certificate program: http://cds.aas.duke.edu/courses/conted.html

The final Seminar in Documentary Studies prepares certificate graduates to show a documentary project to the public. Some of tonight’s projects will lead to longer works; our ten-minute time limit for presentations creates both opportunities and challenges. For me, having taught the Final Seminar for several years, this group demonstrated not only the usefulness of sharing works-in-progress with a capable set of peers but also the subtle distinction between “context” and “story.” Participants in the weekly class analyzed, listened to, and watched emerging final projects with care, working together to find the most effective narrative line. They found that explanatory context and informational color could usually be trimmed in the service of creating an absorbing, focused story. Congratulations to these talented students who, I have no doubt, will continue producing fine documentary work in the future.

—Nancy Kalow, Final Seminar Instructor


Heather Carrie | Ruth
Audio

In June of 2006, Ruth Dasche died peacefully in her home at the age of seventy-six. She spent the six months before her death recording her memoirs. In this piece, we hear her reflect on her days as a young wife and mother.

Heather Carrie is a teacher, musician, and personal historian. She specializes in listening and conducting interviews that inspire remembering. Her love for stories began as a child while listening to her great-grandmother's tales depicting life in another time. After nineteen years of parenting and working in education, Heather moved to Durham, North Carolina, to study audio documentary production at the Center for Documentary Studies. She will return to Seattle in June to continue her work preserving memories, stories, and voices as sound portraits for family members and future generations to cherish.



Amy Conry | The Yraola Women
Photography and Audio

This is a story about mothers. It is also a story about a name and how it connects four generations of women in Conry’s family: her great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and herself. In searching for a way to explore her Filipino roots, Conry chose to focus on the history of her middle name as a way of beginning the story. “The Yraola Women,” which is an excerpt from The Sea Remembering, will ultimately evolve into a larger documentary project that incorporates more interviews, video, and photographs.

Amy Conry was raised in a military family and from a young age her writing and photography were a way to remember the adventures of each new “home.” She majored in English in college and since then has continued to travel the world with journal and camera in hand. When she found CDS, she knew it was the place where she could take everything to the next step. Now, with this new education and the help she has received from the fantastic documentary community of Durham, she feels confident she has a solid foundation to build on. After graduation, she will be moving to Wilmington, North Carolina. Two of her big goals for the next year include traveling to Nepal to document medical camps for a nonprofit she works closely with and to meet her extended family in the Philippines for the first time.



Carol Reese Dykers | Women’s Place
Photography and Audio

The condemned and water-damaged Single Sisters House at Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, caught Carol Dykers’s eye as a photographer in fall 2004 when she accompanied architects into the 1785 building while they determined whether it could be salvaged. When the answer became “yes” and bulldozers and restoration experts arrived in May 2005, Dykers got a hard hat and spent hundreds of hours climbing from the underground meat cellar to the fourth-floor attic documenting the house’s transformation and learning about its role in women’s education.

Carol Reese Dykers worked as a newspaper journalist for sixteen years in East Texas, and then in Savannah, Charlotte, and Greensboro. Since completing graduate degrees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she has taught communications courses for thirteen years at Salem College. She lives on a farm in Chatham County, where her favorite photographic subjects are weeds and cows.



Jeesoo Han | Dribble, Pass, Jump
Video

What goes on in the minds of Korean students when they face an unfamiliar school environment? Do they have difficulty making friends? How do sports such as basketball engage them?

This documentary is the story of one boy who came from Korea and how he adapted himself to new circumstances, made friends, and came to understand the culture of the United States through playing basketball. He discovered that basketball is another language of communication, which is not just mouth to mouth but body to body and heart to heart.

Jeesoo Han is a television producer in Korea. She has recently started to focus on international coproduced projects. She has found differences in how documentaries are made in the United States and Korea, which has motivated her to learn more about documentary studies. At CDS, she experienced many kinds of documentaries. She also learned how to develop stories and impact communities through documentary, and she expects that this experience will continue to influence her work.



Ned Phillips | Hammer Time
Video

Emerging rock trio Hammer No More the Fingers reflect on their craft and their dreams as they prepare to make the leap from local band to international sensation.

Ned Phillips was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, and has dreamed of making films since his youth. Struck by the power of both music and moving images as a boy, he began transforming his experiences into visual stories for others to share. After attending college in Baltimore, he returned home to hone his documentary and storytelling skills at CDS. He enjoys international travel, hip-hop, sports, and ninjas.



Christina Wegs | Grow All Over Again
Audio and Photography

Artist Kimowan McLain is reconsidering his identity and art-making process after brain surgery affected feeling and coordinated movement in the left side of his body. In "Grow All Over Again,” he imagines returning to his studio and combining his experiences as a mature artist with the energy and vision of the new artist that he senses emerging out of this change.

Christina Wegs comes to documentary work with a background in teaching, social work, and public health. She has traveled and lived in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, and has spent the past five years working with global reproductive health and HIV/AIDS programs. She came to CDS in 2007 to complete the Certificate in Documentary Studies, where she focused on photography and the spoken word. In 2008, she will continue to work and learn with CDS as a Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow in Boston.

banner image:

Professor Alex Harris during a slide lecture accompanying the fall 2003 exhibition, Walker Evans at 100. Photograph by Christopher Sims.






Center for Documentary Studies
1317 W. Pettigrew Street
Durham, NC 27705

telephone: (919) 660-3663
fax: (919) 681-7600
email: docstudies@duke.edu

See: directions to the Center for Documentary Studies

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