MDOCS' Storyteller's Institute

During the month of June, professional documentarians and a group of students from Skidmore College worked alongside one another as part of the MDOCS' Storyteller's Institute. This website is intended to build a picture of the participants and showcase the work that was created during the month-long residency.

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Clip from a documentary film project, Welcome to Oaxaca Springs, by Jake DeNicola and Eleuterio Martínez working with Anthropology professors Bernardo Ríos and Michael Ennis-McMillan.  Storytellers' Institute Final Presentation.

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A slideshow of pictures and flyers from the inaugural MDOCS Storytellers' Institute, June 2015.

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Jake DeNicola, Ele Martinez on site conducting an intervies for their film project with Prof. Bernardo Ríos (Anthropology) on Triqui migrants in Saratoga Springs, NY.

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Jonna McKone, an Institute Fellow and documentarian, provides her definition of documentary. Excerpted from a longer interview. You can see her work here

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The Saratoga Chinese Oral History Project investigates and documents the history and experiences of Chinese immigration and residency in the town of Saratoga Springs, NY, and presents the outcome...

Evian Pan ‘16 recorded and transcribed interviews with first and second-generation Chinese immigrants living in the New York capital region, which you can listen to or read via the link above. As she writes on the website, her primary questions were: “What stories would the Chinese here like to tell? And for the first generation of Chinese Americans here, how did the dichotomy of growing up in a Chinese family and living in an American town impact their daily experience and awareness of identity?”

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Matt Barnes ‘15 produced a short audio documentary on his great-grandmother, Martha, which you can listen to above. He’s now revising the piece for the podcast Mother.

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Jackson Bryant ‘16 created a series of short videos that each profile working visual artists living in upstate New York. Above is one such video, and you can see a storymap of the series here.

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Part of a series of interviews conducted between the Institute’s professional and student fellows, hosted in The Sound & Story Project’s Cube. Adam Tinkle, pictured above, speaks on incorporating unconventional musical pedagogies within his own family. You can see his work here.

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Part of a series of interviews conducted between the Institute’s professional and student fellows, hosted in The Sound & Story Project’s Cube. Here, Evian Pan ‘16 speaks to Prof. Rios.

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Part of a series of interviews conducted between the Institute’s professional and student fellows, hosted in The Sound & Story Project’s Cube. Here, Natasha Thaler ‘17 speaks to Evan Roberts.

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Part of a series of interviews conducted between the Institute’s professional and student fellows, hosted in The Sound & Story Project’s Cube. Here, Ellé speaks to Maryam.