When I found out Marshall Curry studied comparative religion for his undergrad, I already felt a connection with the accomplished filmmaker. I came into Cornell as a Fine Arts major, I was going to concentrate in digital media, get an internship at the Whitney for the summer, spend a semester in NYC and Rome, and also find time to finish a Computer Science and Computing in the Arts minor. But now, my sophomore fall semester, I find myself about to transfer in to A&S to complete an Information Science major, PAM and Computer Science minor, and with applications ready for Google and Microsoft. After testing out what I liked my spring semester, I realized I liked coding more than painting; both are honest forms of “creation” but the I realized the first made me more excited than anything else I’ve tried. So I followed what excited me instead of what I knew.

Marshall Curry went from majoring in religion to becoming a filmmaker and winning awards at the Tribeca Film Festival and at the IDA, almost a 180, and a successful 180 at that. I think it’s really inspiring hearing people like him speak because he honestly followed what he was passionate about. I know too many people that are pre-med just because their parents want that future for them, and who have passions elsewhere, in music and in literature, but stifle those passions because they’re not practical, they’re not careers and because they’re not enough. And I think we should put more worth to what makes us happy.

Dinner with a a two-time Academy Award-nominated American documentary director, producer, cinematographer and editor? Why not.

I honestly can say, besides editing and making silly middle school videos on iMovie, film is not something I am very familiar with. However, I am a lover of all documentaries and whenever I need a break from some intense Organic Chemistry, I turn to Netflix and find an interesting documentary. That is why when I found out Marshall Curry was coming for dinner, I decided to get an inside look into the documentary-making process.

Curry said something that I greatly identified with, “I thought that documentaries were something that other people made. Something that I would never be able to experience”. He explained with how he started filming If a Tree Falls, a co-worker of his wife was arrested for terrorism and he thought it would be something interesting to film. Just like that, he become that “person who made documentaries” that seemed so distant and unrealistic.

What makes documentaries so interesting to me, is that it highlights realistic scenarios in life. Movies often glamorize and exaggerate life scenarios and spin them the way they would like (If you watch Narcos on Netflix your frustrations could align with mine). However, documentaries are raw footage that highlight interesting people in the world we live in.

Curry has a wide range of documentary topics, from following a politician’s road to becoming mayor to following (one of my favorite bands) The National around. I never thought about how much work goes into editing and making a documentary, and sitting down with one of the top directors in the game was definitely an experience I won’t forget.

Daniella

This week’s dinner conversation with Marshall Curry started with everyone introducing themselves and talking about their interests or experience with making movies. Many people were like me and had no experience with film-making.  It was quite interesting to hear how his career path led him to become a documentary maker. He studied comparative religion in college, started teaching high school students. He eventually worked for someone who was making a documentary. He told us although things did not go well with the first documentary he became really passionate about making documentaries.

One of the interesting things I learned from Curry was that when making a documentary you have to capture moments that are totally unexpected in order to capture the audience’s attention. In other words, keep the viewer curious about what is going to happen next at every moment. In deciding whether to make a documentary on a certain topic, Curry said he focuses on whether there is a compelling narrative trajectory with an interesting beginning and end to the narrative.

Curry discussed some of the documentaries he has produced. One of them called “Point and Shoot” is about a man who was travelling to Africa and the Middle East and eventually joined the rebels in Libya to fight against Ghaddafi. The other one called “If a tree falls” is about the Earth Liberation Front and discusses whether ecoterrorism should be condemned or not.

I certainly developed a much deeper appreciation of what it takes to produce a good documentary on a compelling topic.

In the Dinner Conversation event on October 25th, the two-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, Marshall Curry, came to Rose House to have dinner with us and share his filmmaking experience. Although it was a short event, we got to learn many things about him. For example, we learnt about how he went from being a comparative religion major to being a documentary producer, director, cinematographer as well as an editor.

We also got some insights into the messages underlying his documentaries. I got very interested in his documentary Point and Shoot, so I went on to YouTube to look it up. Point and Shoot tells the story of Matthew VanDyke who set off on a self-described “crash course in manhood”. While on a his motorcycle trip through Northern Africa and the Middle East, he struck up an unlikely friendship with a Libyan hippie. When revolution broke out in Libya, VanDyke joined his friend in the fight against Gaddafi. I think it was truly a great documentary because it showed how friendships can be formed in the most unlikely place and how life is what you make of it. However, what caught my attention when I found this documentary on Youtube was the comments the viewers left, both positive and negative. I believe a successful documentary needs to be thought provoking and that was what exactly this documentary was. It might have caused people to appreciate how Matthew joined the course of war just to help; other times, it caused people to think he was a “bored middle class brat joining the fight for islamism”. The thought provoking video led to all those stimulating comments, which lead the viewers to think even more. That, I think, is what made the documentary phenomenal.

Last Wednesday, we had a dinner conversation with Marshall Curry, a Brooklyn-based filmmaker of Academy Award nominated documentaries such Street Fight and If a Tree Falls. When I first signed up for the event, I had very little knowledge about filmmaking and documentaries, but I was excited to learn something new. One of the lasting impressions I had was that Curry was a great story teller- I was absorbed in the account of his career path and from the beginning to the current. Curry had no intention of becoming a documentary film maker, let alone an Academy Award nominee. He was a religious studies major in college and wanted to become a teacher. Then he went to Mexico with a couple of friends and later decided to make a film for fun and follow his passion because why not? The unknown film project about a local election Curry started out of a hobby would go on to become an Academy Award nominee, but not without hard work, rejection, and years of editing.

“If you can feed them, you can lead them.” This is the political culture of Newark, New Jersey – a city with staggeringly high poverty and murder rates. Marshall Curry’s Street Fight documents the intersection of race, identity, and democracy in the city’s 2002 mayoral elections. In this city, elections are won and lost in the streets.

The race was between Sharpe James, a powerful and sketchy incumbent, and Corey Booker, an all-American, Ivy League-educated rookie. I label James as ‘sketchy’, because of the tactics he used. Supporters of Booker were threatened. Businesses that hung Booker’s posters were dissuaded by promises of code enforcement shutdowns. Accusations about Booker being white, Republican, Jewish, and associated with the Ku Klux Klan were made. Basically, he played dirty.

One of my favorite scenes from Curry’s documentary was of Corey Booker wearing a Stanford Football Rose Bowl shirt in his Brick Towers apartment. Interestingly, Booker’s academic success was one of the main ‘issues’ James slandered.

Why? Because, the way James saw it, an educated black man is essentially white. This belief represents a problem seen all too often in American society- that being an educated minority is misconstrued as cultural abandonment. Phrases like, “you talk so white” and “you’re not really black” are quintessential examples that too many have heard. Academic success should not lead to hardships in cultural identification.

It is a frustrating idea, and I would like to thank Marshall Curry for documenting a story that transcends beyond the corruption of politics and sheds a raw light on the judgments minorities with academic accomplishments sometimes face.

Yesterday evening, I heard Marshall Curry speak about finding himself and ultimately “finding” or creating great documentaries. Initially Curry studied religion and decided he wanted to be a teacher, however, while interning, he discovered he could not handle disciplining students. So after going back and forth between what to do, he made a spontaneous trip to Mexico. Afterwards, he made another spontaneous decision to make a movie, just so he could say he did it. Curry ended up filming the election of a local man who was running for senator. He made sure to bring out the key issues in the race: politics, passion, and discrimination. Surprisingly to Curry, his film after nearly two years of work, was so successful that it was up for a Grammy.

He then went to describe what went into a great documentary. One thing he mentioned was the transition in a documentary that had a beginning and end. It keeps the viewer on his or her feet because the viewer wants to know what happens next. Also a charismatic character that engenders any strong feeling in the viewer makes a documentary memorable and entertaining. Lastly, he feels that a story that has yet to be told is an entertaining from a lack of knowledge standpoint.

i went to the marshall curry dinner conversation not knowing anything about him other than that he was a documentary filmmaker. truthfully i haven’t seen many documentaries that aren’t crappy history channel specials about ancient aliens, but the few i have (jiro dreams of sushi, room 237, food inc, mistaken for strangers, and montage of heck being the five i can think of off the top of my head), i’ve really enjoyed. marshall told us a little bit about his journey from majoring in comparative religion, to his philanthropic projects, to his work in web design, to his decision to just buy a camera and final cut pro, and give a shot at making a documentary, something he’d wanted to do for a long time. i have a lot of respect for that. it’s so easy to say, “oh, well, that thing i want–it’s way too unrealistic to want. i’m just not even going to try.” but he went ahead and did it anyway. good on you marshall curry. also, he told us that, when he was a web designer, he worked with matt berninger, who later went on to be the lead signer of the national, which is crazy awesome. marshall curry even produced a documentary on the band called mistaken for strangers (which as i said, i’d coincidentally seen already). i’ll definitely be bragging about having me a guy who knows the guy from the national to all my friends now. anyway, after dinner i went to the showing of curry’s first film street fight, which i enjoyed quite a bit. (now i can tell people that i’ve seen six documentaries that i’ve really liked.) overall, i’d rate the evening a solid 10/10 and would recommend it to a top ten friend, especially if he or she happens to like the national.

Question: What do domestic terrorism and selfie culture have in common?

Answer: Marshall Curry has made documentaries about them.

But my question was why? What about each of these things was so engrossing that a person could dedicate years of their life working to document it.

For Mr. Curry, it was all about curiosity and the unknown. He picked his subjects bases on what he didn’t understand. He wants to explore things in his work. Things that he might not have thought about before.

As a person, I think that is incredible. As a director, I think that that’s terrifying.

I have a little bit of experience with acting, writing, and directing. For me, directing is all about having an overarching vision and knowing where you want to end up. That is impossible in a documentary and it scares the life out of me.

After hearing from Mr. Curry, I tried to imagine for a moment what it would be like to direct a show with no script. No actors. No guaranteed action even. How would it work? How would I know what to watch? What is important and what is pointless?

I was quickly overwhelmed by this idea.

But then the panic passed. In its place was something else: Possibility. Suddenly everyone is an actor. Every plot matters. Every second is exciting and important. Making a documentary is like finding art in life. Sure, you need an artist to record it, but at its heart, its just people. Its the art in everyone’s story.

Regardless of this exciting revelation, I’ll probably never direct a documentary. But still, I appreciate the bravery and risk that goes into finding the art in everyone’s life. Marshall Curry’s discussion made documentaries real for me.

Joined by Marshall Curry, the two-time Academy Award nominated filmmaker, lead to interesting dinner conversation. Giving background on his road to becoming the renowned success he is, I could not help being in awe at the simplicity of his start. Not having any background or family connected to the film industry, he discovered his interest in documentaries, and simply bought a camera one day and read the manual.

He then proceeded to make an election film for Cory Booker, who was at the time running from Mayor of Newark. After shooting 200 plus hours of film following the election, Curry cut a trailer and attempted to receive a grant to finish the movie with no success.

Without this grant, he decided that he would have to learn to edit himself. He enrolled in a weekend class about editing and edited his footage for about a year and a half. Throughout this time period it was trial and error, and his only goal was to finish the project, not knowing the success to come.

Once he finished his editing, he took it to POV, who enjoyed it and provided another editor for the film. After this, Curry submitted it into Tribeca Film Festival, winning the audience award and then the film was nominated for the Oscars. This was the start of his career.

One statement that struck me was his motivation behind his films. He stated that he doesn’t make documentaries about what he wants to say but about subject matter that he wants to learn about. I thought that this was a very different humble approach.

Through his experience, he took away a very valuable life lesson that applies to many things in life, and hearing him say it was a good reminder. He said that he became more comfortable with the idea that it’s not going to be correct the first time. You have to keep building, after it topples down, until you create the final product.