06 Feb Documentary Magazine | New Models in Documentary Education

Laura Almo surveys the MIT OpenDocLab in her article “New Models in Documentary Education: Labs at MIT and Harvard Move the Form Forward,” published in the International Documentary Foundation’s Documentary Magazine.

“The MIT Open Documentary Lab, which launched just over a year ago, is fertile ground for all things new media and interactive storytelling. As it is rooted in MIT’s long and venerable history of documentary film and technical innovation, one must look at the past to understand the present. The late Ricky Leacock, renowned for his groundbreaking work in cinema vérité, created the film program with Ed Pincus in 1968, while Glorianna Davenport, a filmmaker and technical innovator, spent three decades at MIT exploring the fundamental issues of digital media. “That was the inspiration to look around and say that things are really changing,” says William Uricchio, director and principle investigator of the MIT Open Documentary Lab. “Online is the space where stuff is happening. Why aren’t we making documentaries? Why aren’t we taking advantage of the phones and cameras in peoples’ pockets?”

Read the full article at documentary.org.