Professor wins Motion Picture Academy grant to write book on Cambridge filmmaking
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has awarded a $25,000 grant to a New York-based professor who will use the money to write a book on the history of documentary filmmaking in Cambridge. Scott MacDonald, who teaches at New York’s Hamilton College, will look at ethnographic filmmaking and personal documentary – two forms of documentary that have uniquely thrived in Cambridge, the academy says.
The book, “The Cambridge Turn in Documentary Filmmaking,’’ will explore why those two styles have done so well in Cambridge, and it will examine the careers of noted filmmakers who have made documentaries in Cambridge, including John Marshall,
Robert Gardner,
Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, Alfred Guzzetti, and Nina Davenport, a Harvard graduate whose first film, 1995’s “Hello Photo,’’ a travel documentary set in India, won Best Documentary at the Melbourne International Film Festival.
Also getting a grant, New York University associate professor Dan Streible, who will use the $25,000 to write a book called “Orphan Films: Saving, Studying, and Screening Neglected Cinema.’’ The Academy Film Scholars program, which metes out the grants, was launched in 1999. JAMES H. BURNETT III
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