Watching the Waterways:
The PaceDocs Production of Tide to Table
On May 10, 2022, the Media, Communications, and Visual Arts department’s award-winning documentary film team—PaceDocs—premiered Tide to Table: The Remarkable Journey of Oysters, which focuses on the astonishing journey of oysters, their farmers, and their role in cleaning the water. At the first in-person premiere for the program since prior to the pandemic, the documentary was shown to a full house at the Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC) in Pleasantville and followed by a question-and-answer session with members of the crew, including a mix of graduate and undergraduate students, as well as co-producers, Professors Maria Luskay, EdD, and Lou Guarneri, MFA. This year’s production was also remarkable in that it played at multiple (and sold-out) venues across Cape Cod, the first time in the program’s history that the film was seen in theaters beyond JBFC.
Tide to Table, a film that continues PaceDocs’s notable legacy of producing documentaries that highlight significant environmental issues, was filmed on location in Cape Cod, Coastal Connecticut, and New York City. The cast varied from scientists to shellfish officers to farmers, and explored the unexpected relationship between nature, oyster farmers, and modern aquaculture technology and attempted to better understand their ecological value, while demonstrating how oysters are both thriving in areas such as Cape Cod and being restored in once depleted regions such as Connecticut and New York City as a means of enhancing water quality.
The creation of this film was a prime example of experiential learning at Pace; students enrolled in the popular Producing the Documentary class, in which the full-length environmentally themed film was completed within 14 weeks, also learned teamwork, problem-solving, research, and organization along with technical skills such as lighting, sound, camera work, interviewing, and other real-life tools. “Throughout it all, we brought together a diverse group of students with a full schedule of work,” said Luskay. “In the process, we not only learned firsthand about the plight of the oyster farmer braving the elements, but also the grit and determination required to complete the film on a tight deadline. It was an incredibly rewarding experience for us.”
Booth Review:
Homebase for Sports Media
In fall 2021, Booth Review was created by Associate Professors Michelle Pulaski Behling, PhD, and Kate Fink, PhD, in the Department of Media, Communications, and Visual Arts on the Westchester campus, to serve students as they explore the intersection of sports media and broadcast-ing, with new technologies and through academic research, education, and mentoring. Areas of inquiry include social media, audio storytelling (podcasts), public relations and television broadcasting, as well as electronic and print media.
In its inaugural year, five student interns contributed a wealth of content to get the program up and running. Notable achieve-ments include: 23 Weekly Recap podcasts covering Pace Athletics highlights; a launch of the first Setters in Sports podcast; 15 blog posts with topics ranging from the Winter Olympics to mental health in sports; countless social media posts, including several alumni takeovers; a collection of sports pho-tography on the Booth Review blog; and two original research articles.
📚 5 Must-reads by Dyson Faculty
📖 How to Understand Art
Janetta Rebold Benton, PhD, distinguished professor, Art
An overview of the fundamentals shared by visual arts across the globe, enabling the reader to think carefully, inquisitively, and critically about art.
📖 Communities and the Clean Energy Revolution: Public Health, Economics, Design, and Transformation
Melanie LaRosa, MFA, assistant professor, Media, Communications, and Visual Arts
An investigation into the intersection of clean energy with community engagement, diversity, and economic development.
📖 Rethinking the New Technology of Journalism: How Slowing Down Will Save the News
Seong Jae Min, PhD, associate professor, Communication and Media Studies
A critique of modern journalism preoccupied with speedy technological innovations.
📖 En Face
Charles North, MFA, poet-in-residence and professor, English
A third collaboration between the author and painter Trevor Winkfield, including eight of North’s poems and six of Winkfield’s color images.
📖 Re-living the American Frontier: Western Fandoms, Reenactment, and Historical Hobbyists in Germany and America Since 1900
Nancy Reagin, PhD, professor, History
An exploration of the global fascination for more than 200 years of the historic and mythic elements of the Old West, and how fans in both Germany and the United States have used, understood, and repurposed stories and artifacts set in that historic world.
Student Film Festival Returns in Person
The 2021-2022 Film and Screen Studies Student Film Festival showcased nearly 100 film projects created by Pace students this year, which were produced in classes including: Introduction to Filmmaking; Directing for Film and Television; Filmmaking: Image and Sound; Digital Television Field Production; Aesthetics and Technology of Motion Picture Production; and Production Practicum. The Festival started in 2010 and moved to the Schimmel Theater in 2014. After two years of a virtual showcase, Film and Screen Studies students, faculty, and staff were delighted to return live and in person to the Schimmel Theater this May to share and celebrate Pace student filmmaking and to continue the essential tradition of the experience of public cinema.
