The Writing Code
Meet
The Filmmaker: Gene Searchinger
Location: NY Chapter office: 1375
Broadway (between 37th & 38th)
Reception:
*Free
to Members! $15 for those without current membership
RESERVATION
REQUIRED due to LIMITED SEATING.
Please
Call 212-459-3630 ext. 200 or via EMAIL kjensen@nyemmys.org
Gene
Searchinger will show his film “The Writing
Code.”
The
Writing Code. This is a
preview of one program in a major new series of films for Public Television on
the most important invention in the history of mankind. Something more
important, even, than the wheel. It is what created civilization. It is the
incredible device we know as Writing. Even though writing is both our most
creative technology and our greatest art form, nobody has made films about it
before. The Writing
Code is funded by both the National Endowment for
the Humanities and The National Science Foundation. This is Program Two, out of
three. It is fully edited and ready for screening, and it is of special
interest to people who care about documentary film making, because it is not
quite finished. Technical tasks are still to be complete- So changes can still
be made and the producers want to know what you think before they “lock
picture.” The films are of special interest, also, because they follow the
hugely successful PBS series of films, by the same producers, on
language. The Human Language is
now seen as a “basic text” and is being used in over 3,000 colleges. Will this
series fare as well? Is it equally informative and entertaining?The
distinguishing qualities of the human species are that we walk upright, that our
bodies don’t have hair, and that we have large brains. The asset that made us
top creature was that we acquired language. The asset that gave us civilization
was the invention of writing. It happened a mere five thousand years ago. The
first of these films shows where and how it happened. Program One, The Greatest Invention, is on the origin
of writing in what is now Iraq; on Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic; the invention
of Cherokee writing by an illiterate blacksmith; the man who wrote the traffic
sign Don’t Even Think of Parking Here; how Chinese writing works; and who writes
fortune cookies. The Greatest Invention
is about the nature of writing and what it has done for us. Program
Two, The Art and The Craft, is
about writing in stone; how papyrus was made; how Gutenberg changed the world;
how the post office works; the life and death of the typewriter; the invention
of spaces between words; how to make paper out of blue jeans; and about how
writers write – with crime writer Elmore Leonard, poet Quincy Troupe, and author
Margaret Atwood who says that “Call me Ishmael” is the best opening line she has
ever read. The
Writing Code shows that we are totally dependent on writing for
the survival of our species.
Gene
Searchinger (producer/director) started making
industrial films (for oil companies, etc.) in the 60’s. Around the world ten
times. Later, films for the
Suzanne Bauman (producer/director and editor) has produced and directed films for all networks, for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian. Her last PBS special was the immensely popular Jackie Behind the Myth. She has won numerous awards including an Academy nomination for A Cuban Odyssey and an Academy Special Merit award for La Belle Époque. Her feature-length documentary
Location:
NY NATAS
1375 Broadway, Suite 2103