Riggs, Friedrich, and Proctor

Me: Looking back on my presentation, I'm surprised that I was up there for so long. Granted Marlon Riggs is an incredibly fascinating director and activist, and wanting to play 10 clips from a DVD helped contribute to the runtime, but knowing myself I'm an average public speaker. I have a lot of things that I plan/want to say, but when I get up there I feel like I'm on word count and I only have 100 vocabulary words to say. There is also the awkwardness of being a straight white girl presenting on a gay black man who focused specifically on the issues and struggles of his community. I do consider myself an ally of LGBTQIA and Black rights, and maybe it was just me over analyzing this, but I felt like I was the wrong person to talk about him. How the presentation would have been more impactful having a student who has the same background as him. That said learning about him and watching his films was a great experience.

Catherine: The most difficult thing when doing a research project is finding little to no information about your subject. And while Catherine was assigned an incredibly private person, I enjoyed how the short films she showed created the biography of Su Friedrich. It was a great development of seeing this director come into her own through her films.

Gabby: I loved how she got to interview the filmmaker she was presenting. You could hear the enthusiasm in her voice and see it through her body language whenever she got to present a short film from Jen Proctor.