GERALYN WHITE DREYFOUS is the co-founder of Impact Partners and has a wide background in the arts, long experience in consulting in the philanthropic sector, and is active on many boards and initiatives. She paints occasionally, and collects folk and traditional music from around the world. She studied piano at the New England Conservatory, and art history, architecture and physics at Columbia University. She was a featured presenter at the EG 2010 conference in Monterey, California, and serves on the jury for the News & Documentary Emmy® Awards, as well as on several festival juries.
In 2012–2013, she produced and shot for Showtime's Emmy®-winning YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY, a documentary series about climate change executive produced by James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gould recently completed OBIT, a feature-length documentary about The New York Times obituaries and their writer-reporters, which will be released by Kino Lorber in 2017. It screened at more than forty-five international film festivals and was recognized with audience and jury awards. BETWEEN THE FOLDS has been translated into more than ten languages and broadcast in dozens of countries on NHK, CBC, ABC, EBS, NRK, SF, SVT, Al Jazeera, Al Hurra, and other networks. Her film BETWEEN THE FOLDS premiered on PBS’s Independent Lens in December 2009 and was re-broadcast the following season. VANESSA GOULD is a filmmaker, editor and camera operator working in Brooklyn. A few months later, I contacted The New York Times about doing a documentary, and began soon after. As I began a new daily ritual of reading The New York Times obits, I soon discovered that nearly every one points to an incredible human story, along with larger contexts of place and time, history and culture.
This led me to a deep point of curiosity about the cultural, historical and journalistic gravity of obituaries. Recognition had mostly eluded him, and I can’t even begin to think how he’d feel if he had seen it. A good account of his life and work is now available.
It logged him into the historical record. It recognized the unique value of the things to which he was so devoted. They ran a beautiful and fitting obituary on him, along with photos of him and his work. About a week later, the first and only paper that responded was The New York Times. And so I sent a short announcement to most of the big English language newspapers around the world. I wanted him to have a final acknowledgement – to be recognized publicly. I was afraid that all we knew of him might disappear with time. Of course, no one else can ever finish them.Įric was a solitary person. Singular ambitions and thoughts gone with him. What I didn’t anticipate were the feelings that come with the early death of an artist. He had become a good friend, so I prepared as best I could for the loss of a friend. OBIT is a recipient of a 2015 NYSCA Artist Grant, and received support from IFP and Made In NY Media Center.įeatured in my last film, BETWEEN THE FOLDS, passed away at age 54. With this comes uncommon insights – insights only the rare obituary writer could have – into the passage of generations, the astonishing cycle of life, the ebb and flow of time, and culture as it appears to accelerate and vanish at the same time. The writers de-emphasize the death, and tell stories of lives lived in extraordinary ways, often below the radar.
The Times' century-old archive (appropriately called the morgue), along with its last remaining full-time archivist Jeff Roth, is also featured. Longtime obituary editor of The New York Times William McDonald, and past and present staff writers on the desk are featured: including Bruce Weber, Margalit Fox, William Grimes, Douglas Martin and Paul Vitello. What do we choose to remember? What never dies? The film invites some of the most essential questions we ask ourselves about life, memory and the inevitable passage of time. OBIT is the first documentary to look into the world of editorial obituaries, via the legendary obit desk at The Times.
Neatly framed vignettes of worlds that will vanish along with their notable stars. Mirrors of life’s great variety, humor and pathos. There are only a handful of editorial obituary writers in the world, and none are better than at The Times, where obits have become some of the best writing in journalism. At The New York Times deposits the details of three or four extraordinary lives into the cultural memory – each life’s story spun amid the daily beat of war, politics, and football scores.