Talk

MFA Photography, Video and Related Media presents a discussion with acclaimed director, editor and producer Sam Pollard and faculty member, artist, editor and filmmaker Grahame Weinbren.

Sam Pollard’s professional accomplishments as an award-winning film editor, director, producer and screenwriter span over forty years. His first assignment as a documentary producer came in 1989 for Henry Hampton's Blackside production Eyes on The Prize II: America at the Racial Crosswords, for which he received an Emmy award. Eight years later, he returned to Blackside as co-executive producer/producer of Hampton’s last documentary series, I'll Make Me A World: Stories of African-American Artists and Community, for which he received The George Peabody award.

Between 1990 and 2010, Pollard edited a number of Spike Lee’s films such as Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Girl 6, Clockers and Bamboozled. Pollard and Lee also co-produced several documentary productions for the small and big screen, including Four Little Girls, a feature-length documentary about the 1963 Birmingham church bombings, which was nominated for an Academy Award, When the Levees Broke, a four-part documentary that won numerous awards, including a Peabody and three Emmy Awards, and its sequel, If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, which won a Peabody.

His recent notable works include By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, for which he won an Emmy Award; August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand, a 90-minute documentary in 2015 for American Masters; Sammy Davis Jr., I’ve Gotta Be Me for American Masters, which premièred at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival; Why We Hate a six-part series that premiered on The Discovery Channel in 2019; the HBO series Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children; MLK/FBI, which was named best documentary at the 2020 San Diego International Film Festival; Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, released in December 2022 and streaming on Peacock; the two-part series Bill Russell: Legend on Netflix; and Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, which had its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in March 2023.

In summer 2023, Biography: Ol’ Dirty Bastard, the first official documentary on the late Wu-Tang Clan rapper, co-directed with his son, Jason Pollard, will premiere on A&E, and South to Black Power, inspired by New York Times columnist Charles Blow’s book, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto, will premiere on HBO in Fall 2023.

In 2020, he received the International Documentary Association’s first Career Achievement Award in 2020, and the following year Film at Lincoln Center paid tribute to Pollard, calling him one of “cinema’s most dedicated chroniclers of the Black experience in America.”

Pollard has partnered with his long-time collaborators Geeta Gandbhir and Alisa Payne to form a new film production company, Message Pictures. The company’s mission is to amplify unheard voices, throw light in the shadows and share stories that dare to be told.

Grahame Weinbren is a pioneer of interactive cinema. His installations have been exhibited across institutions since 1985, including the Whitney Museum, ICA (London), the Guggenheim Museum, the Bonn Kunsthalle and the Centre Georges Pompidou. Commissions include the National Gallery of Art, the City of Dortmund and NTT/ICC Tokyo. His documentaries and experimental films are widely screened, recently at the 2011 Montreal Festival of Films on Art. Weinbren has published and lectured for three decades on cinema, interactivity, and new media. He is the senior editor of the Millennium Film Journal and a senior member of the graduate faculty at the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts, NYC.

Films Available on External Streaming Platforms

South to Black Power (2023) (HBO)

Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power (2022) (Peacock)

Black Art: In the Absence of Light (2021) (HBO)

Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children (2020) (2 episodes) (HBO)

Films Available Via SVA Streaming Platforms

MLK/FBI (2020) (Available via Academic Video Online - SVA Library Database)

Mr. Soul! (2018) (Available via Academic Video Online - SVA Library Database)

Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me (2017) (PBS) (Available via Academic Video Online - SVA Library Database)