post-conquest ~ plural
INDIAN RELAY
Following three teams as they prepare for and compete across a grueling Indian Relay season, INDIAN RELAY is a unique, present-day American Indian story full of beauty, hope, determination and excitement.
2014 Emmy Award Winner: Cultural Documentary, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Northwest Region
2014 Emmy Award Winner: Photography, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Northwest Region
2014 Spur Award Winner: Best Documentary Script, Western Writers of America
Selected for PBS' Independent Lens: 932 broadcasts across the USA + repeats, 97% coverage, > 1,577,986 primetime US viewers
Selected for the "Beautiful Games: American Indian Sport and Art" Special Exhibit. Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
Winner: Audience Award – Best Native American Film: 2015 Durango Film: An Independent Film Festival
Best Action Film: 17th Annual Native American Indian Film & Video Festival of the Southeast, Columbia, South Carolina
Shown twice at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NYC) as part of the "Native Games / Native Stories" and "Rocky Mountain Time" programs
Funded in part by Vision Maker Media
2014 Big Sky Film Festival Official Selection
Comanche Nation College Film Festival Official Selection
Equus Film Festival NYC Official Selection
Opening Night Film: 2014 Interchange Film Festival, Bozeman, MT
57:15 version of the film on MontanaPBS
Before Katie Gilbertson cut the film down to size, I cut it to 1:50:10 (Yep. Director’s Cut!)
Independent Lens Blog Q&A with Charles Dye
Vision Maker Media Press Release
1st Montana air: October 31, 2013
USA air: November 18, 2013
FINDING TRACTION
In an age where obesity is the #1 killer in America, FINDING TRACTION presents the inspirational story of endurance specialist Nikki Kimball's quest to become the fastest person in history to run Vermont's 273 mile Long Trail.
This project grew out of idea Rick Smith had a for a human endurance film that I just couldn't let go. Luckily, Jaime Jacobsen (and Danny Schmidt, and many others) had the energy, care and time to make this project the fine film it is today. I'm very honored to be this film's co-producer/director.
Awards
Emmy Award, Documentary - Topical, National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Northwest Chapter, 2016
Best Mountain Sports Film, Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, 2015
Best Women in Adventure Film, Sheffield Adventure Film Festival, 2015
Best Running Film – Silver Award, Sheffield Adventure Film Festival, 2015
Television Non-Commercial Program of the Year, Montana Broadcasters Association, 2015
Best Action Film, Danish Adventure Film Festival, 2014
Finalist, Mountain Film Competition, Banff Mountain Film Festival, 2014
Television Broadcasts & Online Distribution
Online distribution via Netflix, available for streaming in over 190 countries, 2016~18
VOD on Amazon Prime, available for streaming in over 200 countries, 2015~
VOD on Hulu and apps for Apple/Android devices, 2015~
Cable broadcast in Europe and North Africa via AB Groupe and YLE, 2015
Representation by APT Worldwide for four years in international markets, 2015~2019
National public television broadcast on NETA, with repeated broadcasts on MontanaPBS, 2015~
Selected Premieres
US Premiere: Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, 2015
World Premiere: Banff Mountain Film Festival, 2014
European Premiere: Danish Adventure Film Festival, 2014
Asian Premiere: Mumbai International Women’s Film Festival, 2014
Selected as the headliner for the 2015 Trails in Motion 3 World Tour, stopping in 167 cities in 26 countries, 14,000+ audience members
Additional Festivals
Official Selection, Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival. Vancouver, Canada, 2015
Official Selection, Sheffield Adventure Film Festival. Sheffield, United Kingdom, 2015
Official Selection, Green Mountain Film Festival. Montpelier, VT, 2015
Invited, Danish Adventure Film Festival’s Traveling Tour in Greenland, 2015
Invited, Trail Running Film Festival. Special Showings in Ashland, OR and Seattle, WA, 2015
Invited, Run Deep Film Festival. Boulder, CO, 2015
Invited, Livingston Film Festival. Livingston, MT, 2015
Selected Screenings
Girls on the Run, non-profit screening and fundraiser. Kalispell, MT, 2018
Gender Equality & You Conference, Montana State University, public screening. Bozeman, MT, 2017
James P. Taylor Outdoor Adventure Series, Green Mountain Club. Waterbury Center, VT, 2017
Montana Premiere Screening, Emerson Cultural Center. Bozeman, MT, 2015
Montana Premiere Screening, The Shane Center for the Arts. Livingston, MT, 2015
Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts, public screening. Blacksburg, VA, 2015
Vermont Premiere 3-City Screening with Girls on the Run. Burlington/Brattleboro/Rutland, VT, 2015
Carroll College, public screening. Helena, MT, 2015
Run YHA, public screening. England and Wales, 2015
Junior State Team Orienteering, public screening. South Australia, 2015
Petzl America, public screening. Salt Lake City, UT, 2015
Birmingham Ultra Trail Society, public screening. Birmingham, AL, 2015
Recharge Sports, public screening. Bend, OR, 2015
Seven Hills Running Shop, public screening. Seattle, WA, 2015
Zoot Enterprises, public screening. Bozeman, MT, 2015
California 89 Adventure Film Series, public screening. Truckee, CA, 2015
Girls on the Run, non-profit screening. Steamboat Springs, CO, 2015
Trail Running Conference, non-profit screening. Estes Park, CO, 2015
East Hampton Library, non-profit screening. East Hampton, NY, 2015
Green Mountain Club, non-profit screening. Waterbury Center, VT, 2015
Race Montana, non-profit screenings across the state of MT, 2015
Work in progress screening at the University Film & Video Association's 68th Annual Conference. Bozeman, MT, 2014
Trailer screened in the Trail Running Film Festival, 30+ stops in the USA, 2014
Recent Short Fiction
The Eastside (working title) (in post production)
Total Run Time: 3 minutes (estimated)
A short fiction film about finding resilience within oneself.
Starring Sam McDevitt, DP - Ryan Hedley, Sound - Tatum Fox & Rajahne Witcher: Producers - Allison Lee Craft & Charles Dye, Co-Producer - Sophie Page. Also starring Will Spann. Directed by Charles Dye
Mostly produced during 4.5 hours on a Blacksburg Transit bus on a dark night in December 2022. Awesome! (But never, ever, again.)
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…except you (2022)
Total Run Time: 1 frame under 2 minutes
A micro rom-com.
Shout out to actor/co-producer, Will Spann, for making made this project possible via his constancy and determination. Kudos also to actor Laura Schneider for her good cheer and adaptability.
Thanks as well to this project’s all volunteer crew: to Maxwell Mandell for learning a new camera system; to Kaliegh Miller for standing in and holding the bounce and boom; to Jack Allen for recording sound.
/ c. e. dye (writer/camera/director/producer/editor)
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splits (2020)
Total Run Time: 4 minutes, 44 seconds
A short film about film, aka media—and America. SPLITS is a crystalline disruption of expectation and meaning framed, with outsized implications.
An original, zero-budget, short fiction/experimental film created with a wonderful, all-volunteer cast-n-crew, SPLITS demonstrates how short films, outside of any course or contest, can be made efficiently and enjoyably—with the help of a motivated producer (thanks Allison Lee!), a broad seeing associate producer (thanks Karl!), a talented, quick-working editor (thanks Jimmy!), a willing-to-take-risks composer (thanks James!), and of course an extremely generous, committed, talented cast (thank you Pegah, Isaac and Greg!), and crew (thanks Nadia!).
Official Selection of the 2021 Richmond International Film Festival! https://riff.eventive.org/films/60d4e625bde272003751f0f4
Credits:
PEGAH SERAJEH: Finds the Money
ISAAC HYLTON: Drives Away
GREG JUSTICE: Switches Places
NADIA DAWSON: Location Sound
ALLISON LEE CRAFT: Producer
KARL PRECODA: Associate Producer
JAMES JAFFEE: Editor
JAMES GILCHRIST: Music
c. e. dye: writer/camera/director/co-producer
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UNCLE’S CAR (2019)
Total Run Time: 7 minutes, 11 seconds
An original, nano-budget, short fiction film created by an all-volunteer cast-n-crew, UNCLE’S CAR was supposed to be a quick learning project. But sourcing a Porsche took awhile. Then I found an ideal location—which those who navigated via phone could not locate. Eventually we got everything shot in RAW. But, uhm, this editor is slightly color-blind…Two years later, everything came out exactly right… or close enough.
UNCLE’S CAR celebrates rolling with life's incongruities.
Awards and selections:
2019 Spotlight Gold Award, Spotlight Film Awards, Atlanta, GA (Dec 21)
2019 James River Short Film Showcase, Richmond, VA (Nov 8)
2019 Clifton Film Celebration, Clifton, VA (Nov 8~10)
2019 Southeastern International Film Festival, Nashville, TN (Nov 8~10)
2019 Peak City International Film Festival, Apex, NC (Sep 21~22)
2019 Judge’s Award, Fifteen Minute Film Festival, Wheeling, WV (July 7)
Credits:
CHRISTINA HASTINGS: The Drive In Gal
KARAN KUMAR: The Nephew
DR. STEPHEN PRINCE: The Doctor
ANDREW HUANG: Camera
JOHN CROWDER IV: Location Sound
ZACH CORTEZ: A.D. & 2nd Camera
C.DYE, K.KUMAR & Z. CORTEZ: Story
DIEN VO & RACHEL WEAVER: Assistant Editors
COLM DYE: Colorist
CHARLES DYE: Writer, Producer, Director, Editor
Special Thanks to:
ANN MCDONALD & FAMILY at JIMS DRIVE IN, in Dublin, VA
JACKSON NASR for the Porsche
VIRGINIA TECH School of Performing Arts | Cinema
Nonfiction Filmmaking for the Screen
Edited by Charles Dye
Copyright 2024
Link to 1st Edition at Routledge
Combining essays and interviews with nonfiction filmmakers, this collection explores the business side of nonfiction media creation for film and television.
Over 30 industry professionals dispel myths about the industry and provide practical advice on topics such as how to break into the field; how to develop, nurture, and navigate business relationships; and how to do creative work under pressure. Readers will also learn about the entrepreneurial expectations in relation to marketing, strategies for contending with the emotional highs and lows of creating nonfiction media, and money management whilst pursuing a career in creating nonfiction media.
Written for undergraduates and graduates studying filmmaking, media production, and documentary filmmaking, as well as aspiring nonfiction media creators and documentary filmmakers, this book provides readers with a wealth of first-hand information that will help them create their own opportunities and pursue a career in nonfiction film and television.
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Link to Kindle Edition on Amazon
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Early versions of the jacket! >>>
SPAGHETTI WESTERN
A short, genre-bending, community-based fiction film upending the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s and 70s.
Starring 17 kids, Ben the Dog, and the voices of the VT String Project—a School of Performing Arts-sponsored community enrichment program for local youth.
Tagline: “A short film about a girl who knows her physics.”
One judge’s comment: “…One of the most creative western shorts I've ever seen mixing spaghetti western with the silent film while paying homage to everything Clint Eastwood and making it all seem logical as a kid's film!?! Absolutely delightful! The cinematography, editing, and music aid in creating the mixture of worlds and it didn't even bother me when you broke from the silent film to allow the characters to actually speak because I was already committed to the world you created.”
Sep. 23, 2021 VT News article: https://liberalarts.vt.edu/news/articles/2021/09/spaghetti-western.html
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Official Selections and Awards
Richmond International Film Festival: https://riff.eventive.org/films/60d4e3b97fc37700c5257fb1
Southern Shorts Awards, Atlanta, GA, 2021
- Official Festival Award Winner, featured in the Spring Season Film Festival
- 3 Two-Star Awards of Merit: Director, Production Design, Screenplay. 7 One-Star Awards of Merit: Producer, Costuming, Actor, Music, Editing, Sound Design, Cinematography.
Cowpokes Int'l Film Festival, Electra, TX, 2021
- 9 award nominations, 7 wins: Best Director (mini short), Best Mini Short Western, Best Originality Film, Best Family Film, Best Children’s Film, Best Western Mini Short Actress and Best Young Actress: Hadley Teaster
73rd UFVA (Virtual) Conference 2020
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Written by Gerald Teaster
Produced by P. Booth Teaster
Assistant Director - Gwen Ogle
Animator and Editor - Andrew Huang
Director of Photography - Justin Perkinson
Directed and Co-Produced by C.E.Dye
Starrring
Hadley Teaster
Amelia Arndt
Lily-Anne Cate
Ayla Clay
Graham Heisel
Sylvia MacNab
Isaac MacNab
Taylor McGuire
Brayden McGuire
Addie Mecom
Bridget Miller
Abigail Napolitano
Madison Nolen
Luca Ripepi
Beckett Socha
Sage Stern
Tanner Zoellner
and Ben the Heeler
Associate Producer - Allison Lee Craft
Script Supervisor - Trent Neely
2nd Assistant Camera - James Jaffee
Production Assistants - Jacob Kansco, Nadia Dawson, Kayla Hall, Ethan Hayes, Virginia Gray, Andrew Perkinson, Evan P. Teaster
Art Direction - Becki Jones
Assistant Art Direction - Wally Jones
Catering Staff - Kathleen Stadler-Thompson, Randy Thompson, Debbie Nicols
Filmed on location at
Heartstrings Pet Lodging and Spa, Blacksburg, Virginia
The Park, Roanoke, Virginia
Music
Brett Van Donsel - Rattlesnake Railroad
Motion Array
Luluproduction - Japanese Taiko
DeWolfe Music
Ena Baga - In A Mess
Keith Papworth - Have Gun
Tim Souster - Hot Desert
Andy Quin - My Old Rag
MISTY (Vocal)
Composer: Johnny Burke and Erroll Gardner
Co-publishers:
1954 Marke-Music Publishing Co, Inc (ASCAP) administered by WC Music Corp.
Spirit Two Music, Inc. o/b/o Reganesque Music Company
© Octave Music Licensing (ASCAP) All rights reserved and administered by Downtown Music Publishing LLC
My Dad's Songs/Pocketful of Dreams Music (ASCAP) (Administered by Songs of MOJO, LLC.) All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
Vocal Instructor - Kathy Strong
Vocal Recordist - Rachel Hachem
Singers
Ashton Price, Carlee Cook, Charlotte Reany, Finn Smith, Jaelyn Clark, Liam Baldwin, Lydia Pratt, Moonsie Zhang, Richard Zavaleta, Samuel Kamienski, Turner Gusler, Veronica Garcia
Special Thanks to Molly Wilkens-Reed - VT String Project, Joelle k. Shenk, Joeloe Productions LLC
No dogs, cowboys, or ladies were hurt in the making of this film.
Total Run Time: 9 minutes
© MMXX PEHG Productions
BEFORE THERE WERE PARKS
Winner of our first two Emmys!
Produced for MontanaPBS, BEFORE THERE PARKS: YELLOWSTONE & GLACIER THROUGH NATIVE EYES weaves an indigenous understanding of responsibility and relationship with how that worldview came to be marginalized--and how now it is being re-valorized.
2009 Emmy Award Winner: Historic-Cultural Program Special Category, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Northwest Region
2009 Emmy Award Winner: Photography (DP: Rick Smith), National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Northwest Region
Preproduction by Jaime Jacobsen. Original music by Lissette Norman.
PBS National Program Service Primetime Broadcast
Shown at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NYC) in the "Rocky Mountain Time" program. 2014
Chosen for the 2014 Native Film Fest, Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, Palm Springs, CA
The Snow Leopard
"In remote Central Asia, a reluctant smuggler and a strong-willed fugitive struggle to escape the authorities, their pasts, and each other."
THE SNOW LEOPARD is an original, feature-length screenplay set in western Mongolia and Russia.
The idea for the project arose while living with nomadic herders in western Mongolia, working on projects facilitated by The Snow Leopard Trust, funded in part by Banff Mountain Film.
'Non-fiction' films made by non-locals in under-resourced countries can be problematic, particularly if they reinforce the divide between local participants and non-local viewers. Such projects can be said to 'colonize' their subjects, presenting an othered spectacle for mainstream consumption.
Relatedly, domestically-made fiction films often do little to broaden mainstream perspectives.
Through a collaborative, locally-organized production process and international distribution, The Snow Leopard seeks a better way.
THE KIKLēSE PROJECT for Indigenizing Cinema (formerly Virginia Dares), and INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE
There’s so much great decolonizing/re-indigenizing work happening right now.
(To access recordings of past History events @ Virginia Tech: https://liberalarts.vt.edu/departments-and-schools/department-of-history/history-events.html)
As for THE KIKLēSE PROJECT for Indigenizing Cinema and INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE. The former is an award-winning, three-part project (formerly known as Virginia Dares). The latter is a ‘preview documentary’ I helped produce with Biko Agozino and an amazing team of students. (More about ‘IE’ further down this page.)
About THE KIKLēSE PROJECT
It’s a semi-annual online film festival, with ‘Official Selections,’ a free public screenings, a website (here’s the first one) and cash prizes!
It was (and may be again) a Nearly-Carbon Neutral Conference: Towards Making and Teaching Decolonizing / Re-indigenizing Media.
It will one day be a Web Series (or something) created and recorded by faculty and students in the VT's School of Performing Arts, in Blacksburg, Virginia and on the Shackleford Banks, North Carolina, and edited by…
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About the name:
THE KIKLēSE PROJECT comes to us courtesy of Victoria Ferguson, former Director of Virginia Tech’s American Indian and Indigenous Community Center. It’s a word from the Tutelo-Saponi Monacan language, meaning ‘awake.’ Vicky wrote: “I thought about the fact that we want to enlighten people, we want to wake them up.” Here’s a link to the word in a different way: https://livingdictionaries.app/tutelo-saponi/entries/list?entries_prod%5Bquery%5D=awake
Formerly this project was called Virginia Dares, which grew out of an idea for a short film seeking to re-envision the legend of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in “the New World” (c. 1588). This child’s story has hitherto been principally controlled and shaped by guardians of so-called white identity, for whom the appearance of a native-born white female child carried immense symbolic importance and served to legitimize:
• English colonialism and the doctrines of divine right and manifest destiny
• Anti-Indian propaganda; ideological justification for colonialist genocide and expropriation
• White female innocence—a key trope for racialist thinking in America, directed first toward Indians, and later toward peoples of African descent.
After several scripts, and many months of workshopping the idea, we saw there are many better stories that can be told about the meeting of American Indian, African and European cultures—multiple Virginia Dares.
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In 2019, the Virginia Dares Team won a Virginia Tech Presidential Principles of Community Award. This award “was established to recognize employees who exemplify and promote a welcoming and inclusive environment in accord with Virginia Tech’s Principles of Community.” In selecting our team for this award, the Commission on Equal Opportunity and Diversity recognized “Virginia Dares for its visionary, progressive, and thoughtful leadership.” This award came with an honorarium, which led to…
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THE KIKLēSE PROJECT for Indigenizing Cinema:
Launched in 2020, these film awards promote meaningful cross cultural identifications and helps create the possibility for social change by promoting and celebrating indigenizing / decolonizing media created by artists, activists, educators, and students worldwide.
Award Winners are chosen from the project’s Official Selections and publicaly screened for free*. All entry fees are split evenly and distributed to the winners. No entry fees are paid to , or kept by, the event’s organizers.
For more info: https://filmfreeway.com/VDCAA (Name change coming soon!)
*Please join us for the free community screening of this year’s award winners at VT’s American Indian and Indigenous Community Center, at 7pm on March 21st, 2023
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But what is decolonizing / re-indigenizing media? Well…
Nelson Maldonado-Torres in On the Coloniality of Being, refers to decolonization as “a confrontation with the racial, gender, and sexual hierarchies that were put in place or strengthened by European modernity as it colonized and enslaved populations throughout the planet” (page 261).
In Carole Boyce Davies’ introduction to Decolonizing the Academy: Advancing The Process, she writes: “It becomes clear that “decolonizing the academy” must be an ongoing and parallel feature of attempts to develop new paradigms ... Decolonizing the academy means therefore that in a variety of former colonial sites, including the U.S., the work of making the academy a more egalitarian space as it pertains to knowledge has to become part of the practice of teaching, scholarship and writing. It means as well that various studies rendered peripheral or area studies, must instead become radiating centers from which the various disciplines are reinvigorated. Additionally the embedded hierarchy of knowledge must necessarily be dismantled in any decolonization of the academy” (page x).
M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty argue that a decolonial politics involves both analytic practices of “making sense of the world in relationship to hegemonic power” and constructive practices of building “democratic collectives which are premised on the ideas of autonomy and self-determination" (1996, xxx).
Finally, in Margaret A. McLaren’s introduction to Decolonizing Feminism, Transnational Feminism and Globalization, she writes: “Common threads running through… articulations of decoloniality/decolonizing are attention to both micro- and macro-political structures; a sense of historical consciousness and specificity; a commitment to liberatory practices and values; and an awareness of the effects of colonization not only as political, historical, and economic forces but also as effects on consciousness, theories, research practices, epistemological frameworks, and ways of knowing. Each thread contributes to the overall understanding of decolonization.”
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The Virginia Dares Virtual Conference: Towards Making and Teaching Decolonizing / Re-indigenizing Media:
This virtual event occurred on November 13, 20, 21, 2020. Here’s a link w/recordings of the conference sessions: https://liberalarts.vt.edu/research-centers/center-for-humanities/conferences/virginia-dares.html
Overall, this ‘gathering’ was instigated to interrogate the problematic colonial-era narratives of Virginia’s first European settlements. It dared to upend embedded systems of marginalization and colonization within our disciplines, and seeks to advance dialogue through an examination of de-colonial, anti-colonial, and re-indigenizing imaginary, creativity, making, and teaching efforts.
It fostered explorations and illuminations of the myriad resonances across myths and inequities from European colonization to today, unpacking myths about European origins of American civilization and contemporary anti-feminist, anti-BIPOC discourses.
Through bringing together educators, filmmakers, researchers, artists, students, community advocates, and Indigenous leaders, this conference provided a much-needed intersection for critical inquiry and research at an unprecedented time and will facilitate a space for sharing of media, production, and pedagogy.
Its Goals:
Develop a network of stakeholders committed to anti-colonial inquiry, equitable making, critical Indigenous imaginary, and the development of media and pedagogy
Uplift research, discourse, practices, and perspectives that champion media equity
Showcase outstanding media works through the inaugural Virginia Dares Cinematic Arts Award for Decolonizing / Re-indigenizing Media.
Position Virginia Tech and its Center for Humanities as a megaphone for anti-colonial imagination in making, teaching, and media in Virginia, the American South, and across the globe
Future Dates? TBD!
More Info / Contact email: cdye@vt.edu
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About the Virginia Dares Web Series:
We’re currently seeking demo reels from editors who might wish to edit our footage.
Here’s a sampling of what we recorded: https://vimeo.com/319354270
Contact email: cdye@vt.edu
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The Virginia Dares Project is a collaboration between faculty and students in Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts, the American Indian Studies program, and the School of Visual Arts.
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INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE is…
…a 19-minute ‘preview documentary’ recording how contributions to diversity increased excellence at Virginia Tech—an institution that was initially set up exclusively for white men. Funded via a College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences’ Niles Research Grant.
A review of the film by Dr. Gloria Emeagwali, Central Connecticut State University:
A great documentary. An eye opener. Situates the great Virginia Tech in its true original, racist historical context. A new genre of Campus documentaries has been launched!
Congrats for a great contribution to our understanding of American history, campus history, and the struggle for Human Rights, recognition and Identity.
Another review of the film, posted on Biko’s website: https://massliteracy.blogspot.com/2021/12/review-of-my-video-in-class.html
(Democratically as opposed to Dictatorially) Directed and Produced by Biko Agozino
Co-Produced by Charles Dye
Videographers/Researchers/Editors/Narrators: Kaela Carle, Kale Hall, Micah Untiedt
Production Manager and Consultant: Kerri Moseley-Hobbs
- Official selection: 6th Festival Internacional de Cine de la No-Violencia Activa (FICNOVA) 2022
- Aired on Blue Ridge PBS, 2021
- Premiered at the 2021 VT Diversity Summit
A CAT CALLED ELVIS
When I took my wife and infant son to Mongolia to make a film about the rare and beautiful snow leopard (called 'elvis' in Kazakh Mongolian) I “had no idea it would be a true passage. A uniquely personal natural history experience, A CAT CALLED ELVIS is a gorgeous vision of a nearly impossible journey, unfolding and revealing the filmmaker and the world we share with snow leopards.”
Produced in conjunction with, and support from The Snow Leopard Trust and Banff Mountain Film.
Featured film on www.lifeonterra.com when it won the 2007 Webby Award for Student Online Film and Video
Repeated broadcasts on MontanaPBS.
Lifeonterra webpage
Well, dang. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 used to be viewable on a phone, but now our only option seems to be:
The viewable-on-a-computer, 29-minute version.
Experimenting
SCENES FROM THE GREAT DIVIDE is a different sort of feature-length non-fiction film, inspired by the Slow Media work of Greg Coyes, offering glimpses of time spent riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, May 18 to Aug 1, 2023. Enjoy: https://vimeo.com/867813485?share=copy
The Lentil 360 is an episodic, immersive, documentary experience about a revolution in regenerative agriculture in Montana. An experimental new media project for 6-12 graders, this project was created in partnership with Montana PBS and the Montana Institute on Ecosystems. It offers unique insights into some of the innovative practices now being employed by Montana farmers, scientists, and food health advocates.
Slated to begin streaming in 2020, this 360- (spherical) video project allows viewers to ‘choose their own adventure’ across several chapters, each relating to different aspects of regenerative agriculture in Montana.
Filming, Farming, Failing Forward reflexively presents the medium of 360 while exploring lentils, crop rotations and some of the challenges facing organic and conventional farmers in Montana’s Golden Triangle.
More Protozoa, Less Money visits with a holistically-mined rancher, two organic farmers and a pulse processor on moving away from using costly, chemical inputs.
Holistic Eats visits with a farm-to-table baker, a chef, and various food resource center employees to experience how they’re fostering food security and helping their local communities flourish culinarily.
Inspired by Liz Carlisle's award-winning book, The Lentil Underground, (and featuring Liz), the project was funded in part by a 2017 Film and Digital Media Grant from Humanities Montana, and by the Friends of MontanaPBS.
The Lentil 360 was presented at the 2020 UFVA Virtual Conference on July 27. Here’s a link to the New Media Gallery. Next, it will be tested as a learning tool in select Colorado and Montana schools in fall 2020 and accessible via its own, and MontanaPBS’s website.
Stay tuned for more info!
Student Work
This list below is SO incomplete! Every semester my students make wonderful films, and sometimes I remember to post one or two here, with great appreciation for their hardwork and willingness to share. Enjoy!
DID YOU KNOW? by Sophia Okorn. Winner of the 2018 Fear 2 Freedom Film Festival, Best Documentary 2017 Progeny Short Film Festival, Finalist 2017 Poe Film Festival
GUY BEST FRIEND by Curtis Williams
UNPLUGGED by Abu Jalloh
BLINK by Ryan Hedley
AGAINST THE CLOCK by Grant McMillan and Matt Iglesias. 2018 Poe Film Festival Finalist
WHAT GOES AROUND... by Youssra Chanaai & Lamiae Skalli
VALLEY of HOPE by Andrew Huang. Co-Winner of the Spirit of Appalachia Award, 2017 Progeny Short Film Festival
SPARK by Caitlyn Murray (Audience Choice Award, 2017 Progeny Film Festival, Official Selection, 2018 Queerbee LGBT Film Festival
IDENTITY by Lauren Ravert
THE GREEN MAN, by Loudna Taleb, Hazim Azghari & Ilham Hajji
THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY by Corey Barlow
HORIZON by Yacine Kaouti, Mohammed Serghini, Adel Abaab
HOTSPUR! Scene5, by Corey Barlow, London, Docherty Andrew Schurr, Adithiya Saikumar. Just one tiny example of whole semester’s worth of crazy cool work by Karl Precoda, Bob Leonard, Cara Rawlings, and a whole bunch of smart students.
VID SPILUM TÓNLIST, by Lizzie Eckman
SNOODLES by Alex Gerstein
THURSDAY NIGHT WITH MICAH’S BACKPACK by Daveisha Gibson
~ More all the time! ~
Practicing
Produce and improve.
Learning how to make anything well requires beginning, failing, and yet doing that again. And again, and again….
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CUTFREE is a short nonfiction film, simply posted to my blog, realizing my inaction was defiance, side-stepping a toxic narrative of White masculinity—which still bedevils us.
Towards Decolonizing Media is a film / presentation / blogpost for Virginia Tech’s Center for Humanities.
And here’s another blogpost w/my first three (dance free) Tik Toks: Dinner, Little Possum, and Here I Am (+ links to a few students’ works, for the same assignment)
We’ve started teaching online. Here’s my first recorded lecture, on MAKING STORY.
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EAST OF PULSE, a projection for Annie Stevens’ & the Virginia Tech Percussion Ensemble’s performance of Henry Cowell’s PULSE, using imagery adapted from George Melford’s EAST OF BORNEO. Lyric Theatre, Blacksburg, VA, November 4, 2017. Karl Precoda co-producer.
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And here… at long last, are The Four Collaborations, 4 short fiction films created early in my time at VT, with students:
NECKTIE. A short fiction film adapted from a friend’s true story of leaving the defense industry. Starring Trevor Scott and David Johnson, written and produced by Charles Dye, directed and edited by Karan Kumar, camerawork by Maddie Hill
HALF. Short fiction film about a young woman breaking free of someone who bullies her. Starring Sarah Gehl and Micah Untiedt, written and produced Charles Dye, directed by Andrew Huang, camerwork by Sophia Okorn
BEG TO DIFFER. A short film about getting along—even when not getting along. Starring Kenzy Forman and Andrew Schurr, written and produced by Lauren Ravert, directed by Charles Dye, camerawork by Mordecai Lecky, edited by Sophia Okorn
C17. A short fiction film about a young woman’s addiction to Xanax, and her friends’ intervention. Starring Ann Marie Soltis, Mary Pat Gilliam, Molly McIntyre, written and produced by Maddie Hill, directed and edited by Charles Dye, camerawork by Micah Untiedt
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Before grad school, I struggled to write the ideas behind BEAR . It turns out I’m not that kind of eco-phenomenologist.
When I got to grad school, my first films bored me. EWE was the beginning of me making my kind of work.
I began THE ELK HUNT after THE CYRSTAL MOUNTAIN fell through. Then I read The Omnivore's Dilemmaand thought, well damn. Pollan did such an amazing job with Chapters 17 & 18. It was exactly what I’d been wanting to do with THE ELK HUNT—just better.
COMMERCIAL was a hoot to shoot for my friend Michael Cross.
Before LAST OF THE GUM MEN was edited, THE CRYSTAL MOUNTAIN was in production….
LAST OF THE GUM MEN
With only one company’s demand for natural chewing gum keeping Guatemala's San Benito chicle cooperative in business, a sustainable source of local work teeters on the brink of oblivion.
LAST OF THE GUM MEN documents one season in the lives of five of the last chicleros working in the Maya Biosphere Reserve.
Distributed by the National Education Telecommunications Association and broadcast by PBS affiliates across the USA.
Produced and co-directed by Laura Pacheco, who went on to produce the wonderful EAST OF SALINAS.
At this point in my life, I’d taken a UW extension ‘documentary film production’ course and had made a short film for a local non-profit. I was working as an un-paid assistant at a PBS station, logging tapes and writing grants. Then Laura walked in with a bit of Getty money to make a film about chicleros….
LGM was the first semi-major, non-fiction project I ever helped make in a substantial way. In hindsight, I can see that I still employ the method I was drawn to use here: Go, be slow, but get to the story’s center. Observe. Visit. Problem solve. Record what’s needed to make a film that will take viewers to places they would otherwise never go.
This project provided a reason to learn big tree climbing. It also proved that solar panels are useless for recharging batteries in a shady forest. And we should’ve noticed—and recorded—more SOUND (and found a better narrator). But all’s well that ends well. Hopefully one or two people who saw this film were inspired to study solutions to the complex problems that fill its subtext.
The Peten region of Guatemala is magical. I will never forget sitting high in a treetop, watching a group of toucans fly past at sunset, or hearing a jaguar ‘saw’ somewhere nearby, in the deep darkness of a jungle night. As to the many men and women of San Benito and Melchor de Mancos who let us into their lives… they were equally extraordinary—always generous, endlessly tolerant and courageously real.
My hat is off to everyone involved in this project. Thank you.
First Works
I’m happy enough with my first doc and first fiction films.
I made SPIN in 1996, as a final project for a ‘Certificate in Documentary Video Production’ course taught by Ben Saboonchian at the University of Washington.
Shot with some kind of Hi8 recorder in a backpack connected to a lens taped to my helmet, six years before the first GoPro. Edited tape to tape, pre-non-linear editing.
This is a TERRIBLE rip, from a VHS tape, with distorted audio (unlike it was originally). But, close enough.
Click on the thumbnail >>>
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THE CURTSY (2008)
“…was really excellent -- the photography, the sound, the subtle but persistent manner in which it worms its way into a viewer's empathy and intellect and prompts pondering issues of personal import which are all too easy pushed aside. — Dr. Ekdal Buys.
A just for fun, overly serious, theoretical foray into fiction film, THE CURTSY was my MFA thesis film—a post-structuralist (ha), revisionist (duh) Western adapted from the achingly-beautiful essay by Deirdre Stoelzle-Graves in the book, “Leaning into the Wind.”
(And yup, that’s the Green Darner, doing such a great job in the leading role.)
Unfortunately, the revolution in imaging that came with DSLRs, growing kids, work overseas, larger documentary projects, and what seemed liked extortionate film festival entry fees, all curtailed the reach of this project. Which of course is somehow perfect, in its context.
Credits:
A film by Ann & Charles Dye
Colleen Tretter: Dee
Mathias Saxman: Logan
Bar Guys: Steve MacInaney, Peter MacDougal, Parker Brown
Extras: Kyle Bajakian, David Duesterbeck, Kara Adams, Leslie Gaines
Rick Smith: DP
Parker Brown: Sound
Jim Tharp: 2nd Camera
Additional VO: Jaime Case
Michael Cross: Editor
Special Thanks to:
Jenny & Mark Sabo
Lezlie Kinne
Rocky Mountain Roasting
www.Twang
Aleworks
Produced, considering the alterable nature of the social order, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Science and Natural History Filmmaking - Montana State University.
R.I.P. Comet
Other Work
It's been an honor to have been an advisor, a small part of the SISTERS RISING doc film project. This fantastic film tells the story of six Native American women reclaiming personal and tribal sovereignty in the face of ongoing sexual violence against Indigenous women in the United States.
KAITIAKITANGA: THREE ENDEAVORS IN CONSERVATION O TE TAU IHU is a wonderful project that I feel lucky to have edited for Dawson Dunning.
It's always great, years later, to see the final film when you're just one of its many cinematographers. On SOURCE TO SEA: THE COLUMBIA RIVER SWIM I spent a few days with Chris Swain, just as he was beginning his epic journey.
I ran a camera just one day for PRODIGAL SONS--but it was an interesting day for sure. It was hoot to hear my name is somewhere in the credits.
And here’s a few of the short films I sometimes show in class:
The Shining Star of Losers Everywhere
The Words in the Margins (I can no longer find this wonderful short film online.)
Red Green (I don’t know this great little film’s actual title, or really anything about it. Any info would be great appreciated!)
The Last Farm (I’ve paid $1 for this award-winning film, numerous times on iTunes, but Apple has now lost their mind with Apple Music. This link is to a low-quality rip on YouTube.)
Round About Five (wildcat link—please let me know if you can find an official one)
Zucht (wildcat link)
Evolution (Often copied, but still one of the best one-minute films, IMO).
Bears Ears (A multimedia/VR project backed by Patagonia. Make sure to experience the 360 content!)
And here, in 3 minutes, thanks to Van Draussen, is almost everything I can teach you.
Oh, one of my students just brought in Silva’s Existential Bummer, which is pretty cool (and it preceded Interstellar by a year).
An Implicit Association Test is worth taking.
If you’re a maker, don’t miss Leguin’s 1975 Aussiecon address.
Otherwise, I can’t keep up with everything going on, but here’s a shout out to the Lyric: https://www.thelyric.com/calendar/
Teaching
In film, through our stories, we find the visions and resolve we need to better appreciate and navigate our interdependent journeys. I love being a filmmaker and a filmmaking teacher because it allows me put my energy into helping create the kind of narratives that hopefully make at least a tiny bit of positive difference in this world. I see classrooms as community spaces, places for conversations toward thoughtful making. I am an ally, a co-learner and sometimes a guide, a fellow practitioner of this craft, delighted to be in the company of other film enthusiasts no matter what their experience-level.
Please send me an email if you’d like a copy of my latest CV, teaching statement, or… whatever.
Pics:
In Iceland, leading a National Geographic Student Expedition, 2008
On Shackleford Banks, North Carolina, filming part of VIRGINIA DARES, 2018
Reading
A Space, Culture & Land Acknowledgement:
As an employee of Virginia Tech, I acknowledge that we work within what was once the Tutelo/Monacan people’s home. These folks had an ancient and comparatively sustainable relationship with this area and the interdependent lives within it. I also acknowledge that legislation such as the Morrill Act of 1862--and subsequent actions made by groups of Euro-Americans at the time--enabled ‘Virginia’ to finance and found Virginia Tech through the forced removal of Native Nations from their lands, both locally and in what we now call the American West.*
The notion and practice of Euro-American conquest remains embedded within our technology, institutions, and shared assumptions. And even with the best intentions, the study and creation of media significantly contributes to the destabilization of this planet’s climate, which disproportionately affects colonially-marginalized folks worldwide.
Those of us with some power hold responsibilities to learn, understand, and communicate as best we can, to make good in our time, and to take up roles in reconciliation, decolonization (creating equity) and ally-ship. 𐑍
I also acknowledge that the labor of enslaved Black people also generated revenue that enabled the creation of Virginia Tech.
* - 3,355 Indigenous parcels of parcels of ‘land’, totaling 299,115 acres, were seized and then ‘granted’ to Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1872.
𐑍 - adapted from an acknowledgement by Adrienne Wong
A few quotes:
“I do not know what will be left of me fifty years from now. I suspect that all films will have aged terribly and that the cinema probably won’t even exist anymore. My guess is that the final disappearance of cinemas will take place around the year 2020, so in fifty years time there will be nothing but television. Well, I would be happy to get one line the “Great Universal Encyclopedia of the Cinema,“ and I think that’s the sort of ambition every filmmaker must have. This is a business in which you have to be not arriviste, certainly not that, nor yet ambitious, which I’m not, but you have to have ambition in what you do, which isn’t at all the same thing. I’m not ambitious. I don’t want to be something. I have always been what I am, I haven’t become anything; but I’ve always had, and I shall always try to retain, this feeling that ambition in one’s work is an absolutely healthy, justifiable thing. You can’t make films just for the sake of making films. If fate wills that I should make more films, I’ll try to remain faithful to this ideal of being ambitious when I start a film; not being ambitious between films, but being ambitious when I start work, telling myself, “People have to enjoy this.” That’s my ambition: to fill cinemas.”
—Jean-Pierre Melville
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“What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good.” —Aristotle
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“If you do not understand White supremacy – what it is, and how it works, everything else that you understand will only confuse you.”
—Dr. Neely Fuller Jr.
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"Stop expecting important, meaningful things to feel comfortable and pleasant. Consider the possibility that mild discomfort is the price of doing things you care about."
—Oliver Burkeman
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“I have lived through a revolution, a great and ongoing revolution. When the world turns over, you can’t go on thinking upside down. What was innocence is now irresponsibility. Visions must be re-visioned.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin
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"We've destroyed our planet not with cars or planes, but with the stories we tell about our time."
—Donna Haraway
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"I was learning from these mortal-farcical events about the eternal presence in human affairs of accident and contingency, as well as the fatuity of optimism at any time or place. All planning was not just likely to recoil ironically; it was almost certain to do so. Human beings were clearly not like machines. They were mysterious congeries of twisted will and error, misapprehension and misrepresentation, and the expected could not be expected of them."
—Paul Fussell
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"Sometimes when I was physically at my best I could sense moments of utter ecstasy, those rare fleeting times when you are in total harmony with yourself and the elements around you: nature, the noise of the wind, the smells.
"Let's not get carried away. But I have to confess: I was happy."
—Laurent Patrick Fignon
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“The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.”
—Iris Murdoch
A biography:
I mean it’s terribly—and I do mean awfully (but also beautifully)—complicated. Filter Wong’s ideas and Melville’s words above, through Fuller’s, and even McWhorter’s critique of DiAngelo’s work (which first inspired the paragraphs below) through a few of Ignatiev’s leaflets. Add lots of dusty miles, Kendi’s anti-racist book (which my then 16-year old son read before me), various faculty meetings, and uncomfortable articles like this, and that’s my ambition: to create—and help people create—content that people will enjoy. Content that helps us more equitably structure our society, and be more aware of our interdependencies, situations and histories.
My parents, for much of my youth, were teachers, and I grew up mostly (I’ll explain this in a second) white and nearly unconscious of my race privilege and class oppression, in many places: south-central New Mexico, northern then eastern California, the brilliant Sonoran Desert. My mother’s Oklahoma-born father believed we were part (American) Indian. He had memories and a few old photos to back up this belief—but my mother’s recent DNA test connected us with the people of sub-Saharan Africa instead.
Growing up, my mother sometimes told me, that because I’d been born a WASP male, that I “had nothing to complain about.” Only recently did I ask her where that perspective came from. “From being an officer’s wife in the Army,” she said. “From socializing, as the wife of a lieutenant, with the Black wives of Black officers.”
She also told me she’d later quit a job at a fitness center, after the (white) manager told her to throw away any Black person’s application. Later, in a department store, in response to a sign stating that only the (white) manager could operate the cash register, she’d told him: “I will only give my money to the (Black) clerk who helped me—not you.” And so my mother paid the clerk for my little sister’s new clothes. ”It just wasn’t right,” she said.
In Arizona, on an otherwise all Indian high-school running team, I was uneasy, in obviously occupied territory, seized by the U. S. military, mined and ever-more ‘developed’—a sunny, blatantly inequitable outpost of a tacit empire, with warplanes ‘training’ overhead and bombing ranges and intercontinental nuclear missile silos in most directions—beyond innumerable barbed-wire fences. Crop-dusters rained poisons down on patches of what had once been (and would be again) desert, plowed with machines unsustainably fueled, flooded with ancient water pumped from ever deeper wells. Elsewhere, in places utilized by people for more than twelve millennia, ‘wildernesses’ had been declared, to be spared this overt abuse… to exonerate us: we, the ‘settlers.’
Only recently, after living a decade of my life overseas, in Australia, Central America, Europe, East Asia, and North Africa, have I begun to understand how I/we was/am were/are socialized to collude with colonialism/racism; have I begun to explore my multiple locations; how they function together to hold short-sighted, destructive convictions in place, and more often—hopefully—to help dissolve them. I create media and teach media-making for a reason: I want to spend my energy and time here helping make this world better.
Ideas (then). Click here to download a PDF of: The written half of my MFA thesis
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And… some books I really appreciate / recommend:
AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME - the graphic novel
DOCUMENTARY STORYTELLING: CREATIVE NONFICTION ON SCREEN
THE NATURAL ALIEN: HUMANKIND AND THE ENVIRONMENT
LITERARY THEORY: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
DRAWING WORDS & WRITING PICTURES
DESERT SOLITAIRE (Abbey would probably agree that he’s problematic. But few have written of the American Southwest in the 1960s (when and where I was born), as beautifully he did, in this book.) (Also, he was a teacher of mine, at the University of Arizona, Spring semester 1988.)
and anything and everything by Ursula K. LeGuin (such as 5 WAYS TO FORGIVENESS, or her carrier bag theory)
or N.K. Jemisin (especially The Broken Earth trilogy)
SOME DESPERATE GLORY… and, well, since we’re here, we might as well go ALL the way: GRIDDLE!
There’s also these 24 books!
As well as:
https://www.conspireforchange.org/resources/saviorism/
Liz Carlisle’s THE LENTIL UNDERGROUND
Counterpunch (Towards Decolonization and Settler Responsibility)
Michael Wesch on the Future of Storytelling
https://nathanielianmiller.com/the-book
An interview with the poet Corrie Williamson…
The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto
Walter's World: Film Criticism (sniff… no more!)
MaryAnn Johanson's Flickfilosopher
Slow Media… several links here:
http://en.slow-media.net/manifesto
The International Alliance of Youth Writing Centers
Why’s This So Good? No. 61 John McPhee and the archdruid
Darrell Kipp on Nitsitaapii Art
Warre hive beekeeping info & supplies
World Without Ice & The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record
Crowing & Honeying
Crowing
We’re up to five regional Emmys and a growing pile of other awards. Each is the result of collaborating with family and friends! Thank YOU!
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The tales between our ears are the important ones. Honeying is my semi-monthly blog, a personal AND professional practice of non-fiction storytelling. Reflexively juxtaposing memes, memories, words, aural-visual, eco-phenomenological (and -pedagogical!), imagery, stories...
One family's adventures, great & small.
“Sym-chthonic, not auto-chthonic, sympoietic, not autopoietic. All of us who care about recuperation, partial connections, and resurgence must learn to live and die well in the entanglements of the tentacular without always seeking to cut and bind everything in our way.”
(From “Donna Haraway and Cary Wolfe in Conversation”, Manifestly Haraway (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)
Links to (rarely visited) FB & Instagram… 🙄
Twitter? No way! That’s like yelling out a car window. #nevertweet
X? Oh hell no. We seek the opposite: #visiting
