Have coffee with Marshall Curry to discuss the craft of documentary filmmaking and a project idea!
He will bring you signed DVDs of Street Fight, Racing Dreams, and If a Tree Falls. Marshall is a three-time Academy Award nominated filmmaker who directed Street Fight, Racing Dreams, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, Point and Shoot, and A Night at the Garden. Curry got his start shooting, editing, directing and producing the documentary, Street Fight, which explored urban politics during Cory Bookers first run for mayor of Newark, NJ. The film won the Audience Awards at the Tribeca Film Festival, AFI/Discovery SilverDocs Festival and Hot Docs Festival. It also received the Jury Prize at Hot Docs and was nominated for a Writer’s Guide of America Award. The film went on to be nominated for an Academy Award and an Emmy and was called "extraordinary" by David Denby (The New Yorker) and "filmmaking of the first order" by Scott Foundas (L.A. Weekly).
In 2009, his second film, Racing Dreams, won Best Documentary at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, where it was also runner up for the Audience Award. The film was called "The best film of the year" by The Los Angeles Times and "one of the rare documentaries you leave wishing it was a little longer" by The New York Times. In 2011, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front won the award for Best Documentary Editing at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, was theatrically released by Oscilloscope Laboratories and earned Curry his second Academy Award nomination. Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times called it "one of the best documentaries of the year" and The New York Times described it as "an extraordinary documentary... [a] fearless exploration of complexity in a world drawn to oversimplified depictions of events and problems, heroes and villains." In 2014, Curry's film Point and Shoot won Best Documentary at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. The film was given an "A" grade by John Anderson of Indiewire, who said it was "a virtual swashbuckler". It was called "brilliantly constructed and provocative" by Peter Keough of The Boston Globe, "riveting... an extraordinary and quietly disturbing film" by David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter, and Jay Weissberg of Variety said the "editing is a standout." In 2017, Curry released the short film A Night at the Garden, a documentary about a 1939 German American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden, which attracted 20,000 Nazi supporters. Curry said of the film, "It tells a story about our country that we’d prefer to forget." The film was nominated for an Academy Award. Curry's short film, The Neighbors' Window, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2019.