Doc Talk Podcast Digs Deep Into Archive With Filmmaker Debra McClutchy, Delves Into Incarceration And Redemption Story ‘Songs From The Hole’
07.05.2024 - 23:29
/ deadline.com
Archival producers spend their days immersed in history – cultural, political, or personal, depending on the project. Yet, historically, their specialized work has often been overlooked, even though it’s key to the Ken Burns canon and other great documentaries like Man on Wire, 13th, The Fog of War, Apollo 11, How to Survive a Plague, They Shall Not Grow Old, and so many others.
The recently formed Archival Producers Alliance is helping to address this fundamental lack of understanding of what archival producers do and how they do it. And it’s also alerting the doc community to foundational challenges posed by the rapid emergence of AI.
In the latest episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, we speak with Debra McClutchy, a member of the APA who earned an Oscar nomination for co-directing the archive-driven short film The Martha Mitchell Effect. She discusses where archival producers find the rarities that make a historically focused film stand out – and the potential threat and potential opportunity posed by artificial intelligence. She also shares insights on her archival expeditions for a remarkably entertaining and endearing documentary Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, a mind-bending exploration of the musician and singer Little Jerry Williams Jr., perhaps better known by his alter ego Swamp Dogg.
Our conversation with McClutchy was recorded before a live audience at Nō Studios in Milwaukee, the production hub created by Doc Talk co-host John Ridley in his hometown along Lake Michigan. At Nō headquarters, Doc Talk also sat down with hip hop artist JJ’88, star of the exceptional documentary Songs From the Hole, as well as the film’s producer Richie Reseda.
As ’88 openly says, “I took a life at 15 and discovered the