July 2010 Guide: Music Central

A reporter once asked Ringo Starr the secret of his masterful drumming. “My heartbeat keeps the tempo,” he replied. “I have a great time when I’m performing. It’s the rhythm of my heart and soul.”

Starr demonstrates plenty of heart and soul in the season premiere of the contemporary music series Live From the Artists Den (Fri 9^th, 9:30 p.m. on WNET; Sat 10^th, 10 p.m. on WLIW21). Folk-funk star Ben Harper and Relentless7 join the former Beatle for this intimate concert at The Metropolitan Museum of Art with special guest Joan Osborne.

The series will also feature Tori Amos (Fri 16^th, 9:30 p.m. on WNET; Sat 17^th, 10 p.m. on WLIW21) and Corinne Bailey Rae (Fri 30^th, 9:30 p.m. on WNET; Sat 31^st, 10 p.m. on WLIW21).

American Masters gets up close and personal with country legend Merle Haggard in Learning to Live With Myself (Wed 21st, 9 p.m.), while President Obama welcomes Paul McCartney to In Performance at The White House (Wed 28^th, 8 p.m.). Norah Jones performs her greatest hits on Soundstage (Fri 2^nd, 9:30 p.m.), and Jimmy Smits hosts A Capitol Fourth (Sun 4^th, 8 p.m.).

And opera fans won’t want to miss Great Performances at The Met’s presentation of Hamlet (Thu 15^th, 9 p.m.), starring Simon Keenlyside and Marlis Petersen.

So sit back and enjoy these lively music programs – all made possible by your support!

The Plaza was abuzz on June 16th with the sights, sounds and personalities of public media as WNET.ORG held its 17th annual gala salute. The festive affair was hosted by Jon Meacham and Alison Stewart, who transferred their roles as co-anchors of Need to Know to the Grand Ballroom of the storied hotel. From their anchor desk on the stage, Jon and Alison spoke with Neal Shapiro, WNET.ORG chairman James S. Tisch, and Gerald L. Hassell, president of BNY Mellon, which was honored for the company’s outstanding support of WNET.ORG.
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EDUCATIONAL BROADCASTING CORPORATION AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT REACH SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON GRANT ACCOUNTING

June 15, 2010, New York, NY –Educational Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) has reached an agreement with the US government to settle issues arising from an investigation into grant accounting encompassing grants applied for beginning in 2001. EBC — and its parent WNET.ORG — cooperated fully with the investigation, which was settled today. During the time period subject to the investigation, EBC was the licensee of THIRTEEN, the principal public television station in the New York tri-state area; the ownership of THIRTEEN was restructured for reasons unrelated to the investigation, and the station is now licensed to WNET.ORG.

EBC has agreed to repay the US government $950,000, to forgo approximately $1 million in reimbursement of certain expenditures incurred with respect to project grants that the organization has been awarded but has not yet received, and to adopt a compliance plan. Although EBC and the Government did not agree entirely on the nature and extent of errors alleged in accounting for expenditures incurred in connection with grants supplied to EBC by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, EBC worked diligently with the three agencies to reach today’s conclusion of the investigation, which resulted in no findings of wrongdoing or liability.

In the last year, EBC and its parent WNET.ORG have upgraded their grant accounting practices, including hiring a compliance officer and establishing a committee to regularly review actions on audits and compliance issues.

“We cooperated fully with this civil investigation and have put procedures and policies in place to ensure that we won’t have the same or similar issues in the future,” said Neal Shapiro, President and CEO of WNET.ORG, current parent company of THIRTEEN. “We are fortunate to create and provide the kind of programming that merits funding support through a variety of grants from such sources as the NSF, the NEA and the NEH. We are also proud that these agencies have continued to award grants to us during the investigation. It’s our responsibility to ensure that our accounting for these generous grants is impeccable.”

Today’s conclusion of the investigation was effectuated by the filing of both a Complaint, a procedurally necessary step, and a Stipulation and Order of Settlement and Dismissal in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York. As noted in the Stipulation and Order, the settlement was entered into by all of the parties based on their desire to reach a full and final settlement and compromise of the claims alleged in the Complaint. WNET.ORG was not implicated in the civil investigation whatsoever, but is a party to the settlement as the sole member of EBC and has agreed to abide by the institution of the compliance plan prospectively.

View the official press release

This morning, Inside Thirteen spoke with Seth Kramer, one of the producers and directors of the upcoming documentary, THE NEW RECRUITS.  The film takes a look at a group of business students with a radical plan: to put an end to global poverty by charging for goods and services.

THE NEW RECRUITS explores the social enterprise movement and raises a unique (and somewhat ironic) question: can capitalism, rather than charity, save the world?

Directed by Ironbound Films’ Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger, THE NEW RECRUITS premieres on THIRTEEN this Tuesday, June 15 at 10p.m.

Seth Kramer answered our questions via email.

Inside Thirteen: What inspired you to make The New Recruits?

Seth Kramer: When filming our 2008 Sundance and PBS documentary The Linguists, we—Ironbound Films’ Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger—visited some of the poorest people in the world, from remote tribal communities in Orissa State, India, to mountainside villages in Bolivia. The notion that someone could offer these folk critical goods and services, but make them pay for it, seemed radical to us. Exploring this approach we thought would make for a fascinating documentary.

IT: Was there anything that you were surprised to learn during the making of this film, either about the poor people featured or the way business is currently conducted in poorer countries?

SK: The most surprising thing we discovered is that when businesses sell to the poor, the biggest problem is not necessarily that the poor cannot afford the good or service. The problem is that the poor, like customers everywhere, become more demanding of the product. Their desires must constantly be addressed. When the good or service represents an aberration from their traditional lifestyle, than an even larger problem arises: that desire must be cultivated from scratch.

IT: How did the subjects in the film react to this project? Were they at all skeptical?

SK: We follow three apprentices at startup businesses that sell to the poor in Kenya, India, and Pakistan: Suraj Sudhakar, Heidi Krauel, and Joel Montgomery, respectively. All three were skeptical inasmuch as they are within the reality television demographic, so know that foibles, confrontation, and failure are pillars of the medium. We convinced them that documenting their struggle honestly and unflinchingly would not only make for a more informative film, but also a more effective recruiter for those interested in joining the fight.

IT: Is social entrepreneurship a viable alternative to charity? On what scale do you think it could affect global poverty?

SK: To quote Robert Katz, a social enterprise recruiter who appears in the film, “Aid and charity on its own will never solve the problems of poverty.” The millennia have proven this true. Aid and charity can never cease to exist, especially in the direst circumstances, but their limitations demand sustainable alternatives. Social entrepreneurship—employing business principles to solve social problems—is just beginning to see tangible results, but will take many years before its effects on global poverty are assessed as a whole. Its most significant accomplishment so far might be changing the way the world views the poor, and the poor view themselves.

Watch the official trailer here:

By Independent Lens

In GOODBYE SOLO, an old man gets into a cab with an unusual request: a one-way ride to his death.  The driver agrees, unless he can talk the man out of it. Director  Ramin Bahrani infused the story with African, Mexican, and Southern influences to create a unique drama that explores the human spirit and the role of free will. Independent Lens sat down with Ramin Bahrani, the writer/director/producer of GOODBYE SOLO, to discuss his inspiration for the film and the critical acclaim it has received.

GOODBYE SOLO premieres on June 1 at 10pm on THIRTEEN.

What keeps him motivated as an independent filmmaker:

Curiosity. A desire to create a new set of values, culture and images as the current ones seem old, wasted, and often disturb me.

His three favorite films:
These are three films that I watched in the last few months and I loved:

The Enigma of Kasper Hauser
The Searchers
The Last Picture Show

His advice for aspiring filmmakers:

Read a lot, and work as many odd jobs outside of the film industry as possible.

His most inspirational food for making independent film:

I don’t know if inspiration exists but it always finds me working.

Independent Lens: What impact do you hope GOODBYE SOLO will have?

Ramin Bahrani: I hope first and foremost that the audience will be engaged and that they will enjoy and be emotionally moved by the story and characters. Perhaps it may also cause one to think about the nature of friendship, of selfless love, and of the ceaseless battle between life and death, hope and despair.

IL: What led you to make this film?

RB: A real mountain called Blowing Rock, and two encounters with strangers in my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina:

A real Senegalese cab driver who is as charming, friendly, and curious as Solo in the film, and with whom I spent six months riding alongside doing the night shift in the cab.

An elderly man standing by the side of the road, totally alone, outside of an “assisted living” home that I would pass every day for months.

Blowing Rock provided me with an ending. It is a real life location along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the North Carolina Mountains that I have been visiting since childhood with my family. In October (when we filmed) it is known for its other-worldly beauty as the leaves change into an explosion of colors that burst and flash out of an enveloping and mysterious fog. Blowing Rock is also known to have a wind so powerful that it can blow a person back up into the heavens.

IL: What were some of the challenges you faced in making GOODBYE SOLO?

RB: Every film is a set of neverending challenges.

IL: How did you gain the trust of the subjects in your film?

RB: The two leading actors in the film are both professional, and it was my good fortune they accepted the invitation to be in this film as they are both exceptionally talented.

The rest of the actors are non-professionally trained and locals to Winston-Salem and each of them is a unique gem, especially Diane Franco, the young girl playing Alex, Solo’s step-daughter. None of them knew anything more about the film than the scenes they played in. They trusted me as I trusted them.

IL: Tell us about a scene in the film that especially moved or resonated with you.

RB: William and Solo’s final scene is something very special. Red West, the actor who plays the role of William, has done something phenomenal and magical. West has managed to transfer his inner soul and all our own inner anxieties about the fragility of life, the hopelessness of death, and the power and transient nature of friendship into his face and eyes with only the most subtle of moves, and not even the hint of a verbal utterance. This is what a great actor can do when given respect in cinema.

IL: What has the audience response been so far? Have the people featured in the film seen it, and if so, what did they think?

RB: Thankfully, the response has been very good. The film premiered in the Venice Film Festival where it was awarded the International Critic’s Prize for best film, and then it screened at Toronto Film Festival. It was released theatrically in the U.S. starting in March 2009 in more than 100 markets.

The cast has also seen the film and enjoyed it very much. It was a distinct pleasure for the non-professionally trained actors to finally know the full story of the film.

IL: Why did you choose to present your film on public television?

RB: They were nice enough to ask, and it’s a great opportunity to reach a wide, intelligent, and mature audience via such a respected, important, and long-standing American institution as public television.

IL: What didn’t you get done when you were making your film?

RB: My laundry.

Filmmaker Bio

Internationally acclaimed for his first two features, MAN PUSH CART and CHOP SHOP, Bahrani’s films have won countless awards after premiering in festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Sundance, Toronto and Berlin, and appeared on numerous top ten lists. Bahrani was the recipient of the 2008 Independent Spirit Award’s Someone To Watch prize, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been the subject of several international retrospectives including the MoMA and Harvard University.

He also wrote and directed the short subject PLASTIC BAG (narrated by Werner Herzog) which premiered as the opening night film in Venice 2009 where Bahrani also served on the Jury. GOODBYE SOLO is his first film set and shot in his hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The film premiered in 2008 and immediately won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival.

Tonight at 8pm, THIRTEEN’s Lincoln Center Studios will host New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in a live Q&A, where he will respond on-air to viewer calls and emails regarding the state’s current fiscal crisis. Christie: On the Line will be presented by THIRTEEN in partnership with the Caucus Educational Corporation.  It will be simulcast on THIRTEEN, NJN, Public Television, NJ.com, and WBGO Jazz 88.3 FM.

Have your voice be heard by submitting your questions here: Christie: On the Line

By Independent Lens

In PROJECT KASHMIR, two filmmakers, one Hindu and the other Muslim, sneak their cameras into one of the most beautiful, yet dangerous, places on Earth. In a region where religious alliances have spawned more than half a century of war, can these two filmmakers learn what makes Kashmiris choose their homeland over their own lives, even as their friendship is put to the test? Independent Lens spoke with Senain Kheshgi and Geeta V. Patel, directors/producers/writers of PROJECT KASHMIR — about their motivation, their favorite films, and inspiring foods.

PROJECT KASHMIR premieres on May 18 at 10:30pm on THIRTEEN.

What keeps them motivated as independent filmmakers:

The content, creativity, and impact drive us. We are both interested in documenting the experiences and voices that are underrepresented. When we see the impact PROJECT KASHMIR makes in communities, and when we think about all the people who came together to make this project possible, it fills us with inspiration and motivation.

Their three favorite films:

Senain: In my own work, I am very inspired by fiction filmmaking, the way stories unfold narratively, without talking heads or experts. Some inspirations are The 400 Blows, The Apu Trilogy, Turtles Can Fly, Dog Day Afternoon, Diving Bell and The Butterfly, Breathless, and the films of Wong Kar Wai, Kiarostami, Andrei Tarkovsky. I could go on and on.

Geeta: As far as documentaries, these come to mind at the moment: Capturing the Friedmans, Harlan County USA, Hoop Dreams, and Style Wars. Recently, I’ve enjoyed The Ghosts of Cité Soleil, In a Dream, and Oh Saigon.

Their advice for aspiring filmmakers:

Senain: Think about what you want to say. It is easy to pick up the camera and start shooting a film these days. What is more difficult, but ultimately most fulfilling, is to take the time to really think about your ideas, your vision, what you want to say. Making independent films is not a quick process (at least it isn’t for me!). It takes time, living and breathing with your subject, deep preparation and honest reflection within yourself on why it’s important that you tell this story…. If you know what you are going to say, then you will find that the rest of the process (grant writing, outreach etc.) comes naturally.

Geeta: Apply to grants and public television, and try to understand how to make your proposal stronger. Identify your outreach, if you are making a social justice film, because it will help you get grants and support from niche organizations. Embrace the fact that independent filmmakers must more often take on the role of producers for their first films. Surround yourself with mentors and people more experienced than you. Learn how to work with others and communicate your vision, as this is such an important part of directing and producing. And most of all, just take the leap of making your films and following your heart.

Their most inspirational food for making independent film:

Senain: Yogurt

Geeta: Peanut butter

Independent Lens: What impact do you hope this film will have?

Senain Kheshgi and Geeta Patel: We hope audiences will have a visceral understanding of life in Kashmir today … “the scent of Kashmir,” as someone calls it in our film. Even after 20-some years of turmoil, there is such longing for peace, such joy in the culture, and yet such sadness over what has happened there.

The film is also an attempt to understand how religion is used as a tool to perpetuate conflict. We hope that audiences will seek out more information about the region to better understand the complexity, ambiguity, and gray area of life in this conflict zone.

IL: What led you to make PROJECT KASHMIR?

SK and GP: As children of the partition, we wanted to make a film that would explore this issue of our divided communities in an emotional and visceral way. In our Pakistani and Indian communities, everyone has an opinion about Kashmir. And yet, few people stop to ask the Kashmiri people themselves what they really want. So, we started with the idea to make a film about questions, about memory and silences. We thought if we went to Kashmir together, and asked the Kashmiris how they feel about India and Pakistan, the conflict, religion, and each other, then perhaps we could learn something deeper about ourselves as well.

IL: What were some of the challenges you faced in making this film?

SK and GP: Although both of us grew up traveling to India and Pakistan, neither of us had been to Kashmir. We had read about the conflict and studied the history, but there seemed to be little written about the Kashmiri culture, the people, and their lives. We started by reaching out to Kashmiris living in the diaspora. To the Kashmiris, we were outsiders and it was difficult to gain their trust but after several years of these conversations, we were able to find strong leaders in the community who understood that our goal was to shed light on the similarities and not to make this film about the differences.

IL: How did you gain the trust of the subjects in your film?

SK and GP: We had to genuinely open up with our own stories. We told them about our families, our lives, and our feelings about the conflict, and how we wanted to learn about the divide between our countries and our people. We wanted them see why this was important to us as individuals. In retrospect, we could have said and done more, but because the two of us were going through a difficult reckoning with our own perspectives, we did not talk about our feelings as much as we should have.

IL: What would you have liked to include in your film that didn’t make the cut?

SK and GP: So many aspects of the conflict: more perspectives of women, mothers, daughters, sisters caught in conflict and how they cope with the trauma; the psychological impact of death and dying on the children of Kashmir; the stories of the mental health facilities, the orphanages; more about the daily life of the IDPs living in the camps in Jammu.

IL: Tell us about a scene in PROJECT KASHMIR that especially moved or resonated with you.

SK and GP: When Aarti, a Hindu Kashmiri, returns to her home in the valley in Kashmir after 16 years of living in exile, we saw a prime example of text and subtext. She had told us repeatedly that her pain was gone, that it was time to move on, that things were over. However, it was clear in her face that it was not. In the scene where she returns home, she comes face to face with her past in a very beautiful and haunting manner.

IL: What has the audience response been so far? Have the people featured in the film seen it, and if so, what did they think?

SK and GP: The audience response has been very emotional and personal. We find that the post-screening discussions bring out deep feelings from Indians, Pakistanis, and Kashmiris who have directly suffered during these 20 years of conflict. What has been particularly exciting has been the amazing (and sometimes painful) conversation that develops from the shared experience of watching the film and hearing the perspective of the “other.” This is what we wanted: communication, uncertainty, exploration. The issue we saw in our communities (and within ourselves) was that everyone seemed to have an answer, but very few stopped to think about how one asks the questions.

IL: Why did you choose to present your film on public television?

SK and GP: PBS maintains great efforts to reach out to diverse and underrepresented audiences. This is very important to us and really a motivating factor.

by Bijan Rezvani

This Sunday at 8:30, Seth Cluett presents Three Forms of Forgetting at downtown experimental venue Roulette with the help of the audience and cellist Okkyung Lee.

Cluett is a multidisciplinary artist with a background in photography and a special focus on sound.  His work includes installation, live performance, composition, video, critical theory, and more.  On Sunday he’ll be presenting pieces for paper and stones, cello and oscillators, and a long solo finale to explore intersections of physical actions, listening, and memory.

In anticipation of Sunday’s event I asked Seth Cluett to share some of his thoughts on sound, listening, and the upcoming performance.

Bijan: How does your background in photography inform your sound work?

Seth Cluett: I tend to think photographically, even when I’m working with video or music. I like holding something still and seeing what happens when you move things around it. This happens in photography with seeing through the lens. I’m a fairly pragmatic person, so I’d much rather have a limitation like a lens and solve the problem of what fits in the frame in order to make an image that is legible. I approach composition this way as well: I’ve been trying to find ways of holding material still to draw attention to details the way the eye moves around in order to make sense of an image. A lot of music relies on constant motion and change, which I love, but lately I’m fascinated by exploring what is available from stillness.

B: In descriptions of your early work, you mention photographing images that you found to be worth photographing and recording sounds that you found to be worth recording. What makes a sound worth recording?

SC: I can only answer for myself here, of course. I like sounds that bring the place they were recorded along with them. Sounds that have something going on that needs some decoding; sounds that require a little work on behalf of the listener are fascinating to me. I like sounds that offer a sort of everyday exoticism that can be both aesthetic and social.

B: You grew up in a rural environment Upstate and have since lived in some of the biggest cities. How do these environments and your sonic experiences of them differ?

SC: For me the biggest difference lies in the perception of speed. I tend to feel out of sync in the city; the bustle and pace moves past me like a movie. I’ve found, though, that my own pace has changed over the years; I feel like it takes me some time to adjust to the slow pace of the rural community where I was raised when I visit there. In terms of sound, the relationship between urban and rural is very different. I think there is a misconception that the country is quieter than the city – I just don’t think that’s so. When I listen to a city like New York, I hear a very constant baseline murmur, a steady state that ebbs and flows. Sure, there may be more abrupt and jarring loud sounds in the city, but in a way the shape of listening is the same in both environs. In a rural space, the background is quieter, but that heightens the contrast with foreground sounds. I think for many people this is a much harder thing to acclimate to. I grew up with it, so it feels more like home to have a less mechanical sound and a higher contrast between background and foreground.

B: At what point does collected, extra-musical sound become music?

SC: At the point that the listener starts thinking about it as music.

B: I’ve heard you say that you are interested in teaching sound to young students…

SC: I am, though young people are a subset of something larger I’m interested in. I like developing sound-making pieces for people who have no training. I guess I could have said ‘musical training’ just now, but I think that ’sound-making’ is more appropriately broad and perhaps not so coded and weighed down. I’ve developed a number of pieces for paper and stones, cans of compressed air, and the sound of drawing basic shapes. These pieces are intended to engage people in constructing very complex soundscapes without ever feeling as though they need a special skill set or vocabulary to do so. This works well with groups of any age because they are immediately successful, they have fun, and they get something rewarding to listen to. I hope when I work with members of the audience at Roulette on Sunday that a similar kind of thing happens.

B: You’ve expressed an interest in exploring the details around the “boundaries between urban and rural, private and public experience.” Are you talking about sonic details, or is your sound work somehow an exploration of social and other details beyond what’s merely heard?

SC: For me, scoring sound or making an installation is very much about an exploration of social workings. The problem I am interested in is precisely that we often ‘merely hear’ instead of attentively listen. There are patterns to social behavior, ways of functioning within society, that art and music are capable of mirroring, exploring, exposing, and critiquing. I’m interested in the patterns of commuting and the interactions between members of communities. I’ve been making scores for ensembles and installations meant to be engaged by the public that try to explore these patterns at work. Traditional chamber music sometimes appears as a public display of the intimate interactions between a group of musicians who have a bond, a social contract that must move in sync with the score. That is just one, particular, centuries-old conception the aesthetic potential for a particular type of action between people. Seeing neighbors you know at the farmers market or the nod you give each morning to the subway booth attendant are very real parts of human interaction. I’m trying to see what kind of chamber music comes out of these more irregular, cyclic, routined human interactions that haven’t yet become intimate, but could.

B: How did Okkyung Lee become a part of this weekend’s performance?

SC: A year and a half ago, Okkyung invited me to improvise with her at Roulette for a benefit, along with Brian Chase, Shoko Nagai, Miya Misoaka, and Marina Rosenfeld. We had seen each other perform before, but this was our first time playing together. I’ve been working on scored works for improvisors for a while and I’m in a cycle of solo works now with other pieces for Boston-based vocalist Liz Tonne, Welsh Harpist Rhodri Davies, the German-based American guitarist Seth Josel, and the trombonist Tucker Dulin. Okkyung and I started talking about collaborating almost immediately after the first Roulette gig and have had this Sunday’s piece in the works ever since.

B: What role does memory play in your work?

SC: I’m interested in the oscillation between memory and (in)attention. Put simply, if one doesn’t attend to the sounds of a piece for a while and then begins attending because something has drawn them back in, how can I draw attention to those moments of connection? When these moments become clearly defined they become something like objects of memory. When you think about it, memory isn’t a continuum, it’s a string of assembled of moments. I’ve been trying to think about how to explore this in my work by making a rich sound set that doesn’t require constant attention. On top of this I construct levels of events to draw the listener back in to a place of awareness. I’m not sure yet whether its working… sometimes people fall asleep calmly and sometimes people say that it feels surreal.

B: Tell us about Three Forms of Forgetting and the three works or movements that are a part of this performance.

SC: There will be three pieces presented on Sunday evening. The event will start with an untitled piece for paper and stones to be performed by the audience. The second is a piece called ‘overflow and drift’ written for Okkyung Lee that includes a tape part consisting of sine-wave oscillators and very slowly modulating unison reed drones. I will end the evening with a long-form solo performance called ‘forms of forgetting.’ All three pieces are ‘forms of forgetting’ of one kind or another, each began as a year’s worth of long-form (45-minute or more) performances. I approached these performances as experiments to explore the role of sound memory and attention in live performance work. The first two pieces focus on details that came out of this work, and the eponymously titled solo piece has some elements that came out of previous work and some that are specific to the acoustics and the environment of the specific venue in which it will be performed. I’m hoping that the concert can be a slow, quiet evening out.

This morning, WNET.org opened NASDAQ when Stephen Segaller and Alison Stewart of Need to Know rang the opening bell.

Fun City Revisited: The Lindsay Years, a new special from WNET.ORG, looks at John Lindsay’s turbulent two terms as New York mayor from 1966 – 1973. It also looks at his unsuccessful bid for President during the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination.

THIRTEEN spoke with executive producer Tom Casciato.

THIRTEEN: Why a film about John Lindsay right now?

Tom Casciato: As a filmmaker I can say that this is the perfect time for a documentary about Lindsay because on the one hand his mayoral era (1966-73) was long enough ago that we could go for a real historical feel for the film, with extraordinary film footage of Lindsay and generous doses of the great music of that era, but on the other hand, his era is recent enough that the young people who worked for and with him are still in their prime, and able to give great firsthand accounts of their memories of the Lindsay years. A couple of notable folks giving testimony in the film are Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of Dreamworks, was a teenaged volunteer for Lindsay in the ’60s (he gave us an extraordinary photo of himself with the mayor, which we use in the film), and Eleanor Holmes Norton, who currently repreesents Washington, DC in Congress, but was NYC’s human rights commissioner during the latter part of the Lindsay years. (We use a great old still photo of her, too, but I’m not going to tell you about it because I don’t want to give away one of the best lines in the film.)

13: The program describes the “Fun City” moniker as true for some and ironic for others. What does the term mean, or what did it mean for different people?

TC: During the transit strike that greeted him on his first day as mayor — and pretty much crippled the city’s functioning, Lindsay remarked that despite it all, New York was still a “fun city.” The press siezed on the term, but often used it ironically because, as our film shows, these were particularly turbulent times, and a lot of New Yorkers weren’t having a lot of fun.

13: The program touches briefly upon the idea that the seeds of the Lindsay years’ turmoil had been sown during the Wagner administration, when city planners aggressively encouraged white flight and the destruction of middle class and minority neighborhoods. Do you think Lindsay’s critics judge his failures too harshly in light of the economic forces set in motion prior to his inauguration?

TC: FUN CITY REVISITED is decidedly not an attempt to judge either Lindsay or his critics, harshly or otherwise. Rather it is a film that seeks to evoke an extraordinary time and place, both for those older folks who remember it, for whom Lindsay and the passion he evoked is still very much alive, and for those younger ones for whom Lindsay is a figure out of an American past they never knew, as distant as FDR or Ulysses S. Grant.

13: Many of John Lindsay’s young aides joined the administration as progressive idealists intent on improving the lives of New Yorkers across the social and economic spectrum, and yet their administration’s time in City Hall is remembered mostly as a failure. What regrets, if any, did the former aides you interviewed for the film express?

TC: These people don’t strike me as regretful. Rather, they are still passionate believers in the ideals Lindsay represented. He is the one who brought them into politics, and the ones I talked to are carrying the same torch they carried back in the day.

13: What do you think John Lindsay would think of NYC today?

TC: I have no way of knowing, but from what I know of him I think he’d take a look at it and try and figure out how to make it better.

13: There’s been a huge response to “Share Your Story” on the program’s website. Why do you think people feel so strongly about this time in NYC history?

TC: The best answer to that question is found, I think, by watching the film.

Fun City Revisited: The Lindsay Years, airs Thursday, May 6 at 8:00 p.m. on THIRTEEN and Wednesday, May 12 at 10p.m. on WLIW21.