Filmmaker, WFU professor revive institute from Florida

As a documentary filmmaker, Sandra Dickson’s travels have taken her to Cuba, the Czech Republic and Panama.

She’s still spending a lot of time on the road, but she is leaving her camera behind.

Dickson is on the hunt for students interested in enrolling in the new documentary-film program at Wake Forest University.

The graduate program will offer students the chance to earn a master of arts degree or a master of fine arts degree in documentary production. This will be the first MFA program at Wake Forest.

Dickson and Mary Dalton, an associate professor of communications at Wake Forest, will serve as co-directors of the program, which is accepting applications for fall 2010.

“We are looking for students who are intellectually curious,“ Dalton said. “And we want people who are driven to tell stories, and stories that matter.“

The Wake Forest program will be similar to another documentary program that Dickson helped lead at the University of Florida. That program, the Documentary Institute, started in 1998 and ended last spring because of state budget cutbacks.

Many of her former students at Florida went on to work in production houses and at such places as the National Geographic Channel.

Dickson is familiar with Wake Forest. Her husband, Pat Dickson, is an associate professor in the schools of business. Her desire to live in the same city as him is one reason why Dickson began looking into moving the documentary program to Wake Forest.

The budget cuts in Florida and a burgeoning relationship with Dalton, whom she met at a film festival, also led Dickson to believe that the timing was right to move the program.

“It was a big dream,“ said Dalton, who has also made several documentaries. “But we decided it was a good one and worth pursuing.“

Before approaching Wake Forest’s administration about their idea, Dickson and Dalton met with faculty members from various departments.

“We didn’t want to do it if the faculty felt imposed upon,“ Dickson said. “We spent all of last fall talking to them.“

Two of Dickson’s colleagues from Florida - Cindy Hill and Cara Pilson - will join her on the Wake faculty. The curriculum will include courses on production, cinematography, theory, the history of documentaries and narrative storytelling.

Dickson’s background includes documentaries that have dealt with such issues as the death penalty, the Holocaust and the civil-rights movement.

Giving Up the Canal, a documentary about the Panama Canal, aired nationally on PBS in 1990. PBS also broadcast Deciding Who Dies, a 1997 documentary about the death penalty.

Her latest documentary, which is still in production, is about Petr Ginz, a young Czechoslovakian boy who died in Auschwitz.

Between teaching classes, Dickson and the rest of the faculty in the documentary program will collaborate on films.

Dickson said she hopes to interact with the Winston-Salem film community, including film students at UNC School of the Arts.

One example of that will be on Nov 4, when Peter Gilbert comes to Wake Forest for a free public screening of his new documentary, At the Death House Door. The documentary follows a man who served as the “death house” chaplain at a prison in Texas for 15 years. Gilbert is best known as one of the creators of Hoop Dreams, an award-winning documentary.

Gilbert will be talking with students throughout the day about his work.

“We are hoping that this will be an ongoing sort of thing,“ Dickson said of the public screenings.

lo’donnell@wsjournal.com.