Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard

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Investigating with a Camera

Errol Morris

Academy Award-winning filmmaker and essayist

November 29, 2011, 5:00pm-7:00pm
Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street

Abstract

In this talk, Morris will reflect on his experiences researching and producing four of his most celebrated films — "The Thin Blue Line", on a Texas murder case; "Mr. Death", on capital punishment and Holocaust denial; "The Fog of War", on Robert McNamara and the Vietnam War; and "Standard Operating Procedure", on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Morris' groundbreaking work tackles questions of truth, objectivity, and the role of expert knowledge in modern society. His documentaries are renowned for their innovative use of interviews and archival material. Video of this lecture is located here.

Commentator

Elaine Scarry

Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value, Harvard University Department of English

Moderated by

Sheila Jasanoff

Harvard Kennedy School

About the speaker

Errol Morris is a filmmaker and essayist. He has been listed as one of the top ten film directors in the world by The Guardian. Among his many awards, including five fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship, Morris received the 2003 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for “The Fog of War.” His ninth feature-length documentary film, “Tabloid,” debuted in 2010. He is currently a regular contributor to the opinion pages of the New York Times through his blog, Zoom, and his first book of essays, Believing is Seeing, was published in 2011 by Penguin Press.

Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Graduate School of Design.

Video

The video of this talk has been made available on YouTube thanks to the Harvard Graduate School of Design.