Nick Doob

Street Music

Nick Doob

Brother Blue

A collection of performances by street musicians across the country, from New York to San Francisco, New Orleans to Chicago, the film presents 19 musicians in seven cities, and was one of Doob's first feature-length films. Among the singers, guitarists, drummers, dancers, and other artists, Doob includes street performance legends such as Brother Blue, Gene Palma, Bongo Joe, the Automatic Human Jukebox, and bluesman Jimmy Davis. The film captures a cross-section of Americans filled with raw talent, showmanship, and hustle, and presents a time capsule of the fashion, architecture, and culture of the 1970s. (Yale Film Archive)

42nd St Movie

Nick Doob

Doob’s first longer film begins with a shot of the sun setting over the Hudson River in New York City, and goes on to examine the nighttime street life found in the block of 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. As Doob describes it, “That block was fairly notorious at that time, with pornographic bookstores and theaters, peep-shows, and prostitution. It was also a kind of magnet for exotic personalities, and a visually interesting location.” The film showed at many film festivals, won a prize at the West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, and was well reviewed in the New York Times. After making this film, and after the experience of taking Murray Lerner’s filmmaking class at Yale, Doob worked as Lerner’s cinematographer on a number of films, including his 1979 Academy Award-winning documentary FROM MAO TO MOZART. (Yale Film Archive)

Costumed Dancer

Nick Doob

As a senior at Yale College in 1968, Doob was invited to participate in the Scholars of the House Program, a senior honors program that required students to create, in lieu of regular classes, “a finished essay or project which must justify by its scope and quality the freedom which has been granted.” Rather than pursue a more traditional written work, Doob initially chose to make a film, an unorthodox approach that had not been previously attempted. In the end, Doob chose to make two films to fulfill the requirement, beginning with COSTUMED DANCER. The film is a progression of images of a dancer, shot and printed on high contrast stock, and stacked in the printer in a number of layers so as to create multiple images of the dancer, moving from single image to multiple image in a kind of phasing. It is cut to music composed by Doob’s friend David Sewall, who was the subject of one of Doob’s later films, LONDON SONGS (1972). (Yale Film Archive)

A Boy's Life

Nick Doob, Rory Kennedy

Robert Oliver, Benji Oliver

Follows a Mississippi family's attempts to deal with an increasingly violent and erratic child.

Carmen & Geoffrey

Nick Doob, Linda Atkinson,

Carmen De Lavallade, Geoffrey Holder

This intimate documentary follows careers of two remarkable personalities: Carmen de Lavallade, a dynamic dancer and choreographer from California who moved to New York with Alvin Ailey and began a legacy of modern dance in America, and her husband Geoffrey Holder, a Trinidad-born choreographer, set and costume designer, painter and man about town with productions such as The Wiz. Features interviews and performance footage of friends and colleagues: dancers Judith Jamison, Gus Solomons, Jr., Dudley Williams, Ulysses Dove and Alvin Ailey.

Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life & Times of Katrina Gilbert

Nick Doob, Shari Cookson

Katrina Gilbert

This is the story of a year in the life of one mother whose daily struggles illuminate the challenges faced by more than 42 million American women and the 28 million children who depend on them.

Down from the Mountain

Nick Doob, D. A. Pennebaker

Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris

On May 24, 2000, the historic Ryman Auditorium was booked to offer Nashvillians an evening of sublime beauty. Label executives and soundtrack producers so loved the music of O Brother, Where Art Thou? that they brought it to life as a benefit concert for the Country Music Hall of Fame. Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen loved it so much that they hired famed documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker to record the show for posterity. The concert that unfolded that night was one of the greatest musical moments in the annals of Music City. Performers: John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Chris Thomas King, The Cox Family, Fairfield Four, Union Station, Colin Linden, The Nashville Bluegrass Band, The Peasall Sisters, Ralph Stanley, David Rawlings, The Whites.

Requiem for the Dead: American Spring 2014

Nick Doob, Shari Cookson

From directors Nick Doob and Shari Cookson, "Requiem for the Dead" is made entirely from found footage, including social media posts, 9-1-1 calls, news stories and police files. The film tells the stories of those who have been killed by gunfire, whether from accidental violence, random shootings, family disputes or suicide. Hear those stories of those who have died, which is only a fraction of the 32,000 people killed in America each year, 88 per day, from gun violence.

Al Franken - God Spoke

Nick Doob, Chris Hegedus

Al Franken

Join filmmaking duo Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob as their cameras follow Franken to book signings, campaign rallies and the launch of Air America Radio, documenting his transformation from irreverent funnyman to political pundit.

Set-Up

Nick Doob

A film about the life of African American Donald Horner from New Haven, Connecticut, detailing his views on society, his experience, of his time in jail, and his growing relationship with the filmmaker. - Revitalizing History: Recognizing the Struggles, Lives, and Achievements of African American and Women Art Educators

The Alzheimer’s Project: The Memory Loss Tapes

Nick Doob, Shari Cookson

While there is hope for the future as science gains momentum, millions of Americans are currently affected by the painful and deadly consequences of Alzheimer's. This documentary profiles seven people living with the disease, each in an advancing state of dementia, from its earliest detectable changes through death.

Plastic Saints

Nick Doob

"While still a student at Yale University, Nick Doob made a series of short works that launched his career in film. One was Plastic Saints, in which Doob took black-and-white footage of a demonstration in Washington DC that he and four fellow students attended, and intercut it with color paint-on-film loops, all set to a recording of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”" - Moving Image Archiving News