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The Documentary Life: Listener Stories Special contributor, Joseph Erikson Joseph Erikson didn't grow up watching documentaries. Raised in a working-class family, nonfiction filmmaking simply wasn't part of his world. That changed in a community college Film 101 class when he watched Roger & Me. For the first time, he saw people who looked and lived like the people he knew represented on screen. "It changed the way I looked at the camera." That moment planted a seed that would eventually lead...

The Documentary Life: Listener Stories Special contributor, Jafar Muhammad There wasn't a single moment when documentary filmmaking entered Jafar Muhammad's life. Looking back, the Bangladeshi filmmaker sees something quieter unfolding over many years. Long before he ever picked up a camera, he was an avid reader, devouring Bengali, European, and Russian literature. The poetry of Jibanananda Das left a particularly lasting impression, and by the age of fourteen he had already begun writing...

The Documentary Life: Listener Stories Special contributor, Maris Lidaka Maris Lidaka always imagined himself becoming a narrative filmmaker. Documentary storytelling entered his life almost by accident. Fresh out of college, he was working at a home inspection company when a conversation changed the course of his career. The company's accountant happened to be married to cinematographer Peter Gilbert, whose work on Hoop Dreams helped redefine modern documentary filmmaking. "It was the first...