Robert Greene is a professor at the University of Missouri's Journalism School, where he runs the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism. But he's better known as a filmmaker whose documentaries are anything but “traditional” journalism. These include two that we talk about in this podcast, Procession, about the pedophilia scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, which was shortlisted for the documentary Oscar in 2021, and the award-winning Bisbee ‘17, about a mass deportation of immigrants that took place in the American Southwest about a century ago. We also discuss his influences, his filmmaking philosophy, and some of his favorite documentaries.

Robert’s other films include Kate Plays Christine and Actress. More about Robert here.

Films mentioned in this episode:

Procession (2020), Dir. Robert Greene

Spotlight (2015), Dir. Tom McCarthy

Bisbee ‘17 (2018), Dir. Robert Greene

Written On The Wind (1956), Dir. Douglas Sirk

Imitation of Life (1959), Dir. Douglas Sirk

Racetrack (1985), Dir. Frederick Wiseman 

Strong Island (2017), Dir. Yance Ford 

Cameraperson (2016), Dir. Kirsten Johnson

Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018), RaMell Ross

Time (2020), Garrett Bradley

 Primary (1960), Dir. Robert Drew

Gimme Shelter (1970), Albert and David Maysles

Other Mentions:

Eric Hynes

Museum of the Moving Image

Peter Watkins

Chantal Ackerman

Robert Flaherty

Michael Moore

Direct Cinema movement

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Special thanks for helping make this series happen: Sara Archambault, Florence Barrau-Adams, Jon Berman, Ben Cuomo (music), Jax Deluca, Pallavi Deshpande, Nancy Gibbs, Kathleen Hughes, Caroline Kracunas, Laura Manley, Alexis Pancrazi, Liz Schwartz, Jeff Seelbach, Lindsay Underwood (logo/graphics)

This episode was supported by a fellowship at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.