Kirby Dick

Kirby Dick
Kirby Dick at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival
Born	(1952-08-23) August 23, 1952 Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.[1]
Occupation	Director, producer, screenwriter, editor
Years active	1981–present
Spouse(s)	Rita Valencia (1985-present)
Website
Official website

Kirby Bryan Dick (born August 23, 1952)^[2] is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor. He is best known for directing documentary films. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature for directing Twist of Faith (2005) and The Invisible War (2012).^[3][4][5] He has also received numerous awards from film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.

Life and career

Dick was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He studied at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, California Institute of the Arts, and the American Film Institute.^[6] His first documentary feature, Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate (1986), enjoyed a successful festival run, and Dick spent the following decade pursuing a variety of projects before completing Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997). Sick examined the life of performance artist Bob Flanagan, who utilized sadomasochism as a therapeutic device to help cope with cystic fibrosis. The film was an international festival hit, winning a Special Jury Prize at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival^[6] and helping to establish Dick's position in the world of independent filmmaking.

His next film, Chain Camera (2001), was made entirely with footage shot on consumer digital video cameras by students at John Marshall High School, located near Dick's home in Los Angeles. The film premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Dick followed up this project with Derrida (2002), which he co-directed with Amy Ziering. The film explores the life and work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida while questioning the limitations of biography. It won the Golden Gate Award at the 2002 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Dick's next project, Twist of Faith (2005), followed a man who decides to speak out about his childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest. Released during the midst of the Catholic sex abuse scandal, the film garnered widespread attention and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.^[3][4]

Twist of Faith marked the beginning of a politicization of Dick's work, as his subsequent films would similarly expose the hypocrisy of powerful organizations. This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006) investigated the Motion Picture Association of America and its secretive ratings board. The film argues that the MPAA serves the interests of the major Hollywood studios at the expense of independent filmmakers and also that the organization often turns a blind eye to violence while working to effectively censor sexual content, especially when it involves homosexuality or female sexual empowerment. Dick's 2009 film, Outrage, discusses politicians, predominantly Republican, who vote against gay rights – some of whom, Dick alleges, are themselves closeted gays. The film also criticizes the mainstream media's reluctance to report on this subject. The film received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.

In 2012, Dick directed The Invisible War, which examined the epidemic of rape in the U.S. military. The film won the Audience Award for Best U.S. Documentary at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was heralded for exposing a culture of sexual abuse at Marine Barracks Washington.^[7] Following the film's release, the military introduced a series of reforms that responded to many of the film's critiques.^[8]

Themes

Dick's work often focuses on issues of secrecy, hypocrisy, and human sexuality. Many of his films explore subjects and issues that have traditionally been taboo, such as homosexuality, sadomasochism, and sexual abuse. Ryan Stewart of Cinematical notes that, "Kirby Dick has been compared to photographer Diane Arbus in the way he prefers to open the camera lens to the pained, the freakish and the inexplicable that exists on the margins of everyday life."^[9]

Aesthetically, Dick often employs intricately edited montages that blend together television news clips, archival footage, music videos, documentary interviews, and other sources. Beginning with This Film Is Not Yet Rated, he has also pioneered applying the "fair use" doctrine to appropriate copyrighted footage without the need to obtain licenses or compensate rights holders.^[10]

Dick often employs a cinéma vérité style of filmmaking. He has said that he prefers to work this way because it allows for a more complex relationship with his subjects.^[11] In many cases, Dick has also encouraged his subjects to record their own footage, which is then incorporated into the finished film.

His later works have often involved investigations into powerful organizations, such as the Catholic Church or the United States military. Critics have increasingly remarked on the impact of his films as investigative journalism,^[12][13] with The New York Times's A. O. Scott saying that, "Kirby Dick has become one of the indispensable muckrakers of American cinema, zeroing in on frequently painful stories about how power functions in the absence or failure of accountability."^[14]

Filmography

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kirby Dick.

• Official Website
• Dick's bio on the Derrida page
• Kirby Dick at the Internet Movie Database
• Kirby Dick's filmography at his production company's website Chain Camera Pictures
• Interview with Kirby Dick at SuicideGirls.com
• Interview regarding BBC Four's Storyville documentary Chain Camera