Demystifying Media at the University of Oregon

#44 Guest Lecture: A Masterclass in Documentary with Jake Swantko

Episode Summary

Jake Swantko is the director of photography and documentary producer behind the much acclaimed film Icarus, which won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Orwell Award for revealing “the truth at a time when the truth is no longer a commodity.”

Episode Notes

About our guest:

Jake Swantko has worked on a number of films, shooting for the Associated Press, ESPN, HBO, National Geographic, PBS Frontline, Time Magazine, Passion Pictures, and Nike. He is a 2011 graduate of the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.

His new film, The Dissident, about slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi, premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2020. In this talk, Swantko delivers a masterclass on documentary storytelling. Audience questions have been cut from the Q&A portion of Jake's lecture, but his responses to those questions are included in this recording.As director of photography, he has shown three films at Sundance: Entrapped (2016), Icarus (2017), and The Dissident (2020), which explored the story of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Hear more from Jake:
Watch this lecture on YouTube
Video interview with Jake in the studio
Listen to our interview with Jake on the Demystifying Media podcast

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