Alumni Profiles
July 8, 2010
STPEC Alum Wins Emmy for Documentary Work
When the Emmy Awards were presented this year at the New York City branch of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Sarah Foudy ’96 (STPEC/comparative literature) was on the receiving end, twice. Foudy is a producer/editor for the Spanish-language documentary series Nueva York, which covers Latino cultures in New York and airs biweekly on public television CUNY-TV. Nueva York won an Emmy for Best Magazine Program for the second consecutive year. In addition, a segment Foudy produced and edited received an Emmy in the Politics/Feature Segment category. About a first-time voter from the Dominican Republic, the film described the woman’s seven-year journey to U.S. citizenship and her participation in the 2008 presidential election.
“I work with a handful of really talented producers/editors from Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia and Spain, making the show from scratch,” says Foudy, whose team also won an Emmy in 2009 for a compilation episode. “We find our own stories, figure out production plans, collaborate to crew for each other, and generally edit our own work. It’s ridiculously fun…being out in the field shooting camera, behind a desk editing segments, on the phone to open doors. And because everything is in Spanish, things stay more challenging because I really have to concentrate on what’s being said!”
Foudy says her job is a lot like playing—except for the administrative parts. “I’m the team’s production coordinator for the second year running—kind of equivalent to being a department chair in academia. That part can be dull and boring, but we operate collectively and make decisions by consensus as much as possible—almost as much as my three years of working at the People’s Market at UMass Amherst.” (N.B. Foudy painted the sign that still hangs above the entrance.)
Fieldwork is definitely Foudy’s favorite aspect. “Strangers become friends. They make me laugh and cry as they tell their stories. I get to be out on the street, at great concerts late at night; I meet dignitaries and literary greats visiting New York. I learn about all sorts of things. It’s an amazing privilege to give voice to other people’s stories. And every segment, every film is a new opportunity to do better than the one before.”
In addition, Foudy also works freelance, sometimes paid, sometimes not. Right now she’s finishing a film, Single Mother, about unwed mothers in Morocco. “I was there for a month filming. I’ve received some funding, and although editing in Arabic and French has made production slow, I’m almost at the finish line,” Foudy notes.
Her career can be traced back to a single class at UMass Amherst. “I took a class with Jennifer Stone on Neorealist Italian film and quickly realized that I would never pass it by using words on paper,” Foudy recalls. “Instead I opted to produce/direct a film enacting post-Freudian feminist theory. I filmed it at Professor Sara Lennox’s house—she’s the director of the STPEC program—and I got an A.”
After graduation Foudy went to work for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) as a researcher and organizer, helping low-wage healthcare workers in rural Pennsylvania. “I told the president of the union that I had experience directing and film editing and asked if I could have time and resources to produce, direct and edit a documentary about the union—and he agreed,” Foudy reminisces. “I had no idea what I was doing—I had so little experience, but I figured it out.”
After a few more years of union organizing, Foudy took some time off and went to Mexico, learning Spanish and figuring out next steps. “I decided to go to film school at City College of New York—at the time it was the only public MFA program in the US—a scrappy, upstart, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps program with an incredibly talented mix of filmmakers from around the world. Actually, I feel that UMass is a similar kind of school. The education is as good as Harvard’s as long as you put in the elbow grease”
In fact, Foudy says her success today is due to the foundation and the mentoring she got at UMass. “As a double major in STPEC and comp lit, I found very nurturing faculty and grad students who believed in me and encouraged me. I learned to be academically disciplined, to work hard, to think critically. I loved being there. The place gets small fast—you find your own community. Studying social sciences with arts and literature has served me well in documentary filmmaking. And with STPEC in my heart, I always look for projects that are politically meaningful to me.”
Still, Foudy, who describes herself as a workaholic, is uncomfortable with the term “success.” Despite the Emmy awards, she says, “I have a long way to go before I apply that word to myself. Life is a path, it’s about doing good work, feeling like its done with integrity. I work hard, but I feel that having luck and guts has played a big role in where I’m at today.”
For those who are interested in a similar career, Foudy offers advice. “Get the broadest, best liberal arts education you can. The depth and breadth of your knowledge about life and politics and everything else imaginable will make you better at documentary storytelling because it’s so inherently interdisciplinary and subjective. You need to be able to write, research, listen and think critically. Also, film stuff. Find some editing software. Soon you’ll have a reel and people will believe you know what you’re doing—even before you believe it yourself. Then you’ll have to work like hell to make it real!”
