Marc Levitt

filmmaker, educator, author, storyteller, audio artist, speaker

Author: admin (page 1 of 2)

Preparing for a visit from Marc Levitt

September 20, 2018 /

The more foundational work that is done with administrators, teachers and students, the more successful my visit will be. Let everyone know way in advance that I am visiting so there are no surprises and/or resentments. Teachers need time to prepare their classes and to open up time for me in their schedules. If everyone is prepared and happy about my arrival, it will be a celebration and not a burden.

To maximize a visit from me here are a few suggestions:

  • Circulate my web site to teachers
  • Encourage teachers to write me with any questions, concerns and/or suggestions for my visit
  • Ask teachers to let their children know about my visit by talking about my work, where I’ve been, what
  • I’ve written and what I’m likely to do. The more the students are excited about my arrival the easier it will be for me to stimulate their interests
  • If possible put up posters about my visit around the school with the date of my arrival
  • Let me know if you are working with any specific writing/social studies/social skills curriculum and send of some links and/or writings about them

A short relevant story:

 

Please help me to do the same for your school!

Thanks,

Marc Levitt

Concrete Thoughts

September 19, 2018 /

Site-specific installation “Concrete Thoughts” is a poetic reflection on the concrete corridors of CCRI Warwick’s megastructure created in 2011. This piece invites viewers to pause and to consider questions which, while not having a “true” answer, are nonetheless a means to momentarily consider what is unseen in this building.

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Selection of questions (exhibited on various locations throughout this campus)

  • Do buildings have souls?
  • Where is the best place to sleep in this building?
  • What is this building’s most romantic spot?
  • Does this building cry or laugh?
  • If this building was a boy or a girl would you date it?
  • If you wanted to plot a revolution where in this building, where would you go?
  • If this building was an egg, what would come out when it hatched?
  • In this building have you ever just started to speak with a stranger?

A Holistic Approach For Cultural Change

August 31, 2018 /

Character Education For Ages 13-15

Age appropriate edition about character education, published by Rowman and Littlefield. Story-driven book about changing school culture from ‘me first’ to ‘us’ through curriculum and pedagogical change. In his book Marc addresses bullying, bystander behavior shunning, forgiveness, vengeance and what being a ‘hero’ means.

Place an order with Marc Levitt

Order on Amazon

Changing Curriculum Through Stories

August 31, 2018 /

Character Education For ages 10-12.

Age appropriate edition about character education, published by Rowman and Littlefield. Story-driven book about changing school culture from ‘me first’ to ‘us’ through curriculum and pedagogical change. In his book Marc addresses bullying, bystander behavior shunning, forgiveness, vengeance and what being a ‘hero’ means.

Place an order with Marc Levitt

Order on Amazon

Putting Everyday Life on the Page

August 31, 2018 /

Inspiring Students to Write, Grades 2-7.

This Corwin Press’ book offers a wealth of easily implemented ideas and activities to encourage a culture of writing in one’s classroom and building writing skills by mining what students already ‘know’ and have experienced.

Illustrating how teachers can use a multi- sensory approach and exercise student’s observations intelligence, the book emphasizes specific facets of the writer’s craft including, Beginnings, Sequential Thinking, Observation and Description, Characters, Settings and Endings.

Place an order with Marc Levitt

Order on Amazon

August 30, 2018

Urbanscape (2012-2015) for the University of Rhode Island’s Providence, Rhode Island’s campus. Marc co-created and hosted a public forum concerned with urban issues directed towards a general audience.

Panelists included:

  • Susan Herman – President of the ACLU and Centennial Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
  • Don Mitchell – A MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow, distinguished professor of geography in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.
  • Saskia Sassen – Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and Centennial visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Sassen coined the term global city.
  • Edward Glaeser – Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1992.
  • Barry Bluestone – Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy, founding director of the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, and the founding dean of the School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.
Watch the video-documentation recorded live during the seven evenings of Urbanscape Lecture Series.

The New England Chowda’ Hour

August 30, 2018 /

Between 1985 and 1993, Mr. Levitt was the writer/director/producer for New England’s only radio variety show; the New England Chowda’ Hour.

The Chowda’ Hour, with a cast that included up to fifteen actors and musicians, was broadcast weekly on radio stations that at various times included stations in Providence, Rhode Island, Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts and Westport, Connecticut.

The show combined satirical sketches and music and drew audiences of up to four hundred people to its tapings.

Action Speaks

Action Speaks

August 30, 2018 /

Under-appreciated Dates Than Changed America

For sixteen years, Marc was the Host,Creator and Co-Producer of Action Speaks, Under-appreciated Dates That Changed America (ActionSpeaksRadio).

Action Speaks brought scholars and practitioners from around the United States to speak together about the contemporary implications and history of lesser known dates in primarily 20th Century American History.

Action Speaks was heard at various times in its sixteen years history by over 200 radio stations. Action Speaks Panelists have included; New York Times Editor Gail Collins, Bread and Puppet Theater’s Director Peter Schuman; Author Tom Frank, Former baseball player Bill Lee, Author Marshall Berman; Performance Artist, Reverend Billy, Author Jackson Lears, Film Director Godfrey Reggio, Former Seattle Police Chief and author, Norm Stamper, Author Jane Holtz Kay, Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci and Author, Dolores Hayden.

Action Speaks won the Schwartz Prize from the Federation of State Humanities Councils for outstanding work in the public humanities.

Russel Spears, one of South County's master stone masons Photo: Mathias Oppersdorff

Stories in Stone

August 30, 2018 /

(2008)

Marc Levitt’s first documentary film, co-produced and co-directed with Ms. Lilach Dekel is a film about the Narragansett Tribal stonemasons who, over the last four hundred years, have built many stonewalls that wind picturesquely through the woods of Southern New England.

Interspersing footage that elegantly captures the beauty of the walls with interviews with tribal elders and members of two prominent Narragansett mason families, Ms. Dekel and Marc Levitt weave a story that is at once poetic and inspirational.

Stories in Stones is a story of love; for place, heritage and family and a tale that demonstrates how a craft, utilized initially at the point of European contact, has served as a strategy for resiliency and resistance.

Trailer: youtube

Stories in Stones is the first film that looks at the Narragansett wall building tradition from multiple perspectives, artistic, spiritual, multi-generational and as a story of tribal affirmation. While some would see wall building as the haphazard placement of rocks, Stories in Stone, demonstrates that the wall’s beauty is the result of a finely honed and ever evolving sculptural aesthetic. While some see the walls as ‘the only option’ for the Narragansett, Stories in Stones makes clear, that more often than not, becoming a mason is a choice, a choice that allows freedom of movement, freedom from ‘inside’ work, freedom from working for others and the freedom to join a long and illustrious line of ancestors. While many believe that ‘tradition’ among New England Tribes is long gone, Stories in Stone makes clear that wall building remains a means to assert and perpetuate Tribal identity; in the choice to be a mason, in the placement of symbols, in the use of a particular aesthetic, in the visceral relationship to stone and in one’s spiritual connection to nature. Stories in Stone elucidates the stories that lie beneath one’s initial appreciation for the stone walls of Southern New England and in doing so, illustrates how the seemingly ordinary, can be indeed be, quite extraordinary.

‘Stories in Stone’ received its television debut on April 2nd, 2008 on Channel 36, RIPBS

For information about purchasing and/or showing Stories in Stones please contact Marc Levitt.

ORDER

Woven in Time

August 30, 2018 /

The Narragansett Salt Pond Preserve (2015)

A 57-minute documentary film about a small piece of seemingly ordinary land located on the southern coast of Rhode Island.

In the 1980s, archaeologists, working for a local developer, unearthed the remains of New England’s only undisturbed Pre-Contact Period (1100-1400 AD) Native American coastal village.

Trailer:

Used for dirt biking and adjacent to a suburban housing development and shopping center, this land, on a pond where the Narragansett Tribe located their origin story, became the center of an almost thirty-year battle between the rights of property ownership and the social and cultural importance of preserving one of the most important archaeological sites on the East Coast of the United States.

Woven in Time filming was sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration and the Department of Transportation.

Co-Produced by Michael Hebert
More info: facebook.com/WovenInTimeFilm

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