Producer brings know-how to doc class

By Rachel Cook
J-School Web Reporter

photo by Lizz Rauf

Gita Saedi, who has worked on PBS documentaries, is helping teach the student documentary class this spring.

The Journalism School's documentary production class this spring is welcoming first-time professor Gita Saedi, a producer who has received national attention for her work in documentary films.

"I am thrilled," Professor Denise Dowling said. "I think that she brings that true film making background to the student."

The class is Saedi's first experience teaching at a university and she is excited to see what will happen.

"I'm looking forward to the successes we are going to have," Saedi said. Saedi is co-teaching the senior documentary course with Dowling and said she hopes to bring her experience with production and documentaries to the students.

Saedi graduated from the University of Illinois in 1991 with degrees in communications and cinema studies. She worked on long-form documentaries in Ireland before moving to New York to work for CBS.

After CBS, Saedi worked for PBS with Kartemquin Films, which she describes as "a cool, like, film commune in Chicago", and Steve James, who had directed the acclaimed documentary "Hoop Dreams." Saedi began working with Kartemquin as series producer on the $2.7 million "The New Americans" documentary, which followed the journeys of several families' immigration to the U.S. over seven to eight years.

"We sort of coined it the 'Hoop Dreams for Immigrants'," she said.

Saedi continued to work on "The New Americans" after she moved to Missoula with her husband Jason four years ago. She also worked editing video for labor unions, community groups and broadcasts.

While she has been a guest speaker and led workshops, Saedi said this is her first time stepping back into the classroom since her college days.

While she was a bit nervous to begin teaching, she said, she enjoys the class's seminar format. She looks forward to teaching the class of 18 radio and broadcast students what they will do in the field.

"It's wonderful," Travis Morss, a senior in radio-television production, said of Saedi’s teaching. "Just knowing that she has been really successful in documentary film...knowing I will get some of her knowledge."

The class has been busy brainstorming ideas for the subject of the documentary, which will focus on Montana teens. "A documentary film is such a group effort," Saedi said.

Long-form documentary is so exciting, she said, because you can start out with an idea and then realize you are on a totally different path.

"You hope it's a good path," Saedi said. "You don't want to look back and say, 'Ow, that would have been a good path!'"

In addition to teaching, Saedi is also working with Professor Clem Work, who is on sabbatical this spring, on a documentary of the sedition laws in Montana in conjunction with Work's book, "Darkest Before Dawn: Sedition and Free Speech in the American West."

Saedi said she wants to encourage students to get out and work after college. Students don't have to start out on big, grandiose projects, she said.

"I think the first thing I did was about noses," she said.

Students will do well if they work hard and overcome their fear of taking those first steps , she said: "The world isn't so scary."

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