Biography

My Profile

Michael Rabiger

Chicago

Writer, Filmmaker

Recent Magazine Article Entries: 

"Pandora's Dox: Opening the Doors to What It Means to Be Human " 8/14/2007

Tags: biographical documentaries  

Contact Information

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Supplementary Information

Title/Occupation:  Director 

Gender: Male

Race: Caucasian/White

Citizenship: UK and US dual citizen

Languages Spoken: English, some French

Biography: I grew up in England, my father a film make-up man. I was a bad match for formal education and did well only in what I could identify with (which wasn't much, at the time). I always liked making things, so went into the film industry which was a home for misfits. In England I worked seven years in feature studios as an assistant picture and sound editor, edited documentaries for a variety of producing organizations, then directed 21 films during 5 years for the BBC. A lot of them were oral history--I was one of three people who founded the first TV oral history series at the BBC. My leftish choice of subjects seems to have put me under suspicion at a time of management paranoia, and I was told they "had no more work for me." Years later I learned that the BBC had an MI5 officer permanently housed in an unmarked office whose job was to weed out unreliable elements. Maybe I was one. Certainly I could find no more work. Moving to Chicago (temporarily, as I thought) I taught fiction and documentary filmmaking at Columbia College for 30 years and for a period chaired the department, which rose from 60 to 2,000 students during that time. We were able to construct an education founded on projects and doing--and I was able to fashion the kind of education I would have liked myself. I founded a documentary center, and wrote three filmmaking books: "Developing Story Ideas," "Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics", and "Directing the Documentary." The last is in ten languages. I taught many workshops in many countries. For an essay on how documentary has changed, and how teaching it has changed me, see "Pandora's Box: Opening Doors to What it Means to be Human" on this website. I'm now retired and fully occupied producing new editions of my books and working on a biography of the English novelist Thomas Hardy. I still like making things.