Archive Fever: Marion Stokes' 24-Hour News Cycle

Filmmaker Matt Wolf on Marion Stokes and her massive recording project...

By LARB Radio HourDecember 6, 2019

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Filmmaker Matt Wolf joins co-hosts Kate and Medaya to discuss his new documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project. Marion Stokes was a former librarian, political activist, and early Apple investor who began recording the 24/7 news cycle in 1979 and continued into the early years of this decade, producing the largest archive of recorded television material. Matt discusses the potential of this archive, Marion’s vision, portraying problematic characters, and how the news reconfigures history.

Also, Yogita Goyal, author of Runaway Genres: The Global Afterlives of Slavery, returns to recommend German Author Jenny Erpenbeck's 2015 novel Go, Went, Gone about a retired professor and his relationship with African Refugees staging a protest in Berlin.

Image credit: Marion Stokes in Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, directed by Matt Wolf. Photo credit: Eileen Emond. Courtesy of Zeitgeist Films in Association with Kino Lorber