How to Tell Visual Stories Through Video

Bill Gentile is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker teaching at American University in Washington, DC. His career spans four decades, five continents and nearly every facet of journalism and mass communication, most especially visual communication, or visual storytelling. He is the founder and director of American University's Backpack Journalism Project. He is a pioneer of “backpack video journalism” and today he is one of the craft’s most noted practitioners. He is the author of the highly acclaimed “Essential Video Journalism Field Manual.” He engineered the School of Communication’s 2015 partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and is the driving force behind that initiative.

Gentile’s recent work includes “When the Forest Weeps,” a short film that examines how Ecuador’s Kichwa Indians struggle as their deep spiritual relationship with the Amazonian rain forest diminishes in a clash with the forces of so-called modernity. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgqh6PGw1lg) His work also includes the 2015 documentary, “Afghan Dreams,” which he shot, produced and wrote, about four Afghan law students – all female – who defy all odds to compete in the world’s most important competition of international commercial law. In 2013, he shot, produced, wrote and narrated a three-part film series on religion and gangs in Guatemala. The three films, “I. The Gangs,” “II. The Researcher,” and “III. The Pastor,” are viewable on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu2gRjMyacc, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3wnOfHQemY, and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl7fZnPQjR0&feature=em-upload_owner, respectively.