This episode is about the state of giftedness in today’s kids, as seen through the lens of independent filmmaker Marc Smolowitz. Marc runs an award-winning,San Francisco-based production company called 13th Gen, and one of his newest projects is a film currently in production called The G Word, a documentary exploring where gifted individuals fit in in today’s society.
Defying popular myths that assume gifted people are wealthy, white, and will do fine on their own, The G Word reveals the economic, cultural and gender diversity of the gifted at every stage of life, the educational challenges, social isolation, emotional sensitivities and physical threats faced by many of them in our schools and society at large and the search for solutions. In our conversation, Marc takes us behind the scenes of his film and shares his thoughts on giftedness as it relates to 2e, equity, social justice, and more.
About Marc: 13TH GEN is the San Francisco-based company of multi-award winning independent filmmaker Marc Smolowitz. Founded in 2009, the company continues to advance a career-long focus for Smolowitz on powerful social issue films and filmmaking working across all genres.
Notably, Smolowitz is a director, producer and executive producer who has been significantly involved in 50+ successful independent films. The combined footprint of his works has touched 200+ film festivals and markets on 5 continents, yielding substantial worldwide sales to theatrical, television and VOD outlets, notable box office receipts, and numerous awards and nominations. His long list of credits includes films that have screened at top-tier festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, AFI Docs, IDFA, DOC NYC, CPH: DOX, Tokyo, Melbourne, Vienna, Krakow, Jerusalem, among others. In 2016, he received one of the prestigious IFP Fellowships to attend the Cannes Film Festival’s Producers Network and Marche du Film marking him as one of USA’s most influential independent producers.
THINGS YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
- The story behind the making of the upcoming documentary The G Word
- How the themes of social justice and education equity play into the documentary
- What Marc means by the question the documentary is posing: Who gets to be gifted in America and why?
- How learning differences and 2e fits into the overall narrative arc of the film
- What Marc is hoping the film does in the world
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- The G Word on Twitter (NAGC)
- Andrew Solomon (Far From the Tree)
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