One October

ONE OCTOBER is a lyrical time capsule that offers a window into the shifting heart of New York City. Filmed entirely in October of 2008, a time when gentrification is rapidly displacing the working and middle classes, Wall Street is plummeting, and Senator Obama is making his first presidential bid, the story begins with Clay Pigeon, an intrepid radio host who takes to the streets of New York City to talk to everyday citizens who are facing the uncertainty of change.

During his neighborhood rambles, Clay Pigeon meets people like Kristin, an optimistic young woman who has just arrived from the Midwest; Mark, a union construction worker still dusty from his workday and deeply in debt; Nicole, a transgender woman looking for an accepting community; and Stacie, a single mother in Harlem worried about gentrification.

Pigeon’s encounters interweave with observational passages that poignantly reveal urbanist Jane Jacobs’s idea of the “ballet of the good city sidewalk”: rollerskaters wind their way through Central Park, city dwellers seek blessings for a motley group of pets on St. Francis Day, observant Jews toss breadcrumbs into the Hudson River on Rosh Hashanah, and Muslims mark the end of their Ramadan fast with Eid al-Fitr prayers and expressions of forgiveness. Amid these celebrations of daily life we see the shifting landscape of the city: big-box stores and mega-chains rapidly replace independent businesses, giant glass buildings are erected where flea markets once stood, and luxury condos loom over small brick tenements.

Nuanced, cinematic, and often humorous, ONE OCTOBER charts the chasm between one’s desires and one’s means, explores the urgent need to conserve the old amid the glorification of the new, and affirms the notion that a varied streetscape is essential to the health of a dynamic metropolis. Seen from our current vantage point, the film is also a remarkable time capsule that foreshadows the roiling political upheaval spreading across the country today.

FEATURING

Clay is the host of The Dusty Show with Clay Pigeon on WFMU, an independent freeform radio station. The show began airing in 2005 and can be heard every Thursday at 6pm EST on WFMU 91.1 in the tri-state area and streamed from WFMU.org. Clay was raised in Audubon, Iowa, where he developed a conversational interview style that has informed his work over the years. After broadcasting school, he migrated to Clearwater, Florida, where he DJ’ed at WTAN and 96FEVER and played in the rock band, Deloris Telescope. In 1998, Clay created a street interview–based program for WMNF in Tampa, which he continued to produce after moves to Los Angeles and Milwaukee. He relocated to New York in 2007, where he lives with his wife, illustrator Kirsten Ulve.

CREW

Rachel Shuman (Director, Editor, Producer) Rachel Shuman is a documentary filmmaker and editor who has worked in New York City for 20 years. Her directorial debut Negotiations premiered at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival. She co-directed Art, Architecture, and Innovation: Celebrating the Guggenheim Museum, which aired on PBS and is now on view at the museum. Her editing credits include Wallace (Class 5 Films), Peter Eisenman (Checkerboard Films), and After the Cup (Variance Films). Rachel has also worked as an editor on nonfiction programming for A&E, History, and MTV and she is proud to be a board member of the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship. Originally from Boston, Rachel received a BFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Edward Norton (Executive Producer) Edward Norton is a celebrated actor, director, writer and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards for his work in the films Primal Fear (1996), American History X (1998) and Birdman (2014). Norton landed his first paid acting gig in New York City when he was offered a role in Edward Albee’s Fragments at the Signature Theatre, a not-for-profit theater company now part of the Pershing Square Signature Center on West 42nd Street. In addition to his film work, Norton is a environmental, social, and civic activist, dedicated to improving the communities in which we all live and he is an active proponent of the historical preservation of New York.

Garret Savage (Producer) Garret is a producer and editor based in Brooklyn. His documentary editing credits include the Peabody Award-winning My Perestroika, HBO’s How Democracy Works Now series, Ready, Set, Bag! (LA Film Festival), and IFC’s 4-Cylinder 400. He was an associate producer of the Emmy-nominated feature documentary Pressure Cooker (Participant Films). He has enjoyed working for Paramount Pictures, ABC/ESPN, Discovery, IFC, AMC, MTV, and more. Garret was a 2009 Sundance Documentary Edit and Story Lab Fellow. He was the Program Director of the Nantucket Film Festival’s Teen View Film Lab and is a founder and Board President of the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship.

Ursula Liang (Producer) Ursula is a journalist who has told stories in a wide range of media. She has worked for The New York Times Op-Docs, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, Asia Pacific Forum on WBAI, StirTV, the 2050 Group, the Jax Show, Hyphen magazine and currently freelances as a film and television producer and story consultant. Her credits include: Tough Love (POV), Wo Ai Ni Mommy (POV), NBC Spartan Ultimate Team Challenge, UFC Primetime. Ursula’s directorial debut, 9-Man (America ReFramed) was called “an absorbing documentary” by The New York Times. She grew up in Newton, Mass. and lives in the Bronx, New York.

David Sampliner (Cinematographer) David’s most recent documentary feature, My Own Man, premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. His first documentary feature, Dirty Work (co-directed with Tim Nackashi), screened at the Sundance Film Festival, won Best Documentary Feature at the Atlanta Film Festival, and aired on the Sundance Channel. He co-directed Art, Architecture, and Innovation, a documentary about the history of the Guggenheim Museum broadcast on WNET Channel 13 and now on permanent exhibition at the Museum. His recent short films include Bread Power for Etsy’s website, and the DVD featurette on the making of By the People: The Election of Barack Obama (Sony Pictures).

Paul Brill (Composer) Paul Brill has received three Emmy Award nominations for his scores for the films The Trials of Darryl Hunt (HBO), The Devil Came on Horseback (Break Thru Films) and Full Battle Rattle (National Geographic) and recently won the first-ever Best Music Award from the International Documentary Association for his score for the film, Better this World. He collaborated with Rock legends U2 on the HBO film, Burma Soldier, composing a new string arrangement for an acoustic version of their classic song, “Walk On.” He scored the hit documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (IFC), the Emmy Award-winning Page One: Inside the NY Times (Magnolia), and the widely-acclaimed documentary Gideon’s Army (HBO). He recently completed work on Abigail Disney’s The Armor of Light, and the Emmy, DuPont and Peabody Award-winning, 6-hour PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.

Consulting Producers:
Cathryne Czubeck
Jessica Wolfson

Associate Producers:
Aimee Arvan
Sarah Wainio

Writers/Story Advisors:
Annie Bruno
Whitney Henry-Lester

Consulting Editors:
Linda Hattendorf
Kristen Nutile

Sponsorship:

UPCOMING SCREENINGS:

Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival

Friday, August 25 @ 10:30AM

Beacon Independent Film Festival, Beacon, NY

Friday, September 15 @7PM

PAST SCREENINGS:

Woods Hole Film Festival, MA
Saturday, July 29 @7PM

Lighthouse International Film Festival, Long Beach, NJ

Saturday, June 10 @ 11:00AM

Stranger Than Fiction, NYC

Wednesday, May 17 @ 7PM

IFFBoston

Sunday, April 30 @12:45PM

Full Frame (World Premiere)

Saturday, April 8, 2017 @ 1:30PM

For press inquires, email oneoctoberfilm@gmail.com

Gerald Peary The Arts Fuse, May 6, 2017
Film Review: Round-up of the 15th IFFBoston — A Banner Year
“The probing interviews are juxtaposed with Sampliner’s breathtaking vistas of Manhattan, and all the rich material is edited by director Shuman in the most stirring, extraordinary way. It’s very rare to see a documentary so perfectly made, a jewel of formal beauty. At 56 packed minutes, One October is a small masterpiece of cinema.”

Megan Scanlon ICYMI Stranger Than Fiction, June 22, 2017
Every-Thing and No-Thing in New York City
“New York City is the embodiment of every-thing and no-thing. It defines, cultivates, creates, resists, defies, and flows with change. This push and pull, this ebb and flow, this contraction and expansion is fluidly expressed in the time capsule that is ‘One October.’”

Samantha Sanders Audiences Everywhere, May 16, 2017
These are the Good Old Days: “One October” looks at a moment in New York
Interview with Rachel Shuman
“Take yourself back to 2008 for a moment. I initially remembered it as a relatively calm time—especially compared to what the country is currently experiencing. But my memory was poor (and our collective one can be just as flawed). That’s part of what makes One October so compelling… One October is a narrative time capsule, offering up the gift of hindsight that in turns feels both tellingly ominous and gleefully hopeful.”

Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan Durham Herald-Sun, April 4, 2017
Full Frame: Review of “One October” doc film
“Clay Pigeon asks the right questions to get people talking, and Shuman — who is director, editor and producer — captures the city from aspects busy and slow, quiet and loud… There is wisdom and variety in every answer. …If you have an opportunity to see “One October” at Full Frame, or wherever it goes next, you should.”