Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bill Gentile with American troops while shooting a documentary in Afghanistan, 2005.
Photo by Tomas Munita.
B ACKPACK J OURNALISM
W ORKSHOP W ITH B ILL G ENTILE
We are now at an extraordinary juncture in the history of mankind, technology and communication. Ordi-
nary citizens wield the power to communicate instantly, globally and in a language, the visual language, that
supersedes both the written and the spoken word. This visual language knows no frontiers. It needs no trans-
lation. It is contingent on no corporate support. It is the most powerful cultural tool of our time.
Backpack journalism is the embodiment of this visual language. It is the embodiment of this power. The
Backpack Journalism Workshop With Bill Gentile enables you to harness that power to document and to
change the world you live in.
In a four-day, intensive workshop at the campus of Mary Institute-Country Day School, St. Louis, MO, Bill
Gentile draws upon three decades of field experience to teach you the full range of skills for effective visual
storytelling, from story conception to shooting to scriptwriting, narrating and editing a crafted story.
Gentile began in 1977 as reporter for the Mexico City News and corre-
spondent for United Press International (UPI) based in Mexico City. He
spent two years as editor on UPI’s Foreign Desk in New York, then moved to Nicaragua and became Newsweek Maga-
zine’s Contract Photographer for Latin America and the Caribbean. His book of photographs, “Nicaragua,” won the
Overseas Press Club Award for Excellence. Gentile is featured in two award-winning documentaries about international
journalism in Nicaragua, “The World Is Watching,” and “The World Stopped Watching.”