Risk and failure in documentary filmmaking

Ricki Stern is the producer/director of a number of documentaries including, Joan Rivers: Piece of Work, The Trials of Darryl Hunt and her most recent, Knuckleball that premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and opened in select US cinemas and V.O.D today.

The documentary is about the rare baseball pitch that is released slowly, without spin and is highly unpredictable. When executed successfully, the pitch can strike out even the most seasoned of batters. When it fails, it does so miserably. Knuckleball is a sports doc that follows two of the four remaining living knuckleball pitchers, Tim Wakefield, a 17-year Red Sox veteran, and Mets up-and-comer R.A. Dickey.

Stern is also a graduate of Dartmouth College where she delivered the 2012 convocation speech to the class of 2016. In it she talks about the process of documentary filmmaking in similar hues to the Knuckleball pitch – an act that “that necessary involves risk and failure.”