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Deborah Scranton

Director and Filmmaker of The War Tapes

Deborah Scranton, director/filmmaker, THE WAR TAPES; visiting fellow, Global Media Project, The Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University .

Deborah Scranton made her feature film directorial debut with the award-winning documentary The War Tapes, which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival and won Best Documentary Feature. It went on to win Best International Documentary at the 2006 BritDoc Festival, was named an official selection at the Rome Film Festival and IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam), and was released to critical acclaim in over 120 cities. It is scheduled for a national and international television broadcast in 2007.

THE WAR TAPES grew out of her locally acclaimed World War II television documentary, STORIES FROM SILENCE, WITNESS TO WAR – and her own commitment to using new technologies to give people power in creating their own media, and tell their own stories. Declining an offer in 2004 from the New Hampshire National Guard to embed herself as a filmmaker in Iraq, Scranton instead gave the soldiers cameras and trained them as cinematographers. Scranton directed THE WAR TAPES using email and near-perpetual instant messaging with the Soldiers with Cameras to answer questions, share techniques, and explore stories with the soldiers as they filmed their very personal experiences. She started her career in television covering a variety of world-renowned events including the Tour de France, the Winter Olympics, and US Open Tennis for ABC Sports, CBS Sports, MTV Networks, ESPN, and others. She was also a special assignment reporter.

As a speaker, Scranton often lectures on her innovative "integrative" filmmaking and the new frontier in storytelling: the intersection where web 2.0 meets technology meets documentary. She has been invited to speak at conferences and institutions including TED2007 (Technology, Entertainment, Design), Fortune / Aspen Institute's BRAINSTORM, Fortune 100 Most Powerful Women Summit, Harvard, Yale, and the Tribeca Cinema Film Series. Her work has been profiled in publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the International Herald Tribune.

A former member of the US Ski Team, Scranton is currently a visiting fellow at The Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University working with the Global Media Project in the Global Security program. She graduated from Brown with a degree in semiotics (the study of how meaning is constructed and understood) and resides on a farm in the mountains of New Hampshire in a town where her family has been for the past nine generations.