RECORDER
The Marion Stokes Project
︎︎︎
Trailer
The Film
Marion
Stokes was secretly recording television twenty-four hours a day for thirty
years. It started in 1979 with the Iranian Hostage Crisis at the dawn of the
twenty-four hour news cycle. It ended on December 14, 2012 while the Sandy Hook
massacre played on television as Marion passed away. In between, Marion
recorded on 70,000 VHS tapes, capturing revolutions, lies, wars, triumphs,
catastrophes, bloopers, talk shows, and commercials that tell us who we were,
and show how television shaped the world of today.
Before “fake news” Marion was fighting to protect the truth by archiving everything that was said and shown on television. The public didn’t know it, but the networks were disposing their archives for decades into the trashcan of history. Remarkably Marion saved it, and now the Internet Archive will digitize her tapes and we’ll be able to search them online for free.
This is a mystery in the form of a time capsule. It’s about a radical Communist activist, who became a fabulously wealthy recluse archivist. Her work was crazy but it was also genius, and she would pay a profound price for dedicating her life to this visionary and maddening project.
Before “fake news” Marion was fighting to protect the truth by archiving everything that was said and shown on television. The public didn’t know it, but the networks were disposing their archives for decades into the trashcan of history. Remarkably Marion saved it, and now the Internet Archive will digitize her tapes and we’ll be able to search them online for free.
This is a mystery in the form of a time capsule. It’s about a radical Communist activist, who became a fabulously wealthy recluse archivist. Her work was crazy but it was also genius, and she would pay a profound price for dedicating her life to this visionary and maddening project.
Watch the Film
Streaming
North America:
iTunes
Amazon
Google Play
Kino Now
VuDu
FandangoNow
InDemand
UK:
Curzon Home Cinema
BFI Player
Amazon Video
Dogwoof on Demand
Sky Store
Barbican Cinema on Demand
International:
Vimeo on Demand
North America:
iTunes
Amazon
Google Play
Kino Now
VuDu
FandangoNow
InDemand
UK:
Curzon Home Cinema
BFI Player
Amazon Video
Dogwoof on Demand
Sky Store
Barbican Cinema on Demand
International:
Vimeo on Demand
Screenings
Recorder premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, and played at Hot Docs, London Film Festival, and numerous other film festivals and museums around the world. Zeitgeist Films distributed the film in theaters across the US, followed by DVD and streaming releases. Recorder broadcast on PBS Independent Lens and was released in the UK by Violet Pictures.
Buy DVD & BluRay
with Director’s Commentary
Amazon
Recorder premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, and played at Hot Docs, London Film Festival, and numerous other film festivals and museums around the world. Zeitgeist Films distributed the film in theaters across the US, followed by DVD and streaming releases. Recorder broadcast on PBS Independent Lens and was released in the UK by Violet Pictures.
Buy DVD & BluRay
with Director’s Commentary
Amazon
Reviews & Press
“Outstanding... An information revolutionary, Stokes, despite her decades of isolation, touched the nerve center of the times.” - Best Films of 2019, New Yorker
“Weirdly exhilarating... Enlightening and the stuff of madness." Critic’s Pick - New York Times
“The Information Age has found a startling, eccentric heroine in the subject of Matt Wolf’s eye-opening documentary.” - LA Times
“Matt Wolf’s remarkable Recorder uses Stokes’ recording obsession as a way to explore both Stokes herself and the world she literally committed to video tape. The results are fascinating, weird, and often quite moving.” - Indiewire
“Intriguing from first minute to last... Relating this stranger-than-fiction tale with the narrative twists and turns of a well-paced thriller, Recorder will make news junkies feel a lot better about themselves.” - Hollywood Reporter
“Utterly compelling and beautifully textured… A thrilling portrait of a woman collecting the history of the world as she lived through it through the very media we all engaged with, this is a powerful and truly important documentary feature.” - CriterionCast
“Recorder quietly seeds damning observations about the ways media narratives are formed, and how the shapers of these narratives distort the truth and our worldview.” - Flixist
“Marion’s life makes for a pensive, complicated romantic tragedy.” - Nonfics
Artforum
The Guardian
Frieze Magazine
Sight & Sound Magazine
LA Review of Books
Filmmaker Magazine
Forbes Magazine
The Wrap Review
BBC News
Philadelphia Inquirer
“Weirdly exhilarating... Enlightening and the stuff of madness." Critic’s Pick - New York Times
“The Information Age has found a startling, eccentric heroine in the subject of Matt Wolf’s eye-opening documentary.” - LA Times
“Matt Wolf’s remarkable Recorder uses Stokes’ recording obsession as a way to explore both Stokes herself and the world she literally committed to video tape. The results are fascinating, weird, and often quite moving.” - Indiewire
“Intriguing from first minute to last... Relating this stranger-than-fiction tale with the narrative twists and turns of a well-paced thriller, Recorder will make news junkies feel a lot better about themselves.” - Hollywood Reporter
“Utterly compelling and beautifully textured… A thrilling portrait of a woman collecting the history of the world as she lived through it through the very media we all engaged with, this is a powerful and truly important documentary feature.” - CriterionCast
“Recorder quietly seeds damning observations about the ways media narratives are formed, and how the shapers of these narratives distort the truth and our worldview.” - Flixist
“Marion’s life makes for a pensive, complicated romantic tragedy.” - Nonfics
Artforum
The Guardian
Frieze Magazine
Sight & Sound Magazine
LA Review of Books
Filmmaker Magazine
Forbes Magazine
The Wrap Review
BBC News
Philadelphia Inquirer
The Filmmakers
Directed by Matt Wolf
An End Cue &
Electric Chinoland Production
in association with C41 Media
Producers
Kyle Martin
Andrew Kortschak
Walter Kortschak
Executive Producers
Andrew Kortschak
Walter Kortschak
Edited by
Keiko Deguchi
Music by
Owen Pallett
Cinematographers
Chris Dapkins
Matt Mitchel
An End Cue &
Electric Chinoland Production
in association with C41 Media
Producers
Kyle Martin
Andrew Kortschak
Walter Kortschak
Executive Producers
Andrew Kortschak
Walter Kortschak
Edited by
Keiko Deguchi
Music by
Owen Pallett
Cinematographers
Chris Dapkins
Matt Mitchel
Director Bio
Matt Wolf is a filmmaker and writer in New York. His recent two-part HBO documentary Pee-wee as Himself about the artist and performer Paul Reubens premiered opening night of Sundance, won Producers Guild, Gotham, and Independent Spirit Awards, and was awarded 3 Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Editing, Best Director, and Best Documentary. The film was named one of the year’s best television programs by numerous publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker.
Matt’s feature documentaries include Wild Combination about the cult cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell, Teenage about early youth culture and the birth of teenagers, Recorder about the activist Marion Stokes, who secretly recorded television 24 hours a day for 30 years, and Spaceship Earth about Biosphere 2, a controversial experiment where 8 people lived quarantined inside a replica of the planet. Matt produced the Emmy-nominated, Peabody-winning film The Stroll about the history of New York’s Meatpacking District from the perspective of transgender sex workers.
Matt has made a number of short films about artists and queer history, including Bayard & Me on the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, HBO’s It’s Me, Hilary about the Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight, I Remember about the artist Joe Brainard, The Face of AIDS about a notorious 1992 Benetton advertisement, and Another Hayride about the self-help guru Louise Hay. The Criterion Channel recently presented a survey of Matt’s full filmography.
︎ ︎
www.mattwolf.info
Matt Wolf is a filmmaker and writer in New York. His recent two-part HBO documentary Pee-wee as Himself about the artist and performer Paul Reubens premiered opening night of Sundance, won Producers Guild, Gotham, and Independent Spirit Awards, and was awarded 3 Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Editing, Best Director, and Best Documentary. The film was named one of the year’s best television programs by numerous publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker.
Matt’s feature documentaries include Wild Combination about the cult cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell, Teenage about early youth culture and the birth of teenagers, Recorder about the activist Marion Stokes, who secretly recorded television 24 hours a day for 30 years, and Spaceship Earth about Biosphere 2, a controversial experiment where 8 people lived quarantined inside a replica of the planet. Matt produced the Emmy-nominated, Peabody-winning film The Stroll about the history of New York’s Meatpacking District from the perspective of transgender sex workers.
Matt has made a number of short films about artists and queer history, including Bayard & Me on the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, HBO’s It’s Me, Hilary about the Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight, I Remember about the artist Joe Brainard, The Face of AIDS about a notorious 1992 Benetton advertisement, and Another Hayride about the self-help guru Louise Hay. The Criterion Channel recently presented a survey of Matt’s full filmography.
︎ ︎
www.mattwolf.info
Filmmaker Contact
Matt Wolf office@mattwolf.info
US Distributor, Zeitgeist Films
Emily Russo
emily@zeitgeistfilms.com
Nancy Gerstman
nancy@zeitgeistfilms.com
Matt Wolf office@mattwolf.info
US Distributor, Zeitgeist Films
Emily Russo
emily@zeitgeistfilms.com
Nancy Gerstman
nancy@zeitgeistfilms.com
RECORDER: THE MARION STOKES PROJECT