Characters of the Village

Marcia Rock, Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker

By Joy and Brian Pape

MARCIA ROCK AND PETER WILLIAMS celebrating their anniversary every year at Cornelia Street Cafe, even after it closed. Photo courtesy of Marcia Rock.

We would like to thank our readers who often suggest people who would be good subjects for Characters of the Village.

Let’s learn about Marcia Rock.

Tell us about yourself, Marcia. What is important for our community to know about you?
I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. I visited Bleecker Street at age 13 and knew I wanted to live in the Village. I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a major in English Literature – Shakespeare. I then studied Shakespeare in England and worked at a community theater project in Liverpool before I came to NY. For two years, I worked at an alternative media center called Global Village on Broome Street and Mercer. I lived in the East Village in 1972, then in SoHo for four years. Next, I got my master’s at Brooklyn College and my Ph.D. at NYU in Media Ecology, now called Media, Culture and Communication. I lived at Washington Square Village and Silver Towers until I coupled with Peter Williams and now I’m at Washington Street, between Perry and Charles. We met on Match and married on Zoom after 15 years. Peter converted our building in 1977 and built the two townhouses next door.

Tell us about your work.
I’m an independent documentary filmmaker. I’ve been at NYU for 42 years and started the News and Documentary graduate journalism program in 1999. I found a sweet spot merging the rigor of journalism with the aesthetics of film. It was a dream come true, as I was passionate about long-form storytelling. The students shoot and edit themselves, a key to the program’s success and to their independence as filmmakers. One of my first NewsDoc classes covered 9/11 after just one class on shooting with the camera. They were out on the streets on 9/12 before the police closed all the streets down. We did a special about it for the NYU community.

In addition to 14 feature documentaries, I’ve done two shorts on NYC, one on the draw of tango dancing in NYC called Surrender Tango and one on the history of the Irish immigrants through McSorley’s Ale House called McSorley’s New York. I won an Emmy for that piece and I got my photo on McSorley’s wall ─ a real accomplishment!

What is your favorite thing about the work you do?
My graduate students are amazing. They are my legacy to a field I love. Students come from all over the country and the world. This past year they did moving documentaries about a mother/daughter relationship in China, indigenous women protecting the rain forest in Ecuador, wolves in the Netherlands, a woman coping with Parkinson’s, and a horse trainer in Colorado. Students have won 12 Student Academy Awards over the years. newsdocfilmfest.com

What is your least favorite thing about your work?
Young students losing their passion so they don’t go the extra mile.

Tell us about your passion. What is your favorite accomplishment?
I love making documentaries and dancing the tango. The best part of documentary filmmaking is meeting people ranging from women veterans to women in Belfast and salt harvesters in Ghana. I’m proud of my awards and those of my students. I’m proud of my alumni like Nanfu Wang, a McArthur Genius Grant recipient, who has produced many documentaries and now teaches at NYU with me. I’m also proud of my Airedale dog, Tango.

What is your best memory?
I loved acting in an off-off-Broadway eexperimental drama in environmental theatre. The project was called Taxi Dance Hall, in SoHo in 1973. I’m still friends with three of the actresses. The Italian neighborhood in SoHo was still intact. There was Joe’s Dairy, Margaret the vegetable lady and Lucy, an old Italian woman who would sit outside on Sullivan St. and watch everything going on. I loved The Grand Ticino on Thompson run by Mike and Zoya Bitici. I miss the smell of bread wafting down the street from Zito’s on Bleecker St. My first date with Peter was at Cornelia Street Café, and even after it closed, we would go there on our anniversary and set up a little table and chairs and toast our longevity together; it was so much fun sitting on the sidewalk and talking to everyone who passed by.

What are your favorite things about the Village?
I love local restaurants where the bartender and owner know you, for example, Perry Street or La Ripaille. I love talking to store owners like the Ottomanelli Brothers. We always chat about Perry Street where they grew up in a tenement between Hudson and Greenwich. I’m so glad Dante’s opened on Perry Street after the pandemic. I love dancing tango on the Christopher Street Pier and my vet at West Village Veterinary Hospital.

Parting words?
I wish someone would move into the $200 million dollar home built across the street by Steve Cohen.

More about Marcia—marciarock.com

NYC films

• surrendertango.com—vimeo.com/ondemand/surrendertango/405962

• McSorley’s NY—vimeo.com/ondemand/mcsorleysnewyork/621673794

• Covid & Me—vimeo.com/439361921