Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Making Documentaries in the Digital Age: A Chat With "Autumn Gem" Co-Producers

At the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, besides interviewing a lot of tech and media muckety-mucks, the All Things Digital staff and friends also got a terrific screening of a new documentary–“Autumn Gem”–by our Webmaster, Adam Tow, and his wife, Rae Chang.

The pair co-produced the project, which explores the extraordinary life of the Chinese revolutionary heroine and women’s rights activist, Qiu Jin (1875 – 1907).

As Tow and Chang wrote on their Web site for “Autumn Gem”:

“During the reign of the last dynasty in China, Qiu Jin boldly challenged traditional gender roles and demanded equal rights and opportunities for women. At a time when women’s lives were often marked by repressive practices such as footbinding, arranged marriages, and denial of education, she envisioned a future where women would free themselves from the confines of tradition and emerge as strong and active citizens of a new and modern nation.”

Even more interesting is what it is like to get an indie film made and distributed in the digital age, which I talked about with Tow and Chang last week.

Here’s the video with my interview with Tow and Chang (and, below it, a preview of “Autumn Gem”) :

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik