The sleeping voyages to weird places and with stranger people, the daytime rambles that are only slightly more rational: I’ve always been good at dreaming. To my chagrin, but not surprise, I was recently informed that my biggest red flag is that my head is often off somewhere in the clouds. Yet, despite all this dreaming, in college I find myself a tad bit lost: How do people discover their dream jobs? In this column, I endeavor to not only stumble upon my future career, but maybe yours too…
In honor of the recent screening of All Static & Noise here at Tufts, today we will meet David Novack, producer and sound engineer, of this new, exposing documentary. The film is a collection of testimonies from family members of Uyghurs who have been detained and survivors of Chinese “re-education camps.” Their stories bring attention to the “mass brutality of state-sponsored oppression in Western China,” of the Uyghur population.
How Novack found himself in the position to help build an international platform for Uyghurs to share their stories began back in 1982 at UPenn. He was studying engineering, singing with choirs, and performing in “music pits,” when he met his wife Nancy, film editor on the documentary, and back then, a film major. After a quick stint in the pharmaceutical industry, Novack immediately sought out a different career path: one that would stimulate the “music-side” of his brain.
“I came across a music video in 1985…and I was listening to the sound of the drum in this piece of music, and it became clear that there was an engineer behind the creation of that sound,” Novack said. So, off he went to Berklee College of Music for music production and engineering.
For the next decade, Novack worked in sound mixing for film, but he always knew he wanted to someday produce. The first story that found him was inspired by the history of his great uncle, a famous Jewish liturgical musician in Ukraine. This inspiration would become his first documentary, Songs of Odessa. After producing, Novack said, “I sort of had this two-sided thing again, where I really liked filmmaking and I had been learning the language of film through mixing.”
Songs of Odessa took Novack to Ukraine, while his next expedition would lead him to the U.S. mid-Atlantic. A pitch that began as a “positive reality show” about researchers (the market, more focused on reality TV like The Bachelor, wasn’t ready), turned into a Human Rights documentary that exposed the dangers of the mountaintop removal in West Virginia and Kentucky: Burning the Future: Coal in America. Novack said, “I found that the nature guy in me, who was very much connected to my father, who was a landscape architect and botanist, said ‘wow, this has landed in my lap for a reason. I am meant to make this film. And I’m going to make this film.’”
I know that Novack’s career path has been a winding one, but we are learning that following passions often are, so stick with me. These experiences along the road, for Novack, were the catalyst for a strong filmmaking drive and “solidified not only the filmmaking process, but [his interest in] making films that have some connection to human rights…bringing awareness to things that are going on that people don't know about.”
Another career pivot occurred when Novack became a professor. He has now produced four films, and teaches graduate and undergraduate film and sound studies at a university in Lisbon. “I decided that ….I would teach sound and film so that I could share my knowledge and continue to grow and get to do research in the sound sphere, but with a little more liberty in time.” Novack explained, “there's more freedom of time in academia than there is in industry, for sure.”
From sound engineer, to producer, to professor, Novack’s career is not a sedentary one. “You know, I feel like these things call to me. People ask what's your next film? I don't really know yet,” Novack said.
While traveling in China, at the request of the U.S. State Department, to share Burning the Future Coal of America, Novack met Janice Angle Ford, who became his co-producer of All Static & Noise. From the get-go the new film was about human rights, but was not initially about the Uyghurs but more general changes in China.
During that filming Novack explained, “we learned of what was escalating in Shinjang and the Uyghur region. The more I dug into it, the more I realized it really had to be a film of its own.” He went on to say, “that's how the paths are - not linear, right? Our career paths are often not linear nowadays. They don't need to be linear. I think a linear career path is a thing of my parents' generation.”
I asked Novack if he was living his dream career. It was a question I was scared to ask because career satisfaction feels deeply personal, and I also worried if the mere concept of living our dreams bordered on being too cliché. In any event, to share our journeys is vulnerable, so I thank Novack, for sharing with us today. This is what he said:
“I don't feel like I'm living my career dream because I don't think that really exists. I think we can have career dreams. And then when we are in them, if we are thinking people, we're usually thinking about other things that we really want to get done. And it doesn't necessarily mean another career. But even just like my next film… I honestly don't think for me, I don't think it exists [a dream career], because I love to do everything.”
Based on our conversation, I know that as an audience we can expect more Novack produced films in the future (maybe even fiction?), but for today I would like to end with All Static & Noise. Here is what you should keep in mind before watching:
In 2017 the Party Secretary gave a speech to communist officials at Xinjiang University, which “painted Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in the Uyghur Region as ‘terrorists,’ guilty of ‘separatism.’” Novack said that “[the official] said that people have to speak the party line, and anything else, anything outside of what it’s permitted to be said, is static and noise and all static and noise has to be eliminated.” In referring to itself as All Static and Noise the film is a revolution; a declaration that, despite the risks, noise will be made. Spreading awareness helps amplify the brave voices that speak out for freedom and safety. With that said, I will keep you posted on when All Static and Noise comes back to Boston!
Wishing you luck in all your dream-catching endeavors…