Short Attention Span Cinema: StoryCorps Spring Renewals
Friday, April 4 - Thursday, May 15, 2025
As part of our ongoing Short Attention Span Cinema program, IFC Center is proud to share a collection of shorts from StoryCorps before our regular feature presentations.
Spring is a season of renewal—a time for growth, change, and fresh starts. This collection of stories explores personal transformation, resilience, and the wisdom we carry forward. From unexpected encounters that open new worlds to lessons passed down through generations, these animations highlight the moments that shape who we become.
4/4-10: The Temple of Knowledge (2:48) | For avid readers, or even the avidly curious, spending a night in a library would be a dream come true. Growing up, Ronald Clark spent every night in one. That’s because his father worked as custodian of a Washington Heights branch of the New York Public Library. In those days, many custodians lived with their families there on library property, in exchange for keeping it clean and maintained, and secure at night. That gave a young Ronald first-hand access to two things: The pride his father took in polishing the library to a gleam, and to the books themselves, right at his fingertips. Ronald came to StoryCorps with his daughter, Jamilah, to remember how his father’s work and the family’s lifestyle shaped the scholarly man he would become.
4/11-17: The Bookmobile (3:21) | Storm Reyes grew up in migrant farm worker camps outside Tacoma, Washington during the early 1960s. Most of the laborers were, like Storm, Native Americans. They were paid less than one dollar per hour for their work in berry patches and apple orchards throughout the state. Storm started working as a full-time laborer herself when she was 8 years old. Her family lived without electricity or running water. At StoryCorps, Storm shared stories of her difficult childhood with her son, Jeremy Hagquist, and remembers the day a bookmobile unexpectedly arrived, opening up new worlds and bringing hope.
4/18-24: Lessons Learned (3:09) | In the fall of 1964, William Lynn Weaver was 14 years old and about to start his sophomore year of high school in Knoxville, Tennessee. Along with 13 other black students, he integrated into a previously all-white West High School. From the very first roll call of that school year, Weaver was targeted by his white teachers. A few weeks later, Weaver, a former high achiever, brought home a failing report card. What happened next transformed the rest of his life: the intervention of an educator from his past who became the unseen hand shaping all his future successes.
4/25-5/1: Leading the Way (2:44) | John Washington was born blind and with a severe loss of hearing that has become more extreme over time. He raised three children with his wife Fannie Ruth, who was also blind and deaf. John, who did not finish high school, began reading books in braille and went on to teach others to read braille as well. He helped found the first braille magazine in the United States focused solely on issues important to the Black community. At the age of 95, John sat down with his eldest child, Melva Washington Toomer, for a conversation about the pride he takes in his kids and to laugh over some of their childhood hijinks. This StoryCorps conversation was done with the help of a TeleBraille machine, which translated Melva’s typed questions into braille for John to read and answer.
5/2-5/8: My Father, the Giant (2:14) | Caught in a thoughtless act of cruelty, a young man learns a lesson in compassion from his father, a larger-than-life tribal leader of the Caddo Nation and a veteran of World War II. Years later, the man passes that lesson down to his own son. Thompson Williams was growing up in Oklahoma as one of eight children during the period he attributes to when his father Melford captured his imagination and set his moral compass. Thompson came to StoryCorps with his own son, Kiamichi-tet. StoryCorps’ animated short, “My Father the Giant,” brings their conversation to life.
5/9-5/15: The Human Voice (2:45) | The great oral historian Studs Terkel was an inspiration to StoryCorps, and he was also an early participant in the project. In this animated short, he speaks out on what has been lost in modern life and where he sees hope for our future. At the age of 96, Terkel passed away in October of 2008.