B-Roll – Steve Robitaille

B-Roll: Life in front and behind the lens

In his memoir, B-Roll: A Life in Front of the Blackboard and Behind the Lens,Robitaille reflects on his five decades as student, teacher and documentarian.

During Robitaille’s adventures in filmmaking he befriended and interviewed many noted writers such as Peter Matthiessen, Allen Ginsberg, Russell Hoban, Carl Hiaasen, May Sarton and others. His interactions and exchanges with independent filmmakers such as Ross McElwee and Robert Frank sparked an interest in the boundaries of personal filmmaking. Having filmed a troupe of Florida-based cloggers on their tour of the Soviet Union in the mid-80s and returning to Russia decades later to film the staging of Albert Alonso’s ballet Carmen at the Bolshoi in Moscow, Robitaille reflects on the dramatic changes he witnessed there. His Emmy Award-winning series, Expedition Florida, followed noted scientists, authors and artists on location from the Florida Everglades to the underwater caves of North Florida.

B-roll is ultimately a meditation on the spiritual aspects of observing the world around us, as students, teachers, and consumers of screen imagery. What is it we think we are capturing through the lens, and what escapes the frame? What personal insights might we find in the B-roll?

Robitaille regales with his moving memoir offering a fly on the wall view of the often humorous, occasionally tragic and always uncertain life of an educator and documentary film maker where life and art are inextricably intertwined.

— Jeff Ripple, American realist artist and landscape photographer, The Wild Heart of Florida.

Mike Owen, Jeff Ripple, and I often spontaneously head out into the swamp for a day of fun, but having the experience of being in the swamp with a group of mosquito masked folks carrying heavy film and sound equipment was a unique¬¬ experience for us. It was a lot of fun sharing the beauty of Fakahatchee with a group of people who understand that helping our country see the beauty of a swamp through the use of movies is worth all the difficulties of creating a wonderful experience for the audience.

— Clyde Butcher, American photographer, The Everglades

A veritable feast of personal encounters with writers, poets, filmmakers, and photographers whom Steve Robitaille persuaded to come down and spend some time with him and his students (lucky kids!) in the Sunshine State over the last four decades. Robitaille’s insatiable curiosity about how creative folks think, talk about, and craft their work drives this narrative, which along the way reveals quite a bit about what drives the author himself.

— Ross McElwee, American documentary filmmaker,
Sherman’s March, Time Indefinite.

For five decades, documentary producer Steve Robitaille has secured a place on film for a long line of Florida advocates and writers who have treasured and advocated for our endangered state. Now, in B-Roll: Life in Front of the Blackboard and Behind the Lens, he steps before his own camera to show us the expanse of his commitment to this landscape and his anguish at its devastations. He holds nothing back, letting us peek into a heart carved as vast as his vision, by loss and love.

— Susan Cerulean, award-winning writer of I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird:
A Daughter’s Memoir, and other works of creative nonfiction and memoir.