Photograph by Lucy Gellman
You’ve seen Travis Carbonella before. Jumping on and off stage at Jose Oyola’s show at the College Street Music Hall; trailing along with the giant puppet parade in Westville; interviewing people all over downtown about their lives, their backgrounds, their passions and talents. Carbonella is a freelance videographer, and a dedicated storyteller. He’s New Haven’s Man with a Movie Camera, capturing the essence of this city one video at a time.
“I like showing the human experience, whatever that means, vulnerabilities and all,” Carbonella said during the first segment of an episode of WNHH’s “Deep Focus.” “Everybody has such amazing gifts. If I can create an opportunity for someone’s voice to be heard, especially when that voice is normally not heard, overlooked, marginalized, I think that’s the most fulfilling thing for me.”
For the past two years, Carbonella has committed himself to seeking out and documenting with his camera these types of stories all over New Haven, from high school student art projects that grapple with the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans, to community leadership workshops that empower our city’s LGBT youth.
His videos, some commissioned by local organizations, some made as passion projects, offer a layered perspective of New Haven that is simultaneously comprehensive and episodic. Taken by themselves, each video presents a different story about a unique and talented and invariably complex person. Taken together, they form an ever-expanding definition of what constitutes a city.
“It’s funny, this is the only thing I know how to do,” Carbonella mentioned a few times throughout the interview, reflecting on the precarious but exhilarating state he finds himself in as a full-time freelancer. “It’s satisfying in that I get to meet tons of people, and I get to create tons of different stories. But it’s also horrifying when it comes to freelance, because you’re always like, ‘How am I going to pay for this? How am I going to pay for that?’ There’s a really scary aspect to it. It really pushes you to make something happen.”
After many months on the job, Carbonella is finally at a point where he has built enough relationships to get work by referral. He is finally confident enough in his abilities and in his sense of self-worth that he can comfortably provide rates for clients interested in his services. With the expansion of the “gig” economy and the technical consolidation of video equipment, Carbonella sees himself as a one-man production outfit, responsible not just for lighting, editing, and shooting each movie, but also for defining for himself the value of his time and work.
“Stories need to be told, and there are platforms for stories to be told on,” Carbonella said, calling forth his motivation for sticking with freelance, for making that next movie at whatever the cost. “Everybody has a story. It’s just about going out there and telling it.”
New Documentary Explores History of New Haven Holocaust Memorial
Photograph by Thomas Breen
On the latter half of “Deep Focus,” Doris Zelinsky came by the WNHH studios to talk about another effort to preserve the stories of longtime New Haveners, another testament to the sense of community that can unite Elm City residents: that is, the history and construction of the New Haven Holocaust Memorial on Whalley Avenue. Zelinsky, who is the president of the New Haven Holocaust Memory, Inc., is also the executive producer of a new documentary about the memorial, entitled People Forget…New Haven Remembers, which is making its world premiere at the Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas in downtown New Haven this Sunday at 10am.
Directed by Elena Neumann Lefkowitz, New Haven Remembers divides its concise 22-minute runtime into two sections. The first is an oral history of the Holocaust that juxtaposes the stories of 4 survivors who also have deep roots in the Greater New Haven community. These include Shifra Zamkov, a longtime teacher whom Zelinsky remembers knocking on her door to raise money for the memorial decades ago, and Dr. Ralph Friedman, a man who lost his family and education during the Holocaust at the age of 12, but managed to emigrate to New Haven and establish himself as a successful dentist.
Photograph by Thomas Breen
The New Haven Holocaust Memorial.
The second half of the movie offers a brief history of the memorial, built in 1977, which was the first in the country to be established on public land. An understated plaza of cobblestones, concrete and yew trees that is anchored by a metal sculpture reminiscent of the barbed wire fences of a concentration camp, the memorial creates a place of peace and reflection at the lip of Edgewood Park. But its various explanatory plaques, as well as the sharp, stolid presence of that metal sculpture, are also challenges for this community to remember the atrocities of the Holocaust, to remember the horrors of which mankind if capable.
“What we hope to do with this movie is not just to capture the story, which is a great New Haven story of community, but also to capture the lessons from the story,” Zelinsky said. “There are lessons of resilience, lessons of community, lessons of private funds. There are lessons of a partnership and a trust with the city government. And, of course, there are lessons of the dangers of hate, and of that slippery slope when hate turns into denigrating another person, and actually into murder.”
Although New Haven is by no means the only city in the United States where Holocaust survivors moved after World War II, its historical memory of the Holocaust and its openness to survivors makes it an appropriate setting, in Zelinsky’s mind, for where this story could play out. “I think what’s amazing about New Haven is that we are a city that has welcomed immigrants,” she said. “We are a city that has made homes for people. In this case in particular, it was a community that banded together to build the memorial. Not all of them were survivors. In fact, few of them were survivors. But they made this happen in the city.”
People Forget…New Haven Remembers makes its world premiere at the Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas in downtown New Haven this Sunday, Nov. 15, at 10 a.m.. Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $5.
To listen to the full WNHH interviews with Carbonella and Zelinsky, click on or download the above sound file.
so great to hear this wonderful interview!
thanks tom for drawing travis out about his special work
and deep gratitude for you travis for all you do to enliven and enrich our community