Listening at the Luncheonette

Americans from all walks of life gather at diners, cafeterias, and coffee shops to discuss identity and the challenges of building community.

Series
PBS Plus Presentation
Premiere Date
March 1, 1998
Length
180 minutes
  • Nominated laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    1996 International Documentary Association (IDA)-Distinguished Achievement Award
  • Producer

    Carole Lucia Satrina

    Carole Lucia Satrina has been an independent filmmaker for 35 years. Fresh out of college, she and partner Eugene Marner made their first film, Phyllis and Terry, about a couple of wise African America teen-aged girls. The film’s success led to their becoming a cinema-verité filmmaking team on such award-winning public television productions as Goodbye and Good Luck, Birth and Death, Fayette Story, Show more and Great American Dream Machine, as well as on episodes for a the series Matters of Life and Death, Creativity with Bill Moyers, Art of the Western World, Childhood, and Listening at the Luncheonette. Satrina has written cultural documentaries, syndicated television series and low-budget features, and was selected for AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, where she wrote and directed a comic melodrama, Camera Obscura. Show less

    Other ITVS Films
    New Cop on the Beat
    Producer

    Eugene Marner

    Eugene Marner has been an independent filmmaker for 35 years. Fresh out of college, he and partner Carole Lucia Satrina made their first film, Phyllis and Terry, about a couple of wise African America teen-aged girls. The film’s success led to their becoming a cinema-verité filmmaking team on such award-winning public television productions as Goodbye and Good Luck, Birth and Death, Fayette Story, Show more and Great American Dream Machine, as well as on episodes for a the series Matters of Life and Death, Creativity with Bill Moyers, Art of the Western World, Childhood, and Listening at the Luncheonette. Marner was producer/director/writer of episodes for the PBS series Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, and Challenge to America. In 1986 and 1987, he directed Puss in Boots, starring Christopher Walken, and Beauty and the Beast, starring Rebecca de Mornay and John Savage. Both films were written by Satrina. Show less

    Other ITVS Films
    New Cop on the Beat

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    The Film

    Set in six luncheonettes around the country, this series lets American people define and express themselves as common themes emerge. Wisconsin Ojibwa, Hispanic New Mexicans, California fishermen and longshoremen, Chinese immigrants in New York, striking workers in the Midwest, and the deaf in Seattle speak with wit, fervor, and anger about rights lost and reclaimed, cultures under assault, and building community.

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