Walking Cinema’s Projects
focus on fascinating places.
Geography and neighborhoods inspire our storytelling over a range of platforms. From podcasts to location-based augmented reality. Our projects generally fall into three categories: Walking Tours, Podcasting and Place, and Education.
Our unique brand of experiential soundwalks. Smartphone audio, augmented reality, and hands-on installations take audiences back in time and deep into the ideas that shape our neighborhoods and historic sites.
The Fillmore Eclipse
An immersive theater extension of our walking tour series: Museum of Hidden City. This recreation of a 1950s late-night jazz club tells the story of a crucial moment when San Francisco’s modern housing policy was being formed and a successful black business neighborhood was about to be erased. Opens April 26, 2024.
Museum of the Hidden City
Wilbur Hamilton, a preacher and redevelopment leader, is both saving and erasing the Fillmore in the 1960s. His daughter and a young architect try to understand the impact of his life’s project five decades later. Currently running in San Francisco. Opened in 2019. Free.
Migrant Footsteps
2023 Walking Cinema production telling unique migration stories in three different San Francisco neighborhoods. In partnership with the California Migration Museum. Running through 2023. Free.
Before the Bulldozers
Imani moves into DC's Southwest neighborhood and discovers the story of a man who tried to save the neighborhood from being bulldozed in the 1950's. What she learns changes her views on gentrification and the troubling history of her adopted neighborhood. Currently running. Nominated for two Webby Awards.
Free & Equal
Darius Brown is a teenage expert genealogist trying to understand the experience of his third great grandfather in the Civil War. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in collaboration with the University of South Carolina. Produced in 2021 and still running in the National Reconstruction Memorial Park in South Carolina. Currently running. Free.
History Unwired
Walking Cinema’s first mobile interactive audio tour. Produced in 2005 for the Venice Biennale and funded by the Regione Veneto, Motorola, and Dell. Tells five interconnected stories of artisans living and practicing in the shadows of the world’s oldest modern art festival. Licensed by the Venice Biennale, running from 2005-7 in Venice, Italy.
Murder on Beacon Hill
A site-based extension of the PBS Film "Murder at Harvard", this walking tour tells the story of the disappearance of the richest man in 19th century Boston and the Harvard professor accused of his murder. Winner of The Best of Boston and Boston International Film Festival. 2008-2014 in Boston. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Walking Cinema has developed several experimental podcast series and audiobooks, exploring compelling geographies and creative luminaries.
Day of Days
In 1958 Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed by a deranged woman at a Harlem book signing. Recovering in the Harlem Hospital, King had a three-hour conversation with the black mystic Howard Thurman that changed his life. This podcast miniseries dramatizes that encounter and brings the spaces in the story to life via an immersive podcast app. Available Summer, 2024.
Pen & Place
How is great writing connected to places? This podcast mini-series is one of Audible’s first “Originals” and takes listeners around the US to explore the places that inspired our nation's most compelling writing.
The Curious Case Of The Pheromonophone
This romp with “experimental philosopher” Jonathon Keats explores the link between high art and technological innovation. Wired Magazine describes the podcast: “Keats's latest invention is the Pheromonophone, an inflatable suit with tubes coming out of it that records your body odor onto a carbon capsule… The resulting conversations expose more about how Silicon Valley perceives itself than the marketability of the silly smell-tech. But that's sort of the point.” Available on Audible.
Patent Pending
Of the 4 million patents that have failed to become products, maybe some of them deserve a second chance. Patent Pending is a live event, in which inventors and designers will guide the audience through thought-experiments and hands-on prototyping to bring new thinking to a persistent problem. In the process, attendees and podcast listeners will be reminded that innovative thinking isn’t limited to well-financed startups or founders with prestigious degrees. Pilot funded by the PRX. In development.
Walking Cinema teaches professional workshops and university courses in the tools and narrative strategies behind its audio and augmented reality productions. Our modular curricula allow for workshops to run for an hour to a week to a full semester.
History Around Us
Our flagship curricula series teaches a range of professionals and college students how to develop a site-based story. The course is modular and can cover how to “script with a landscape”, develop site-specific augmented reality, and tell audio stories that play out in synch with audience surroundings. Can be online, in person, or hybrid. Clients include Northwestern, California College of the Arts, and several iterations of an open enrollment online course of media professionals. Currently booking courses and workshops.
Expandable Audio Journalism
Walking Cinema founder Michael Epstein was a Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow at the University of Missouri from 2019-2020. There he investigated smartspeaker news that could react to audience interests. Called “Expandable Audio Journalism,” the fellowship built a prototype Alexa skill that allowed listeners to dig deeper into aspects of a story that interested them and skip over parts they didn’t find so interesting. As part of the fellowship, Michael led a capstone class in news product development.