A Small Voice: Conversations with photographers and filmmakers (exclusive member content)
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A Small Voice: Conversations with photographers and filmmakers (exclusive member content)

Ben Smith

  • 206 Episodes
  • English
  • Last updated Mar 04, 2026
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277 - Zackary Canepari

Mar 11, 2026 • E277 • 01:21:00

Zackary Canepari is an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker and Guggenheim Fellow whose work moves between documentary film and photography.  He began as a photojournalist in India and Pakistan before creating the Sundance-screened series California Is a place, a portrait of the golden state unraveling at the edges.

He later co-directed the feature documentary T-Rex (SXSW), following teenage Olympic boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields as she fought her way toward gold; the film was adapted by MGM into the narrative feature The Fire Inside. His Guggenheim-supported project Flint Is a place expanded documentary storytelling across film, photography, archival material, and immersive media, earning a World Press Photo Award and recognition as Multimedia Photographer of the Year at POYi.

His monograph REX won POYi Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture First PhotoBook Prize.

Zackary's documentary Fire in Paradise won an Emmy and an Edward R. Murrow Award and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. He received a second Emmy for directing The Gallagher Effect for The New York Times Presents (FX/Hulu).

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In episode 277, Zackary discusses, among other things:

  • How he started in photography
  • The experience of cutting his photographic teeth in India
  • The complicated question of whether it's a good time to be a filmmaker
  • His early project California Is a place, with his collaborator Drea Cooper
  • Learning the ropes through experience
  • His first feature documentary, T-Rex, and being smiled upon by the documentary gods
  • Flint Town
  • Thoughts & Prayers
  • Fire in Paradise

 

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