Fast Talk tracks the Northwestern University debate team as it tries for a second consecutive championship while simultaneously examining why debaters now talk so fast and how their arguments are unintelligible and inconsequential to a non-debate audience. Clearly there are benefits to fast-talking--more arguments presented in a shorter amount of time. But is there a dark side? Has debate slowly morphed from an academic activity meant to train young minds to an activity meant to train winners regardless of whether or not they know how to communicate and/or form nuanced arguments? Regardless, as the film shows, there is much to admire about the present state of debate: Coach Scott Deatherage cares deeply about his team. The debaters are also very committed to their activity and very emotional about their losses.
Debra Tolchinsky is a documentary director and producer, multimedia artist, curator, and professor in the IU Media School, with an affiliated appointment in the Maurer School of Law. She previously taught at Northwestern University, where she founded and directed the MFA in Documentary Media program and served as associate chair of the Department of Radio, Television, and Film.Her four-part episodic documentary, True Memories and Other Falsehoods, examines false memory and false internalized beliefs within the criminal justice system, with particular attention to how the mind may become contaminated through the investigative process. On a more meta level, her work explores how documentary film itself can act as a contaminant. Her earlier films, including Fast Talk, Lucky, Dolly, Max, and Saint Catherine’s Wedding Ring, have screened nationally and internationally at venues such as the Sundance Film Festival, the John F. Kennedy Center, the Chicago International Film Festival, FIPADOC, the Italy Innocence Project, and the Supreme Court Institute. More recently, her short documentary Contaminated Memories was released through The New York Times Op-Docs. She earned an A.B. from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and an MFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her recent work has been supported by an Alice B. Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Fellowship, a Northwestern Provost Grant, a Sage Fund grant, various private foundations, and Kartemquin Films.
