American University
Bill Gentile is the author of, “Wait for Me: True Stories of War, Love and Rock & Roll,” his memoir and crown jewel of a career as independent journalist and documentary filmmaker whose work spans four decades, five continents and nearly every facet of journalism and mass communication.
He is a full-time professor of the School of Communication (SOC) at American University (AU) in Washington, DC. He is the founder of AU’s Backpack Journalism Project, a pioneer of “backpack video journalism” and one of the craft’s most noted practitioners. He authored the highly acclaimed, “Essential Video Journalism Field Manual,” and its Spanish-language counterpart, “Manual Esencial de Produccion Video Periodismo.” He has conducted Backpack Journalism Workshops from Cuba to Ghana, from Bangkok to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.
He covered stories from Central America, to the Persian Gulf, to Iraq and Afghanistan. He engineered the SOC’s partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and remains the driving force behind that initiative. He won two national Emmy Awards and was nominated for two others. He is the director, executive producer and host of the documentary series, “FREELANCERS with Bill Gentile.” He teaches Photojournalism, Foreign Correspondence, Backpack Documentary and the first Spanish-language class ever taught in the School of Communication.
His recent work also includes, “Fire and Ice on the Mountain,” a short documentary about the impact of climate change on Peruvians’ relationship with the glacier of Huaytapallana, and “When the Forest Weeps,” a short film that examines how Ecuador’s Kichwa Indians struggle as their deep spiritual relationship with the Amazonian rain forest diminishes in a clash with the forces of so-called modernity.
He also shot, produced and wrote the 2015 documentary, “Afghan Dreams,” about four Afghan law students – all female – who defy all odds to compete in the world’s most important competition of international commercial law. In 2013, he shot, produced, wrote and narrated a three-part film series on religion and gangs in Guatemala. The three films, “I. The Gangs,” “II. The Researcher,” and “III. The Pastor.”
Additional work in Cuba includes “Reading While They Roll: Cuba’s Cigar Factory Tradition,” for Time.com. Also on the Time Magazine Web site, see “Cuba’s (Rocky) Love Affair with the Harley-Davidson.”
His previous works include “Nurses Needed,” about the nursing shortage across the United States, and “Afghanistan: The Forgotten War,” about America’s deepening involvement in that Central Asian country. Broadcast in 2008 by NOW on PBS, the stories were named NOW’s Number 1 and Number 3, respectively, most popular of the year. For the Afghanistan piece, he was nominated for a national Emmy Award.
Gentile began in 1977 as reporter for the Mexico City News and correspondent for United Press International (UPI) based in Mexico City. He covered the 1979 Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua and later spent two years as editor on UPI’s Foreign Desk in New York, then moved to Nicaragua and became Newsweek Magazine’s Contract Photographer for Latin America and the Caribbean. His book of photographs, “Nicaragua,” won the Overseas Press Club Award for Excellence, Honorable Mention. He covered the U.S.-backed Contra War in Nicaragua and the Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s; the U.S. invasion of Panama; the 1994 invasion of Haiti, the ongoing conflict with Cuba, the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He worked in Ivory Coast, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Chad, Angola, Rwanda and Burundi.
