User talk:Suzannetrosen

Sumner Jules Glimcher (born June 4, 1924) is a documentary filmmaker, Professor Emeritus of film in the New York University, School of Continuing Studies, a former television and radio broadcaster, author of Movie Making: A Gide to Film Production, and creator of the now defunct International Transmissions, Inc. (ITI), the first independent international voiced news service for radio and television, the precursor of CNN, bringing live news reports from all around the world to American broadcasters. He is currently editing a soon to be published autobiography about surviving the Battle of the Bulge.

Life and career

Sumner was born in Boston, Massachusetts and served as an infantry soldier in World War II, the Battle of the Bulge where he was shot in the leg.  Upon returning from his military service, he attended Harvard University and graduated in 1948 with a degree in Nuclear Physics.  He began his career as a page at NBC in New York (1949-1954), where he worked with many of the greats in the Golden Age of Television -- including Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon -- and saw the rapid advance of television production and operations as it grew from four to eighteen hours of daily programing. 

International News Career

From 1954 to 1957, Sumner worked as the Program Administrator of [Free Europe] in Munich. Returning to the United States in 1958, he created International Transmissions, Inc. (ITI), the first independent international voiced news service for radio and television, the precursor of CNN, bringing live news reports from all around the world to U.S. broadcasters.

Subsequently he joined WOR and RKO General in New York as Manager of Foreign News, where in addition to putting the first space shot on television, he also covered the inauguration of John F. Kennedy on location. In 1962 he was recruited by National Educational Television, now known as the [Broadcasting Service], where he was in charge of bringing programs from abroad to the United States. He was the first broadcaster to initiate a program exchange with NHK in Japan, and imported the first documentaries from the National Film Board of Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Norddeutsche Rundfunk in Germany.

Academic Career

In 1963 Sumner began his academic career when he was hired by Columbia University as the Manager of the Center for Mass Communication, a unit devoted to the production and distribution of educational films. Shortly thereafter, he began to teach, ultimately becoming Deputy Chairman of the Department of Radio and Television in Columbia’s Graduate School of the Arts. At that time he was the principal author of MOVIE MAKING: A GUIDE TO FILM PRODUCTION,

During that period he met and recorded a series of interviews with Frances Flaherty, widow of Robert Nanook of the North[[2]] Flaherty, and programmed the International Flaherty Film Seminars for two years. After a ten-year tenure at Columbia, he left to form his own production company, Mass Communications, Incorporated, in 1972, which enabled him to continue making educational and documentary films.

In the early 1970's, he developed a close working relationship with Harvard, his alma mater and created several series of programs on China with John King Fairbank[[3]], and several on Japan with Edwin O. Reischauer[[4]], at which time he began his extensive travels to East Asia. In the late 1970's, he was recruited by the Consulate General of Japan to serve as film consultant, helping to inform America about Japan through the broadcast of Japanese films that were shown on American television stations; an activity he continued for twenty years.

He spent academic 1977-78 in Cambridge when Harvard's President Derek Bok asked him to undertake a one-year study and report on the use of media in education. In June, 1978 he completed an 82-page report, recommending that Harvard establish a Video Production Center and put its outstanding faculty on videotape. <ref>“THE POTENTIAL ROLE OF AUDIO/VISUAL MEDIA AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY," June, 1978

Travel Lectures and Films

Two trips to Taiwan resulted in four films, and that work, along with his consultancy for the Japanese and his work with Fairbank and Reischauer made him a frequent visitor to East Asia. As a result of his knowledge of East Asia, he began to show his slides and films and lecture on China and Japan.