Stories Make the World: Hannah Arendt

In 1967, Stephen Most, a member of the Hannah Arendt Center and regular participant in its virtual reading group, came to the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago to study with Hannah Arendt. Having read The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition, he wanted to learn how to think about the twentieth century. He discovered that Arendt had a profound interest in drama and in the relationship between nonfiction stories and their sources in the world. What he learned from Arendt both in Chicago and from her posthumously published writings has guided his approach to documentary storytelling. He is currently completing a book, Stories Make the World, which describes how he applied Arendt's thinking about stories to his work as a filmmaker. "Hannah Arendt" is a chapter in that book.

You can read Most's chapter on Arendt here.

About Stephen Most

[caption id="attachment_16586" align="alignright" width="300"] Stephen Most[/caption]

Stephen Most is a playwright and documentary filmmaker. He is the writer/producer of the documentary River of Renewal, which won the "best documentary feature" award at the American Indian Film Festival, and the author of River of Renewal, Myth and History in the Klamath Basin, published by the University of Washington Press.

He began his playwriting career with the award-winning Poe, which the Organic Theatre produced twice in Chicago. He co-wrote Loon's Rage, which launched the Dell'Arte Players Company. His other plays are Medicine Show, Crossing Borders (for the San Francisco Mime Troupe), Raven's Seed, Watershed, A Free Country, and Forces of Nature.

Documentary films Stephen Most has scripted include Oil On Ice, which is about the controversy over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; A Land Between Rivers, a history of central California; and Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time. Wonders of Nature, which he wrote for the Great Wonders of the World series, won an Emmy for best special non-fiction program. The Bridge So Far: A Suspense Story, won a best-documentary Emmy. Promises, on which he worked as Consulting Writer and Researcher, won Emmys for best documentary and outstanding background analysis and research and was nominated for an Academy Award. Berkeley in the Sixties, which he co-wrote, also received an Academy Award nomination for best documentary. Nature's Orchestra, which he wrote and produced, will be broadcast in the upcoming season of the PBS series Natural Heroes. His website is www.stephenmost.com.