Cornell University

The lights dimmed. The wizened man in the next seat over rasped into a handkerchief, as the musk of the hundred-year-old mansion seeped into my nostrils. In the front row, a perfectly coiffed woman fumbled to silence her phone. I folded my arms across my stomach, as if to calm my churning gut and my galloping heart. The screen went black. I held my breath, then exhaled, as sweeping shots of the grand estate rolled across the screen—and the audience settled into the hushed trance that every filmmaker prays for. My documentary on the Mill Neck Manor School for the Deaf—combining present-day…