On September 18th in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, HERE in the world is Carmen Sandiego! Join an interactive archival screening and discussion as we look at the work of a maker too seldom discussed as part of western Pennsylvania's media history: Dorothy Curley Tecklenberg. In the 1970s and 1980s, Curley Tecklenberg was a producer and director with the experimental television station QUBE. This pioneering broadcast technology utilized digital technology to blur the line between viewers and users, allowing people to interact in real time with television programming. Later in the 80s, Curley Tecklenberg co-created an early adaptation of a computer game into live action television with the classic Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (a co-production of Pittsburgh’s own WQED.)

Curley Tecklenberg and QUBE/Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? collaborator Howard Blumenthal will both join us in-person for this very special evening. This event will take the form of an interactive game show, with audience participation prompting clips from QUBE, Carmen Sandiego episodes and gameplay, and other footage relevant to the development of digital media in/around Pittsburgh.

About our guests

Dorothy Curley Tecklenburg and Howard Blumenthal have worked together for decades, first at QUBE in the development of the future of television, later on the Peabody and Emmy Award wining children’s series, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? for PBS. Along the way, they have traveled through time as co-authors of a non-fiction guide to time travel, tackled the world’s biggest problems with puppets, and imagined all sorts of interesting ideas. Dorothy is a long-time resident of the Pittsburgh region, as a television and video producer for KDKA, PPG, and, of course, the Pittsburgh QUBE operation. Howard’s connection runs through WQED, where the PBS story of Carmen Sandiego began.

Dorothy is a storyteller, a writer, a journalist (for five years, reporting from China), an author, and the long-time writer and researcher for American Movie Classics. Nowadays, Howard is focused on children and teenagers, and how school works around the world.

Steven Haines is a motion picture archivist, programmer, multimedia maker, film historian, and a 2024 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh MLIS program. As founder of Flea Market Films, co-founder of Pittsburgh Sound + Image, and a member of the Glitterbox Theater, Steven seeks to foster community and curiosity around marginalized media forms and stories.

About the Essential Pittsburgh series
Pittsburgh Sound + Image seeks to redefine our region’s film history with the Essential Pittsburgh series. Too often when recounting the noteworthy makers who have worked here, we hear the same names. We wish to acknowledge the depth of creativity which has flourished here by spotlighting additional vital artists and their films from the 1960s through the 2000s. This ongoing series is a continuation of our efforts to celebrate a fuller picture of independent, amateur, industrial, and experimental filmmaking talent, and to better situate Pittsburgh nationally as a place of rich cinematic history.

Please RSVP at the following link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/essential-pittsburgh-dorothy-curley-tecklenberg-tickets-1008667651097?aff=oddtdtcreator

This event is co-sponsored by Pittsburgh Sound + Image and the Bernadette Callery Archives Lecture Series at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Computing and Information.