billzarchy@gmail.com
billzarchy.com
findinggeorgewashington.com
showdownatshinagawa.com
— Writer, Photographer, and Storyteller, San Francisco Bay Area
— Retired cinematographer for film and video projects in 30 countries and 40 states. See our Cinematography page for a portfolio of his professional work.
WRITER
Bill’s memoir, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil, tells true stories from his long career working on film shoots all around the world. He recently completed his first novel, Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale.
His tales from the road, technical articles, and personal essays have appeared in American Cinematographer, Emmy, and other trade magazines, Travelers’ Tales and Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies, the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers and literary publications.
PHOTOGRAPHER
- See Bill’s Instagram page.
- See Photoshow page.
STORYTELLER
As a storyteller in the oral tradition — no text, no notes — Bill is a graduate of the two-year EPIC Storytelling Program at Stagebridge in Oakland, where he studied under Kirk Waller, MaryGay Ducey, Jeanne Haynes, and Olga Loya.
He produced and performed a show called “Billy Solo: One-Man, One-Hour Storytelling Soirée Salon” in April 2018 at the Silk Road House in Berkeley, California.
He has told stories at Tell It On Tuesday at The Marsh in Berkeley, at Contra Costa Tale Spinners, at The Monkey House in Berkeley, at Lunchtime Storytelling at Stagebridge, at various house parties, and at his 50th college reunion at Dartmouth College.
He has read from his writings at Weekday Wanderlust in San Francisco, at LitCrawl in the Mission District, at Book Passage and Left Coast Writers in Corte Madera, on the Lilycat show and Matthew Felix On Air on FCC Free Radio, at various book launch events, and at Northbrae Church and Congregation Beth El in Berkeley.
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Bill retired as a cinematographer in 2015. His credits include filming interviews with three former presidents for the Emmy-winning West Wing Documentary Special; the Grammy-winning Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em; the feature films Conceiving Ada and Read You Like A Book; and the PBS science series Closer to Truth; as well as countless high-end corporate projects for a wide variety of technology and medical companies.
He has a BA in Government from Dartmouth and an MA in Film from Stanford. He taught Advanced Cinematography & Lighting to graduate students at San Francisco State University for twelve years, as well as Lighting classes and workshops at UC Berkeley, De Anza College, & the Art Institute of California-San Francisco.
For a number of years, he was a member of the San Francisco-based writers’ collective Townsend 11 and contributed stories to each of their first three anthologies: No Fixed Destination, No Set Boundaries, and No Definite Plans, all available now as e-books at the Kindle, Nook, and iBooks stores.
