Doc Studies DOC TALKS

Doc Talk: Ian Soroka (Nov. 4, 2019)

GRAND PRIX – DOCLISBOA – City of Lisbon Award for Best International Competition Film

GRAND PRIX – DOXA Doc. Film Festival Vancouver – Best Feature Documentary Award

The film’s attractively verdant visuals are layered with a variety of voices exploring the forest’s past and present, with particular focus on its role as a commune for partisans during WWII. – Matt Turner, The Brooklyn Rail

Tactfully, Soroka keeps subjects at a distance in the frame, mostly using off-screen interviews as voiceover, side-stepping both conventional technique and creating a sort of unified disembodied voice of the setting. – Adam Cook, MUBI

Drifting through the densely forested landscape of southern Slovenia—GREETINGS FROM FREE FORESTS, like a lifting fog, reveals a refuge of embedded historical memory. The film travels alongside the testimonies of local hunters, foresters, cavers, and foragers among others—orbiting around an absence left by radical struggle after it has come to fruition and since faded. During WWII, this forest served as a sanctuary for the Partisan Liberation Front, who were resisting the Fascist occupation of Yugoslavia. Remnants of this event can still be found throughout the forest in various states of decay, but also within images that sought to preserve the revolution’s emancipatory energy for future generations; images now stored in an underground film archive buried within the forest itself, depicting both the violence and the hope that came with radical change.

Ian Soroka (b. 1987) works in non-fiction forms of film and of Colorado in Boulder, in Prague at FAMU, and completed an M.S. in Art, Culture and Technology at MIT. Ian is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Princess Grace Foundation-USA Award recipient, and a Fulbright Fellow in Slovenia, where he was a guest researcher at the Slovenian National Film Archive and Cinematheque. His work has screened internationally in festival, gallery and museum contexts including: DocLisboa, Art of The Real, The Doc’s Kingdom Film Seminar, Rencontres Internationales, Dokufest, DokFest München, and Kinoteka, Ljubljana. Ian is from western Colorado and is based in the San Francisco Bay area.

Doc Studies DOC TALKS, Uncategorized

Doc Talk: Penny Lane (Oct.14, 2019)

As a history lesson every bit as clarifying as it is cockeyed, “Hail Satan?” possesses unarguable value. – Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

Chronicling the extraordinary rise of one of the most colorful and controversial religious movements in American history, Hail Satan? is an inspiring and entertaining new feature documentary from acclaimed director Penny Lane (Nuts!, Our Nixon). When media-savvy members of the Satanic Temple organize a series of public actions designed to advocate for religious freedom and challenge corrupt authority, they prove that with little more than a clever idea, a mischievous sense of humor, and a few rebellious friends, you can speak truth to power in some truly profound ways. As charming and funny as it is thought-provoking, Hail Satan? offers a timely look at a group of often misunderstood outsiders whose unwavering commitment to social and political justice has empowered thousands of people around the world.

PENNY LANE (Director) has been making award-winning, innovative nonfiction films for more than a decade. Her third feature documentary, The Pain of Others (2018), debuted at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and went on to Sheffield and BAMcinemaFest. Her previous feature documentary Nuts! (2016) premiered at Sundance, where it won a Special Jury Prize for Editing. Her debut feature documentary, Our Nixon (2013), premiered at Rotterdam, had its North American premiere at SXSW, won the Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival at Ann Arbor, and was selected as the closing night film at New Directors/New Films.

Festival screenings of her works have spanned the independent and experimental film worlds, including Sundance, Rotterdam, Images, Impakt, Hot Docs, Full Frame, CPH:DOX and Oberhausen. She has been awarded grants from Sundance, Creative Capital, Cinereach, TFI Documentary Fund, Jerome Foundation, Catapult Film Fund, LEF Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, and many other organizations. She is possibly most proud, however, of having been named “Most Badass!” at the Iowa City Documentary Film Festival in 2009.

Please join us for this screening and Q&A, hosted and moderated by Amir Husak, Director of Documentary Studies and Assistant Professor in the School of Media Studies.

Doc Studies DOC TALKS, Uncategorized

Doc Talk: Samara Chadwick (Oct.7,2019)

“1999 is one of the most haunting documentaries I’ve ever seen… a philosophical meditation on memory, sorrow, uncertainty, adolescence, and rebellion”  – Astra Taylor

“A profoundly personal but strikingly universal diaristic look back at a particular place and time. Surprising, tender, and charming.” – Pamela Cohn, Filmmaker Magazine

“A powerful meditation on trauma and resilience. Unlike anything I’ve seen this year.” – NOW Magazine

When death haunts a high school in a small town in the late 1990s, everyone is forever transformed. In this gentle, prismatic film, Samara returns to the town she fled as a teen to re-immerse herself in the memories still lurking there, in its spaces and within the dusty boxes of diaries, photos and VHS tapes. 1999 is not a ghost story, but the ghosts are palpable at every turn. The snow-covered streets, the school’s hallways and lockers are preserved as in a dream. 

The absences left by the relentless teenage suicides still shimmer with questions, trauma and regret. Samara encounters people who are as breathtaking as they are heartbroken, and, finally, 16 years later, the community strengthens itself by sharing the long-silenced memories. Ultimately the film weaves together multiple voices in a collective essay on how grief is internalized—and how, as children, we so painfully learn to articulate our desire to stay alive.

Samara Chadwick is a scholar, filmmaker and curator. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies from the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro and Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle. Samara’s first feature documentary, 1999, produced by Parabola Films (Canada), Beauvoir Films (Switzerland), and the National Film Board of Canada, premiered in 2018 at Visions du réel, and has since played festivals worldwide including HotDocs, DokuFest Kosovo, BAFICI Buenos Aires, as well as the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City.

Samara is also the Senior Programmer for the Points North Institute and the Camden International Film Festival (CIFF), a much-loved documentary festival, bringing the best of creative non-fiction (features, shorts & immersive) from around the world to the rugged coast of Maine. She has programmed films and conferences for HotDocs, the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) and the Berlin Biennale (2012). In 2018, Samara curated VR:RV, a year-long German:Canadian Exchange in Virtual Reality by the Goethe-Institut. She has served on juries at The New Horizons Film Festival (Poland), Sunny Side of the Doc (France) and Sheffield Doc/Fest (UK). 

Please join us for this screening and Q&A, hosted and moderated by Amir Husak, Director of Documentary Studies and Assistant Professor in the School of Media Studies.

Doc Studies DOC TALKS

Doc Talk: Darko Lungulov (Nov. 25, 2019)

ESCAPE is emblematic of challenges  “the new immigrants” face in America besieged by a host of new complexities… a powerfully personal story of exile, survival and family. – Kim Snyderr, Hamptons Intntl. Film Festival Catalogue

In 1999, during US led NATO bombing in former Yugoslavia, Ljilja and her two sons escape Belgrade to ironically seek refuge in the US. Over the course of the next four years, filmmaker follows this single mother, whose bitterness toward US foreign policy is still palpable, and her two sons as they make a new home in America. The film focuses largely on the sons, Vlada (11) and Dusan (8) as they navigate the complicated waters of “becoming American”. Then, in an unimaginable twist of fate, on September 11, 2001 Ljilja finds herself working on the 80th floor of one of the Twin Towers while her sons wait anxiously from the sidelines to learn of her traumatic escape. Less than two years later, Vlada, now a young man, tries to make sense of the world around him as the War in Iraq unfolds. We follow him through his complex quest for personal and national identity. Filmed over 5 years, ESCAPE delves deep into global issues, and yet remains an intensely personal story. 

DARKO LUNGULOV (Director) is an award-winning director and screenwriter. Originally from Serbia, he moved to New York City in 1991. His debut feature Here and There won the Best NY Narrative Award at the 2009 TRIBECA Festival and won 20 awards at more than 50 international festivals. It had a theatrical release in the US, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Greece and was sold to 21 countries. Darko co-wrote and was a supervising director on Good Wife, directorial debut of renowned Serbian actress Mirjana Karanovic, which had its world premiere at SUNDANCE 2016 in competition. It was screened at more than 40 festivals since and have won over 10 Awards, most notably at Göteborg Film Festival, Cleveland International Film Festival, Vilnius International Film Festival. Darko’s 2014 film, Monument to Michael Jackson, had its World premiere at 2014 Karlovy Vary International Festival and won The Best Eastern European Award at its USA premiere at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2015. Since 2015 Darko is in production of music documentary The Last Band, a film that follows the carrier of legendary Yugoslav rock band YU Grupa (The YU Band).

Please join us for this screening and Q&A, hosted and moderated by Rafael Parra, Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies.

Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies

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Doc Studies DOC TALKS

Doc Talk: Stephen Maing (2018)

“As [documentary filmmakers] we have a chance to make something that transcends straight [journalistic] storytelling. We have the opportunity to bear witness to incredibly messy situations and to interrogate our own placement within that.”

Stephen Maing was a Doc Talk guest on September 17th, 2018. He is an Emmy-nominated Brooklyn-based filmmaker. His film Crime + Punishment chronicles the real lives and struggles of The NYPD 12; a group of black and Latino whistleblower cops and the young minorities they are pressured to arrest and summons in New York City.

Crime + Punishment received a Special Jury Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

Doc Studies Uncategorized

Doc Talk: Nina Davenport – “First Comes Love”

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage. For filmmaker Nina Davenport, that old playground song didn’t go as planned. Single at age forty-one, she decides to have a baby on her own, never minding the odds stacked against her or the extra hurdles of living in New York City…

Nina has spent over a decade turning her life experiences into cinematic essays, following the path of her mentors, documentarian Ross McElwee (Sherman’s March) and Robb Moss (The Same River Twice). Her combined talents as a cinematographer, editor, and storyteller set her apart from the average first-person filmmaker. She develops characters and story arcs better than most Hollywood screenwriters do. In her quest for motherhood, Nina enlists her best friend Amy as a birth partner and her gay friend Eric as a sperm donor. While pregnant, Nina winds up dating the film critic John Anderson in an unusual display of sympathy between a director and a reviewer. The process of baby-making affects all their lives profoundly. Additionally, Nina struggles to cope with the recent death of her mother, who had been a source of strength, and seeks to improve relations with her father, a source of discouragement.

The film taps into the zeitgeist topic of how the modern family is being re-imagined in the early twenty-first century. They say it takes a village to raise a child. In Nina’s case, that village is populated by urban sophisticates who have delayed procreation for as long as possible and are late in confronting its joys and chores. Nina is unflinching at exposing her inner and outer self as a case study. She’s refreshingly frank and funny about the trials that women endure in order to get pregnant, give birth and manage the early years of parenting. After watching, you’ll want to thank your mother.

— Thom Powers, Toronto International Film Festival

Doc Studies Uncategorized

Co-editor Maya Mumma: Which Way Is The Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington

Doc Studies graduate and editor Maya Mumma discusses the making of the HBO documentary on photographer Tim Hetherington, who was killed in Libya shortly after the release of his 2011 Oscar-nominated film Restrepo. Maya describes her role in the researching, shooting and editing of Which Way Is The Frontline From Here?, a tribute to Hetherington’s singular work by his close friend and Restrepo co-director Sebastian Junger.