Author: Doc Studies

This Doc Talk featured a virtual Q&A with filmmaker Theo Cuthand to discuss his works Neurotransmitting, Medicine Bundle, Extractions, Woman Dress, Less Lethal Fetishes, Reclamation, 2-Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com, and Madness in Four Actions.

Since 1995 Theo Cuthand has been making short experimental narrative videos and films about sexuality, madness, Queer identity and love, and Indigeneity. In Neurotransmitting a mother and child talk about the child’s recent manic episode. Medicine Bundle explores colonial trauma and healing through found footage. Extractions traces parallels between natural resource extraction and the Canadian Indigenous child welfare system. In Woman Dress a Two-Spirit person travels the Plains. Less Lethal Fetishes wryly comments on tear gas controversies in the art world and Chemical Valley, Southern Ontario. Reclamation speculates upon Indigenous futurity in a post-apocalyptic world. 2-Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com queers and indigenizes traditional dating site advertisements. In Madness in Four Actions a fellow bipolar sufferer recontextualizes Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker.

Moderated by Lana Lin, Director of the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies. Co-produced with Documentary Program Associates Adriana de Lucio (Media Studies ’24) and Johann Yamin (Media Studies ’24).

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Theo Cuthand was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Cuthand’s work has screened in festivals internationally, including the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC, Mix Brasil Festival of Sexual Diversity in Sao Paulo, ImagineNATIVE in Toronto, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Images in Toronto, Berlinale in Berlin, New York Film Festival, Outfest, and Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, and at galleries, including the Remai in Saskatoon, The National Gallery in Ottawa, the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA in New York, and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In 2020 he completed a 2D video game called A Bipolar Journey, and is finishing his second video game, Carmilla the Lonely, a lesbian vampire game about ethics. He has also written three feature screenplays. Cuthand is a trans man of Plains Cree and Scots descent, a member of Little Pine First Nation, currently residing in Toronto, Canada.

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Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.

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This Doc Talk featured a screening of The American Sector and a Q&A with filmmakers Courtney Stephens & Pacho Velez.

For 18 months, Stephens and Velez traveled the US to document sections of the wall that are on display in over 75 locations, ranging from the serious to the bizarre. Along the way, interviews with unusual characters who own, maintain, and interact with pieces of the wall offer a window into American culture, and the Cold War relics become a catalyst for exploring today’s timely issues. “An exemplary work of cinema as political action. A film that powerfully evokes the active presence of history in daily civic life—and reveals the politics that inhere in its commemoration” (Richard Brody, The New Yorker).

Moderated by Lana Lin, Director of the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies. Co-produced with Documentary Program Associates Adriana de Lucio (Media Studies ’24) and Johann Yamin (Media Studies ’24).

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Courtney Stephens is a writer/director of non-fiction and experimental films. The American Sector, her documentary (co-directed with Pacho Velez) premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and was named one of the best films of 2021 in The New Yorker. Her essay film, Terra Femme, premiered at MoMA and has toured widely as a live performance. Her work has been exhibited at The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican, Walker Art Center, The Royal Geographical Society, and in film festivals including the Berlinale, the Viennale, and the New York Film Festival. Stephens is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Sloan Research Fellowship, and a Fulbright Scholarship to India.

Pacho Velez directs nonfiction films. His most recent feature, Searchers, premiered at Sundance 2021. Pacho’s earlier features, Manakamana (2013, co-directed with Stephanie Spray) and The Reagan Show (2017, co-directed with Sierra Pettengill), have played around the world, including the New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and on CNN. In 2015, Pacho was awarded a Princeton Arts Fellowship. Pacho is an Assistant Professor at The New School.

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Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.

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This Doc Talk featured a screening of Miryam Charles’ film, Cette Maison. Following the film screening of Cette Maison, Miryam Charles joined virtually for the Q&A.

Bridgeport, 2008. A teenage girl is found hanged in her room. While everything points to suicide, the autopsy report reveals something else. Ten years later, the director and cousin of the teenager examines the past causes and future consequences of this unsolved crime. Like an imagined biography, CETTE MAISON explores the relationship between the security of the living space and the violence that can jeopardize it.

Moderated by Lana Lin, Director of the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies. Co-produced with Documentary Program Associates Adriana de Lucio (Media Studies ’24) and Johann Yamin (Media Studies ’24).

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From Haitian descent, Miryam Charles is a director, producer and cinematographer living in Montreal. Her films have been presented in various festivals internationally. CETTE MAISON, her debut feature film, had its world premiere at Berlinale Forum 2022 and has been screened at festivals worldwide, winning awards at Indie Lisboa, Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, Montréal Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, and Indie Memphis. Her ongoing work explores themes related to exile and the legacies of colonization. Her second feature-length fiction film LA MARABOUT is currently in production.

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Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.

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Archive Acts was a presentation of Crystal Z Campbell’s short films CURRENCY (2019), On the Way to the Moon, We Discovered the Earth (2018), Go-Rilla Means War (2017), REVOLVER (2011–2022), and Futures for Failures (2011).

Campbell’s works perform critical excavations of history, drawing on archival research. They use collage, oral histories, and sonic recording to expose public secrets, historical gaps, structural violence, acts of omission, failures of collective memory, and sociopolitical narratives. Campbell’s most recent film, REVOLVER, is an archive of pareidolia (a situation in which someone sees a pattern or image of something that does not exist) narrated by a descendent of Exodusters.

Moderated by Lana Lin, Director of the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies. Co-produced with Documentary Program Associates Adriana de Lucio (Media Studies ’24) and Johann Yamin (Media Studies ’24).

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Crystal Z Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of Black, Filipinx, and Chinese descent. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets — fragments of information known by many but undertold or unspoken. Campbell’s creative practice spans painting, sculpture, performance, film, writing, and installations that are often site-responsive. Campbell was the recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts and a 2022 Creative Capital award. Other honors include a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Award, and MacDowell. Exhibitions and screenings include MOMA, Artists Space, SFMOMA, ICA-Philadelphia, REDCAT, MIT List Center, Block Museum, Walker Art Center, BAM, and DocLisboa. Campbell was a featured filmmaker at the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar. Their latest film, REVOLVER, received the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and was featured in the 2023 Berlinale Expanded Film Forum.

Headshot photo by Jeremy Charles

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Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.

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Join us for a screening and presentation with Alexis Kyle Mitchell to discuss her films, Bugs & Beasts before the Law, Special Works School, and The Treasury of Human Inheritance (in progress)

Bugs & Beasts before the Law explores the medieval practice of putting animals on trial, an aspect of colonial law-making that forged political and sometimes profane relationships between humans and animals. Special Works School investigates the connections between artistic practice and surveillant technologies, honing in on the psychic, embodied and material dimensions of surveillance – both from the position of the surveiller and the surveilled. Mitchell will also present her current film-in-progress, The Treasury of Human Inheritance, about a rare neuromuscular genetic disease that runs in her family.

Moderated by Lana Lin, Director of the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies. Co-produced with Documentary Program Associates: Cacau Araujo (Doc Studies ’22 & Media Studies ’23), Tiffany Jiang (Doc Studies ’22 & Media Studies ’23), and Farrah Elatty (Media Studies ’24).

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Alexis Kyle Mitchell is an artist and scholar based between New York and the Glasgow. Mitchell recently completed a PhD in Human Geography at the University of Toronto and was artist-in-residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude (2015-17), MacDowell (2018), and Sommerakademie Paul Klee (2017-19). She often works collaboratively alongside artist Sharlene Bamboat – the duo has recently launched a web project http://www.before-law.com. Recent screenings and exhibitions include Mercer Union, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Lille Fine Art Museum, and a solo exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery, presenting Bamboat | Mitchell’s experimental film and installation Bugs & Beasts Before the Law. Her writing can be read in Digital Lives in the Global City and Queer at Camp. Mitchell currently holds a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Disability Studies at New York University.

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Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies
School of Media Studies, The New School

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