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Doc Talk: Silence of Reason with Kumjana Novakova

Please join us for a screening and Q&A with filmmaker Kumjana Novakova to discuss her film Silence of Reason on Dec 1st at Kellen Auditorium.

Silence of Reason is a forensic video essay constructed as a performative research into the first international criminal tribunal case to enter convictions for war-time rape as a form of torture and sexual enslavement as a crime against humanity. While working solely with archive and testimonies, the film acts as a memory itself: elusive and fluid, it rejects framing, moving in all directions, spatial and temporal. The singular experiences of violence and torture by women from the Foča rape camps during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina become our collective memories, surpassing time and space.

Program Duration: 63 min

Note: Following the screening, filmmaker will join remotely via Zoom for the Q&A.

About the Filmmaker

Kumjana Novakova was born in the former Yugoslavia and has worked in film and the arts since 2006. She co-founded the Pravo Ljudski Film Festival in Sarajevo, serving as its chief curator and director, and between 2018 and 2021 she led the Film Department of the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje in North Macedonia. Her practice spans cinema and contemporary video art, with a particular interest in how moving images explore identity, memory and the collective self.

Novakova’s work has screened at numerous festivals and venues, including Tate Modern, MoMA, Museum of the Moving Image, IDFA, Cinema du Reel, Punto de Vista, HotDocs, MG+MSUM, etc. Her feature film work includes Disturbed Earth (2021, co-directed with Guillermo Carreras Candi), which was shortlisted for the Academy Awards, and Silence of Reason (2023), which won multiple international awards — including the Grand Prize and Youth Jury Award at the Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival (2024), Human Rights Award at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2024, and the Golden Lily for Best Film at the goEast. 

Currently, she is an associate professor in the Master of Film programme at the Netherlands Film Academy and is pursuing a PhD in Contemporary Arts and Media in Belgrade. She splits her time living between Sarajevo and Skopje.

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

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Alumni Spotlight: Suzanne Smith (Doc Studies 2013)

We’re thrilled to share that Suzanne Smith’s short film DOOR OF NO RETURN will have its New York premiere this weekend (Nov 16) at the Video Arts Festival at Cinema Village, as part of the Fragmented World program.

Synopsis: A full body artist, Gregory Maqoma, navigates his own identity through a deeply personal narrative performed at House of Slaves on Goree Island, Senegal, a landmark to one of humanity’s most horrific journeys. Yearning for a way to move through past and present complexities, Gregory’s artistry breaks down walls and reframes history.


Suzanne’s recent work continues to gain international recognition — her feature documentary JOY DANCER premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last year.


Catch DOOR OF NO RETURN in New York this weekend and learn more about the program here: videoart.net/fragmented-world-2025

****If you’re an alum or current student of Doc Studies with news to share, send us a message**** 

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Doc Talk: A Body to Live In with Angelo Madsen

Please join us for a screening and Q&A with filmmaker Angelo Madsen to discuss his film A Body to Live In on November 17th at Kellen Auditorium.

The world of queer body modification and its intersection with BDSM is brought to life through this rich portrait of an artist and his philosophy of a spirit-body connection. Merging oral history with 16mm abstraction and photographic meditation, Angelo Madsen’s new film A BODY TO LIVE IN uses the life story and artworks of Fakir Musafar to guide us through pressing questions of belonging and the search for an authentic way of being.

Program Duration: 98 min

About the Filmmaker

Angelo Madsen (formerly Madsen Minax) is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator whose work explores how human relationships are shaped by history, culture, and kinship, with focus on subcultural experience and the politics of desire. His films and installations have screened at Berlinale, Sundance, TIFF, NYFF, MCA Chicago, Museum of the Moving Image, and numerous festivals worldwide. A Creative Capital Fellow (2025), United States Artists Fellow (2023), and Guggenheim Fellow (2022), he has held residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Pioneer Works, Headlands, Skowhegan, and the Core Program (MFA Houston). His film North By Current (2021), a New York Times Critics Pick, aired on PBS’s POV, won Cinema Eye and IDA awards, and was praised by Rolling Stone as “a beautiful, complex wonder.” In 2024, the Video Data Bank released CHICAGO SEX CHANGE, a compilation of Madsen’s early works. He is Associate Professor of Time-Based Media at the University of Vermont, based between Burlington and New York.

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

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Doc Talk: The African Film Institute Presents with Christian Nyampeta

Please join us for a special screening of short films that bring together a range of contemporary voices exploring the everyday, the poetic, and the political in African life through the moving image on November 3rd at 1pm at Kellen Auditorium.

The program is selected and curated by Christian Nyampeta, who will join us for a conversation following the screening.

Presented in collaboration with The African Film Institute, this screening is part of a growing effort to cultivate a sustained and intimate engagement with African cinema in New York. 

The African Film Institute aims to create a home and a place of intimacy with African cinema in New York, through developing gradually and organically a viewing program animated by fellowships; a growing library; an active writers’ room; and an expanding catalog of recorded dialogues. The African Film Institute draws from the visual cultures that view cinema as an evening school: a popular information system in the service of education, aesthetic experience, and public dissemination—employing a methodology concerning the use of cinema’s collective production, and investing in viewing methods informed by different uses of time, visual and textual histories, and social struggles and hopes in mutuality between their own locality and the world at large. 

Program Duration: 70 min

About the Curator

Christian Nyampeta is an artist living in New York, where he organizes programs, exhibitions, screenings, performances, and publications, which are conceived as hosting structures for collective feeling, cooperative thinking, and mutual action. Nyampeta convenes the Nyanza Working Group of ARAC — Another Roadmap School, which participated in documenta fifteen, and he is the convener of Boda Boda Lounge 2022–24, a trans-African film and video art festival. His recent exhibitions include the 14th Shanghai Biennale (2024), Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2016); Dakar Biennale Dak’Art, Dakar, Senegal (2018); 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art (2019) and Risquons-Tout, WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, Belgium (2021). Nyampeta was awarded the European Union Prize at the 12th Bamako Encounters — African Biennial of Photography in 2019.

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

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Doc Talk: The Dating Game with Violet Du Feng

Please join us for our next screening of Violet Du Feng’s film The Dating Game on October 20th at 7pm at Kellen Auditorium.

Following the screening, the filmmaker will be in conversation with Amir Husak, Director of the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies, and Judith Hefland, filmmaker and co-founder of Chicken & Egg Films.

NOTE: Open to TNS Students, Faculty and Staff ONLY.

Set against the backdrop of China’s evolving dating culture, The Dating Game delves into the personal journeys of Zhou, Li, and Wu as they navigate the challenges of finding companionship in a society where traditional norms and modern expectations collide. Under the guidance of coach Hao and his wife Wen, the men confront their insecurities, societal pressures, and the complexities of human connection.

Program Duration: 90 min

Violet Du Feng is an Emmy® Award-winning independent filmmaker, AMPAS Documentary Branch member, and adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School. She directed the Oscar®-shortlisted Hidden Letters (Tribeca 2022), broadcast in over 15 countries, and Harbor From the Holocaust (PBS/CPB, 2020) with music by Yo-Yo Ma. Over the past decade, she has directed, produced, or executive produced more than ten films, including Maineland (SXSW Jury Award) and Please Remember Me (DocImpactHi5). Her films have received support from Sundance DFP, ITVS, IDA, and Ford Foundation, and screened at over 100 international festivals.

Judith Helfand is an Emmy-nominated, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker celebrated for her open-hearted, humorous approach to urgent social issues. Her acclaimed films—A Healthy Baby Girl, Blue Vinyl, Cooked: Survival by Zip Code, and Love & Stuff—explore the human costs of environmental, public health, and structural crises. A co-founder of Working Films and Chicken & Egg Pictures, Helfand is also a dedicated educator and field-builder in documentary storytelling.

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

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Doc Talk: A Fidai Film with Filmmaker Kamal Aljafari

Please join us for our next screening of A Fidai Film, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Kamal Aljafari on October 6th at 1pm in Kellen Auditorium.

In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this time, it raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive. The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images. Taking this as a premise, ‘A Fidai Film’ aims to create a counter-narrative to this loss, presenting a form of cinematic sabotage that seeks to reclaim and restore the looted memories of Palestinian history. It’s a poignant exploration of identity, memory, and resistance, told through a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques. (Doha Film Institute)

Program Duration: 80 min

About Kamal Aljafari

Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist. His films have screened at major festivals and museums, including Locarno, London, Viennale, and the 35th Bienal de São Paulo. He has received prestigious awards from FIDMarseille, Pesaro, and Visions du Réel. In 2024, IndieLisboa hosted a full retrospective of his work. Aljafari has taught at The New School and DFFB in Berlin and was a Film Study Center fellow at Harvard. Currently a fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination, he is developing “Beirut 1931,” a fiction film to be shot in Jaffa.

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

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Join us for our 1st Doc Talk of Fall 2025!

We’re excited to open the Fall 2025 Doc Talks screening season with The Shards by Masha Chernaya, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.

In Spring 2022 Masha prepares to leave Russia – her homeland that has changed. It turns into a chain of unexpected farewells: her mom dies of cancer, her lover flees army conscription, everything including her own old self is falling apart. Her way to cope with the grief is to fixate everything with her camera. Her anger guides her to inner emigration to the local underground scene, which became an escape for young Russians. This kaleidoscope of shards chronicles not only the spirit of the time, but the director’s personality crumbling against the backdrop of global turmoil.

With a multifaceted background, Masha Chernaya works as a director and cinematographer, editor, text author, photographer, and illustrator, blending her diverse talents to create compelling visual narratives. Her most recent feature documentary The Shards (2024) has won the Doc Alliance award for Best Feature Film.

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.