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.
We are thrilled to announce that several alumni of the Doc Studies program have been selected to showcase their films at DOC NYC, the largest documentary festival in America, this November! Orgy Every Other Day by Samuel Döring (Class of 2024) and If I’m Being Honest by B.A. Williams (Class of 2024) have been chosen for the shorts programs, while Dark Chambers by Jordan Salyers (Class of 2024) was competitively selected for DOC NYC U. All three short films were previously featured during our 17th annual Doc Studies showcase, Truth Be Told 2024. Congratulations to our talented alumni!
Explore their backgrounds, the films’ synopses, and screening details below.
Orgy Every Other Day
Director/Writer: Samuel Döring
In basements and lofts NYC’s queer underground sex party community has created spaces where people can play and enjoy orgies in a safe and semi-public environment. The film explores what these places mean to people, where these parties originate from and why it might be important for them to remain underground. (USA 13 MIN)
Samuel Döring is a German-French filmmaker, festival programmer, and film critic. They graduated with their debut short film Orgy Every Other Day as part of the Documentary Studies class of 2024 at The New School, funded by the Fulbright Program. Sam worked as a cultural programmer at Goethe-Institut Senegal and as a program coordinator at DOK Leipzig and hosts the film podcast Nach dem Kino on Spotify.
If I’m Being Honest
Director/Writer: B.A. Williams
A filmmaker delves into their origin story, uncovering painful truths about their estranged mother. Weaving a vulnerable letter to their son and a recorded conversation with their mother, scenes of domestic life form a poignant backdrop to this exploration. (USA 16 MIN)
B.A. Williams (they/she) is a writer and filmmaker. Originally from Long Beach, CA, they now call New Jersey home, where they live with their wife, Nikki, and child, Morrison. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing and are pursuing their Master’s in Media Studies at The New School, where they wrote, filmed, and directed their first short film, If I’m Being Honest. B.A. is interested in exploring themes of Blackness, motherhood, belonging, and longing in their films and, at the same time, juggling the tall task of shifting and centering the narrative surrounding queerness by focusing on the beauty of mundane queer life. Their writing is featured in Rigorous Magazine, Every-Other Broadsides, The Rumpus, and The New York Times: Parenting. (photographed by: Michael DeJour)
Dark Chambers
Directors: Jordan & Kanette Salyers
In the shadow of covid-19, the filmmaker and his mother huddle around their family photo album, updating old media and transcribing written histories. But in preserving these dark chambers, what goes to rot?
Jordan Salyers (he/him) was born in Maryland, 1992, to an extraordinary, singular single-mother, Kanette. His first act of independence was flunking out of the local college. He then made the most regretful decision, in 2012, to enlist in the US Navy. He has a lot to say about that. In 2019, he grew out his hair and relocated to NYC as a student at The New School. He works with blended fictions; he likes found-footage film and video; he loves his partner, Victoria, and her cat, Uma. He hopes to remain a student indefinitely.
The Documentary Media Studies Graduate Certificate will be on hiatus in Fall 2024-Spring 2025 semesters.
We encourage those interested in The New School’s 2-year Masters Program in Media Studies to apply for admission for Fall 2024 and to pursue the Documentary Certificate in their second year of study. Applications to the Documentary Certificate for students seeking to enter in Fall 2025 will open in September 2024.
We are excited to announce our Doc Talks Line-up for Spring 2024! Throughout the semester, we will be hosting screenings and Q&A conversations with directors from around the world. Please join us for what we know will be a great semester!
We’re thrilled to announce that several Doc Studies program alumni are screening their films this November at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary festival! Rite of Passage by Talha Jalal (Class of 2023) is an official selection of the shorts programs, and Through a Glass Eye by Lola Granger-Jourdan (Class of 2023) was competitively selected for DOC NYC U. Both short films were previously presented during our Doc Studies annual showcase, Truth Be Told 2023. Mahdokht Mahmoudabadi (Class of 2018) is the lead editor of the feature film Three Promises, included in the official selection of DOC NYC. Congratulations to our alums!
Learn more about their backgrounds, the films’ synopses, and screening details below.
We are excited to announce our Doc Talk Line-up for Fall 2023! Throughout the semester, we will be hosting in person and virtual Q&A conversations with directors from around the world. Please join us for what we know will be a great semester!
Thanks to all who attended the Doc Studies virtual info session held over Zoom on April 20th. A panel of alumni from recent years (Inés Vogelfang, Mahdokht Mahmoudabadi, Luz Zamora, Cacau Araujo, Tiffany Jiang) answered questions about their experiences in the program, shared excerpts of their work, and gave updates on what they’re doing now in the field. Lana Lin, the Director of the Doc Studies graduate program, provided insight into the curriculum, faculty, and structure of the program. Prospective students received application fee waivers for attending the session.
We encourage all prospective students to visit campus on May 23, 2023 at 7pm to attend Truth Be Told, our annual documentary film festival of original short films made by students in the current graduating class. Past editions of the festival can be found here. Each work is the result of a year of intensive study in documentary cinema – production, history, theory, and aesthetics. The screenings will be followed by a faculty-led Q&A with the filmmakers and a light reception. Admission is free and registration is required. Learn more about the films and students.
Cacau Araujo was featured in the third season of the All Arts “Rising Artists”, by PBS. The series profiles creative student talent at NYC area universities. Araujo shares the process of making her Doc Studies capstone short documentary “The Great Find”, and how getting immersed in the production and conversing with the material captured allowed her to transform her initial idea into the final cut.
“The Great Find” will broadcast on BronxNET TV Saturday, January 7th, via cable channel and online, 10:30 pm (EST)
About “The Great Find”: New York is a cornucopia of free stuff. Stunned by the city’s give-and-take dynamics, a Brazilian filmmaker embarks on an investigation of the codes behind reclaiming objects left on the street. As a result, she ends up reflecting on her own attachment to material things.
Cacau Araujo is a Brazilian filmmaker, writer and artist based in New York City. Her work revolves around place, language, memory, and identity; especially women’s identities, and the events that shape and shift them. She is the co-founder oflínguamãe (mothertongue), a collective that explores the intersections between mothering and other creative & artistic practices. Currently she is a graduate student in the School of Media Studies at The New School, where she graduated from the Documentary Studies Program and received the Deanna Kamiel Fellowship.
The New School Doc Studies 