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After winning the Best Documentary Film Award and the Albert Maysles Award for best new documentary director at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and numerous other accolades, Ascension, the documentary feature directed and produced  MA Media Studies alum Jessica Kingdon has been nominated for the 2022 Oscar for best documentary feature film.

Ascension examines the contemporary “Chinese Dream” through staggering observations of labor, consumerism and wealth. In cinematically exploring the aspiration that drives today’s People’s Republic of China, the film plunges into universal paradoxes of economic progress.

Ascension is an impressionistic portrait of China’s industrial supply chain that reveals the country’s growing class divide through staggering observations of labor, consumerism and wealth. The documentary portrays capitalism in China across the levels of its operation, from the crudest mine to the most rarefied forms of leisure. Accordingly, the film is structured in three parts, ascending through the levels of the capitalist structure: workers running factory production, the middle class training for and selling to aspirational consumers, and the elites reveling in a new level of hedonistic enjoyment. In traveling up the rungs of China’s social ladder, we see how each level supports and makes possible the next while recognizing the contemporary “Chinese Dream” remains an elusive fantasy for most.

“The film that took the top of my head off was Speak So I Can See You….It’s on another planet from character-driven narrative, in a good way…. Art museums should embrace it. Radio aficionados will fall in love with it, and historians will treasure it.” – Pat Auderheide, IDA journal

“Rich in…brilliant moments…. immersing the viewer in quite a unique cinematic experience. And, commendably, it also leaves some room for irony.” – David Abbatesciani, Cineuropa

Serbian filmmaker and Media Studies alumna Marija Stojnić will screen Speak So I Can See You, her new documentary feature on Friday, February 21^st at 6:30pm in Kellen Auditorium.  The film premiered at International Documenary Film Festival in Amesterdam last fall, and it is featured at MoMA’s DocFortnight this month.  Stojnić, who brings her background in music and keen understanding of the art of documentary, has crafted an original work—a “cinematic soundscape” that captures the wonders of Radio Belgrade, Serbia’s long-lived radio station, which has kept history, culture and critical thinking alive in the former Yugoslavia.  Borrowing upon the cumulative effect of slow tracking shots and close-ups of cryptic technological grids and patient performers testing microphones, Stojnić portrays the station in the throes of change as it abandons the dilapidated equipment of its Tito-era studios for the bright newness of the now while clinging to all it holds dear.  Her observational visuals illuminate the sounds of the radio past and present, including moments from beloved shows like “The Invisible People” and “Journey through Words,” jazz tributes on “Needle on Vinyl” and live performances of opera, and dramatic readings of writers like Dostoyevsky and Carl Sagan. Stojnić’s underlying focus is on the people who keep Radio Belgrade going—audio engineers, actors, announcers, directors, moving men, and cleaning ladies—while inviting viewers into the haunting space, time, and sounds of  Radio Belgrade. Even if you never lived through ’68 or wondered about the future of the former USSR or listened through the night and in your dreams to the rambling thoughts of Radio Belgrade’s philosophical radio hosts, Stojnić’s film conjures a collective memory of the past through audio echoes personal and public. 

The film is a love letter to radiophonic art, subtly and playfully demonstrating how radio can make us remember, understand, think, and feel. 

Stojnić will join Media Studies faculty member Deirdre Boyle for a Q&A after the screening.  This program is open to all students and faculty of The New School.