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.
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
Each year, Sundance Institute provides unrestricted grant support to a small number of filmmakers who have ongoing documentary projects in various stages. Of the 35 projects, 5 are in development, 15 in production, 10 in post-production and 5 are in the process of creating social impact campaigns.
“This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Documentary Film Program (DFP), which throughout its time has been a vibrant and impactful global resource for independent non-fiction storytelling. This granting cycle’s recipients have roots in 31 countries, with 57% of submissions coming from outside the United States. Among the 14 U.S. films granted this year, all are helmed by at least one BIPOC director and/or lead producer; two of these projects are directed by Indigenous filmmakers. Internationally, the Documentary Film Program prioritizes supporting artists living and working in countries that lack an adequate infrastructure of support for independent film and/or regions where freedom of expression may be at risk. The 21 international projects supported by the Fund in this cycle fully reflect such commitment.” – Sundance
Congratulations to the following Doc Studies alums who have works in progress and received grant support. Learn more about their documentaries below and check out the full list of recipients here.
Igor is an Emmy-nominated BAFTA-winning filmmaker who co-produced feature-length documentary Welcome to Chechnya (Sundance ‘20, Berlinale ‘20). He is a 2022 Sundance Producing Fellow and was named by DOC NYC as one of the “40 Under 40” working in documentary. Igor believes that cinema is not a way to escape reality but a way to embrace it with all its peculiarities and its darkness. Most recently, Igor worked on a short documentary called Race to Save the World. Narrated by Oprah Winfrey, the film tells the story of the worldwide cooperation involved in the race to make the vaccine. It was simulcast primetime across the major networks as part of Global Citizen’s VAX LIVE concert. Previously, Igor directed two award-winning shorts, has been awarded a Davis Peace and Diplomacy grant at the International House in NY. Igor is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and an alumnus of NextDoc. (Website)
Synopsis: Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes made from junk and tape, and protests the government on the streets of Moscow. She stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism – and put her life in danger.
Alexis is a documentary filmmaker and educator based in New York City. Her work largely centers around community and how we find meaning in people and place. She is the co-creator, co-director and producer ofNeighborhood Slice, a documentary series that tells the stories of longtime New Yorkers who’ve held onto their little corner of the city despite fast-growing gentrification, broadcast on public television. She produced and directed the series 9.99, for which she won a NY Emmy. Her short documentaries Doctor Kong, Coney Island’s for the Birds and Ethan 2018 all screened at festivals worldwide, and were broadcast on the Documentary channel and online as a Vimeo Staff Pick. She is currently in post-production on two feature length documentaries, Dear Thirteen and Fire Through Dry Grass. Over the past decade she has developed filmmaking programs, implemented curricula and taught students all around NYC. In 2019 Alexis was a visiting artist for OPEN DOORS, where she met the Reality Poets and began working with Jay. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MA in Media Studies from The New School. (Website)
Synopsis: On a tiny island in NYC, a group of Black and brown disabled artists fight COVID-19 and the city to protect the lives of 500 vulnerable nursing home residents.
Follow Igor and Alexis to keep up with their ongoing projects and achievements! Catch the premiere of Alexis’ feature documentary, “Dear Thirteen”, at DOC NYC this coming week. Congrats as well to Igor for making it onto DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list this year, which highlights emerging talent in the documentary world.
The New School Doc Studies 