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!
Check out the Spring 2024 lineup webpage for more details and registration links.
This Doc Talk featured a screening of Kimi Takesue’s film, Onlookers. Following the screening, Takesue joined virtually for the Q&A.
ONLOOKERS offers a visually striking, immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos, reflecting on how we all live as observers. Traversing the country’s dusty roads and tranquil rivers, we watch as painterly tableaus unfold, revealing the whimsical and at times disruptive interweaving of locals and foreigners in rest and play. Tourists swarm sites of spectacle, then recede like a passing tide, leaving Laotians to continue with their daily lives. ONLOOKERS transports viewers on a sensorial journey of deep looking and listening, inviting audiences to contemplate their own modes of tourism, while asking enduring questions about what we seek when we travel.
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).
Kimi Takesue is an award-winning filmmaker working in documentary, experimental and narrative genres. Takesue’s films have screened at more than 250 film festivals and museums internationally including Sundance, Locarno, Toronto, New Directors /New Films, Cinéma du Reel, Centre Pompidou and MoMA and have aired on PBS, IFC, and the Sundance Channel. Takesue is the recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, as well as the “Breakthrough Award” from Chicken and Egg Pictures recognizing women who have made significant contributions to the documentary field.
Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.
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).
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.
Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.
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).
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.
Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.
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.
Continue reading “Doc Studies Alumni at DOC NYC 2023!”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).
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.
Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.
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).
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
Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.
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!
Check out the Fall 2023 lineup webpage for more details and registration links.
The New School Doc Studies 