Doc Studies DOC TALKS

Doc Talk (In-Person) – Richland by Irene Lusztig

This Doc Talk featured a screening and Q&A with filmmaker Irene Lusztig to discuss her film, Richland.

Built by the US government to house the Hanford nuclear site workers who manufactured weapons-grade plutonium for the Manhattan Project, Richland, Washington is proud of its heritage as a nuclear company town and proud of the atomic bomb it helped create. RICHLAND offers a prismatic, placemaking portrait of a community staking its identity and future on its nuclear origin story, presenting a timely examination of the habits of thought that normalize the extraordinary violence of the past. Moving between archival past and observational present, and across encounters with nuclear workers, community members, archeologists, local tribes, and a Japanese granddaughter of atomic bomb survivors, the film blooms into an expansive and lyrical meditation on home, safety, whiteness, land, and deep time.

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).

Irene Lusztig is a feminist filmmaker, archival researcher, educator, and amateur seamstress. Her work brings historical materials into conversation with the present, inviting viewers to contemplate questions of politics, ideology, and the complex ways that personal, collective, and national memory are entangled. Her films have been screened around the world, including at the Berlinale, MoMA, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archive, Flaherty NYC, IDFA Amsterdam, Hot Docs, AFI Docs, BFI London Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, DocLisboa, and RIDM Montréal. She has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (2021), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Fulbright, two MacDowell fellowships, the Flaherty Film Seminar, and the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship. She is Professor of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz.

Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.

Doc Studies DOC TALKS

Doc Talk (In-Person w/ Zoom Q&A) – Chimeras of the Cine-machine: Films by Ana Vaz

This Doc Talk featured a screening and Q&A with filmmaker Ana Vaz to discuss her short films Apiyemiyekî?, Amérika: Bahía de las Flechas, Ha Terra! There is Land!, Look closely at the mountains, and Atomic Garden. Following the in-person film screening, Vaz joined virtually via Zoom for the Q&A. 

Vaz’s films activate and question cinema as an art of the (in)visible and instrument capable of dehumanising the human, expanding its connections with forms of life — other than human or spectral. Apiyemiyekî? addresses the genocide of the Waimiri-Atroari people in 1970s through illustrations created by the indigenous population which refer us to the present day. In present-day Dominican Republic, Amérika: Bahía de las Flechas revisits Lake Enriquillo where Christopher Columbus landed in 1492 and confronted the native Taíno people to establish the first European settlement in America. Há Terra! is set in the Brazilian bush where land and character, predator and prey encounter one another in a chase, a hunt, and a tale of looking and becoming. Look closely at the mountains compares the dire mineral extraction issue in Brazil with a different outcome in Nord-Pas-de-Calais in France, where such extraction has ceased. Atomic Garden explores an elderly Japanese woman’s contaminated garden after the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima.

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).

Ana Vaz is an artist and filmmaker born in the Brazilian highlands. Recent film festivals include Locarno Film Festival, Cineasti del Presente (Switzerland, 2022); Berlinale, Forum Expanded (Germany, 2023, 2021, 2020); MoMA Doc Fortnight (New York, USA, 2023); CPH:Dox (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2023); IFFR (Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2023, 2020); Viennale (Austria, 2022); Mostra Internacional de Cinema em São Paulo (Brazil, 2022); Jeonju International Film Festival (South-Korea, 2023); Indie Lisboa, International competition (Portugal, 2023). Her work has also been shown at Jeu de Paume (Paris, France), Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo, Brazil), Courtisane (Ghent, Belgium), Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK), TIFF Cinemathèque (Toronto, Canada), and Flaherty Film Seminar (Hamilton, USA). She is a founding member of the collective COYOTE, an interdisciplinary group working in the fields of ecology and political science through an array of conceptual and experimental forms.

Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement.

Doc Studies Latest News

Certificate in Documentary Media Studies is On Hiatus for the 2024-2025 Academic Year

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.

Doc Studies DOC TALKS

Doc Talk (In-Person w/ Zoom Q&A) – Onlookers with Kimi Takesue

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.

Doc Studies DOC TALKS

Doc Talk (Online) – Reclamation and Other Works – Screening and Q&A with Theo Cuthand

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.

Doc Studies DOC TALKS

Doc Talk (In-Person) – The American Sector – Screening and Q&A with Courtney Stephens & Pacho Velez

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.

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Doc Studies Alumni at DOC NYC 2023!

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!” →