Storytellers' 2016: Fact and Fiction

Calling evidence-based storytellers! In June 2016, MDOCS will host its second Storytellers' Institute and invites applications for up to  four Institute Fellows for a five-week summer experience in Saratoga Springs, New York, who will consider the role of fact and fiction in documentary practice. 

Up to four institute fellows working in any of the documentary arts—sound, moving image, still image, multimedia, exhibition, text—will invest in bringing their own visions to fruition in a lively summer context, as they share their passions in documentary with the next generation of practitioners. Around 10 students drawn from across Skidmore's academic programs will join four institute fellows, visiting artists and area documentarians in a hybrid-creative five-week experience.

"We are seeking creative, collaborative souls who intend to workshop and develop documentary projects in an intense, focused period of study & discovery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, with a small group of Skidmore faculty and advanced students," notes MDOCS director Jordana Dym. "In the first year, we were excited to host fellows from Texas, Maryland, Chicago and New York—and hope our reach will be at least as broad in 2016. Nicky Tavares, Mellon fellow, visual media artist and documentary fillmaker and part of Skidmore's visual literacy initiative, Project Vis, and Adam Tinkle, a sound and music documentarian and artist, will be on hand again to support and inspire our students and fellows; their inegenuity, generoisty and spirit are just the start of some exciting collaborations and initiatives we are lining up for 2016."

Applications

"In a sense all documentary is 'a work of the imagination."                    
—John Hughes, 2003

MDOCS invites documentarians with projects (preferably recent or in process) that touch on the (thick, thin, permeable) line separating and connecting fact and fiction in theory or practice to apply to the institute. Whether the story you have to tell is a portrait of a solitary journey or the study of a generation or a tradition, a personal experience or the result of archival research, and whether you seek to make us laugh, shudder, weep or move to change the world, we welcome your application. 

Institute Fellow applications are due on January 1, 2016.  For additional information on the institute Fellow application process, click here.

Skidmore College applications are due on January 25, 2016. and the application process, click here.

The Institute

The Storytellers’ Institute is a five-week experience at which 10 Skidmore College students and faculty (Skidmore Fellows) workshop and develop documentary projects alongside up to four competitively selected documentarians (Institute Fellows). Institute fellows will receive an honorarium, five weeks' room and board in apartment-style housing at Skidmore College and working space. The director of MDOCS will discuss equipment and facilities needs with accepted fellows. All institute participants enjoy an intense, focused period of documentary study and production at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, a vibrant upstate community three hours from Boston, New York and Montreal, and home many cultural events including Yaddo, SPAC and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. 

See here for additional information on the Institute.