Fall 2021
MDOCS hosts a variety of public events throughout each academic semester. These events are all free and open to the Skidmore community as well as non-Skidmore community members.
Documentary at the End of the World is a documentary screening series curated by Bhawin Suchak and Darian Henry and presented by the MDOCS Co-Creation Initiative. The series features virtual screenings and Q&A’s with dynamic emerging filmmakers from the NeXt Doc Collective whose praxis is deeply rooted in community-based storytelling including Cai Thomas, Jalena Keane-Lee, Brit Hensel, Farrah Rahman, César Martínez, and Davyana San Miguel.
"At a time when we are collectively being challenged to acknowledge and confront the crumbling white supremacist, capitalist, colonial infrastructures of documentary filmmaking, Documentary at the End of The World takes an interventionist approach that aims to provoke and incite a reimagination of the form and explore emergent and liminal spaces within the world of non-fiction storytelling."
- Bhawin Suchak and Darian Henry
Series schedule: Wednesdays @ 6pm - presented virtually on zoom register here (Meeting ID: 932 8769 0770)
Cai Thomas: Screening + Facilitated Q&A
Cai Thomas is a documentary filmmaker and dp telling verite stories at the intersection of location,
self-determination and identity about Black youth and elders. She grew up in Miami's
Liberty City neighborhood and is deeply interested in stories rooted in place. She
will be screening her most recent film Change The Name which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and is currently airing on BET
and her short Queenie which premiered at NewFest in 2020 winning the New York short Grand Jury award.
Jalena Keane-Lee: Screening + Facilitated Q&A
Jalena Keane-Lee is a filmmaker who explores intergenerational trauma and healing through an intersectional lens. Jalena’s work subverts traditional narratives about the femme, Asian American Pacific Islander experience. She will be screening her film Standing Above the Clouds (2020) which won Best Short Documentary at LA Asian Pacific Film Festival and is playing on the Criterion Collection. She will also be screening her film Period Girl (2019).
Farrah Rahman: Presentation + Facilitated Q&A
Farrah Rahaman is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar from San Fernando, Trinidad. As a CAMRA Fellows Undergraduate at Penn, Farrah received her first training in media making using ethnographic and ethical knowledge production methods. Her work at CAMRA, BlackStar Film Festival and the Leeway Foundation has enhanced her desire to use film based and teaching practice, to explore the ways in which communities of color resist, decolonize and build.
Currently, she is the Communications Director at CAMRA and a PhD student at the Annenberg School of Communication. Her current work focuses on the activist and artist networks in the Caribbean and Latin America who are actively eroding colonially produced calcifications through their collaboration. Such collectives embody the rich and defiant intellectual heritage of the Global South to enact anti-hegemonic feminist processes and imagine an environment beyond crisis.
Brit Hensel: Screening + Facilitated Q&A
Brit Hensel is an Oklahoma based writer and award-winning filmmaker whose work focuses on Indigenous storytelling and environmental justice. A member of Cherokee Nation, she was recently awarded the 4th World Indigenous Media Fellowship and is a 2022 Tulsa Artist Fellow. She will be screening her film Zibi Yajdan (2019), which tells the story of the Kalamazoo River and its relationship to the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Pottawatomi people (Gun Lake Tribe) in the wake of the Enbridge Pipeline 6B oil spill. She will also be screening her first film Native and American (2017), which explores identity through the lens of a young Potawatomi woman as she navigates her tribe’s blood quantum standards.
Davyana San Miguel: Screening + Facilitated Q&A
Davyana San Miguel (she/they) is a filmmaker and multi-media artist from Maui, Hawai’i. Davyana is an experimental filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist interested in experimenting with the form of storytelling, utilizing analog mediums such as hand-drawn animations and juxtaposed sound design. Through her work, she challenges societal stigmas by having open conversations about inclusivity and representation. Recent topics include: feminism and pornography (eros, 2017) and portraying realistic LGBTQ relationships (into the skin, 2016).
César Martínez: Screening + Facilitated Q&A
César Martínez is a NYC based filmmaker and editor invested in the intersections between documentary media and experimental filmmaking. His editorial work has screened at festivals such as HotDocs, SFFILM, and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. He will be screening his films Chaporazzi (2020) and Dial Home (2021).
More info coming soon!
Community Co-Creation Pitch Session
Thu, November 11 @ 6-8pm
Location: Zoom
MDOCS is hosting its second Community Pitch Session where groups and organizations have the opportunity to present their mission, work, and documentary project proposals that capture a story they want to tell.
Register to attend here: registration form
Contact Angela Beallor for more information!
Stay posted on all upcoming MDOCS events on our Instagram page.
