These interactive sessions will be hosted on Zoom synchronously during Forum weekend, June 11th-13th. Simultaneous translation will be available in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Mandarin unless otherwise indicated. To gain access to these free meetings please register. More about Forum 2021.
Friday, June 11th
*9AM – 10AM* EST
Welcoming Remarks, Led by Sarah Ema Friedland
Workshop – Building Imagined Worlds Together: A Collaborative Start to MDOCS Forum, Led by Micaela Blei
This playful, reflective workshop will be an exploration, through improvisational story making activities and facilitated reflection of the challenges and possibilities of creating together. It will also be a chance to begin to get to know the other participants in the weekend’s events. Participants will collaborate in small groups online to create brief new story artifacts together — drawing on their own experiences, favorite cultural artifacts, and storytelling strategies, and negotiating with one another to solve challenges and create a piece to share with the room. We’ll conclude with discussion about what has surfaced as both ideal and problematic in the collaborative spaces we create, opening questions to be explored and deepened over the course of our weekend together.
*10:30AM – 12PM* EST
Conversation – Co-Creation as a means for Decolonizing Storytelling, Led by Sarah Ema Friedland
This conversation brings together the dynamic perspectives of organizers, administrators, academics, and makers in discussing their visions for a bold, new, radically inclusive, co-created documentary landscape. The conversation asks how artists are able to access, move through, and “capture” the landscape from a decolonial standpoint, and which aesthetic, practical, and ethical concerns they find themselves grappling with politically and personally as creators. The conversation also asks what gate-keepers and academics can do to collectively rethink non-fiction funding, distribution, and study in a more restorative and less exploitative way.
Format- This conversation will start as a large group, will breakout into smaller affinity groups for the bulk of the session, and will re-convene as a large group to report back and conclude.
Saturday, June 12th
*9AM – 10:30AM* EST
Workshop – StoryShift: Exploring Non-Extractive Storytelling, Led by Hannah Hearn and Molly Murphy from Working Films
The topic of accountability and authentic representation brings up many questions when a media maker is telling a story that is not their own. StoryShift lifts up best practices for non-extractive storytelling, ranging from building authentic trust and consent, to co-creation. This interactive session will focus on core values for accountable storytelling and create space for participants to reflect on and share their own practices.
*11AM – 12:30PM* EST
Conversation – Learning from Past Co-Creative Practices to Work in the Wake, Led by Jesse O’Connell
Against a backdrop of racial, economic, and pandemic violence in respective places and spaces, this conversation asks what is to be gleaned from deep foundational fractures finally coming to the surface and fissuring. This dialogue crystalizes the present transformative moment and situates students, makers, organizers, and institutions within it, consolidating ways to co-create pathways forward, using what we can learn from the past to shape in this “pandemic as portal” moment.
Format- This conversation will start as a large group, will breakout into smaller affinity groups for the bulk of the session, and will re-convene as a large group to report back and conclude.
Sunday, June 13th
*9AM- 11AM* EST
Global Pitch Session, Led by Adam Tinkle, joined by Sarah Choi from Field of Vision, Dana Merwin from the International Documentary Association
This public pitch session will be a meeting between MDOCS Forum’s International Co-Presenters and representatives from the U.S. Documentary Industry who are specifically interested in hearing from and potentially supporting international makers who are creating nuanced, insider depictions of their homes. This pitch panel is part of MDOCS Forum’s commitment to a global documentary ecosystem that redirects the traditional flows of capture and capital.
*11:30AM – 1PM* EST
Conversation – WRAP UP: Moving Forward- where do WE go from here?, Led by Sanjna Selva
This conversation will center student creatives and rising makers at the conclusion of MDOCS Forum. Students and makers will rethink the idea of “the big break,” finding ways to uplift each other through co-creation instead of relying on codified industry pathways. This conversation will also bring together academics, organizers, and other members of institutions to question the industry as a space and brainstorm co-creative theories for change around making resources more equitable and accessible for rising makers.
Format- This conversation will start as a large group, will breakout into smaller affinity groups for the bulk of the session, and will re-convene as a large group to report back and conclude.
