Navigating the Gray Areas
Navigating the Gray Areas: Ethical Dilemmas in Documentary Filmmaking
To register, please visit: https://docethicsworkshop.eventbrite.com
For the workshop website: https://docethicsworkshop.com
Emory Ethics and the Arts, the Documentary Accountability Working Group, and DOC NYC present Navigating the Gray Areas: Ethical Dilemmas in Documentary Filmmaking, a two-day in-person workshop on Friday, April 12th and Saturday, April 13th 2024 at Emory University.
Do you wonder about what responsibility documentary filmmakers have to their participants throughout the filmmaking process and beyond? Should filmmakers compensate participants? What if a filmmaker doubts the integrity of their protagonist?
As documentary filmmakers, it’s essential to understand your role and obligations towards the participants involved in your projects. In this interactive learning experience, we’ll explore the nuances and complexities of ethical responsibility in filmmaking. While there are often no concrete answers to ethical dilemmas, discussing case studies with other filmmakers will provide guidance as you wrestle with dilemmas from your own projects. Join Emory Ethics and the Arts, DOC NYC, and the Documentary Accountability Working Group in an event geared towards doc filmmakers at all stages of their careers.
Filmmakers Daresha Kyi (Mama Bears), Andy Sarjahani (The Smallest Power), Matthew Hashiguchi (The Only Doctor), and Bo McQuire (Socks on Fire) will present one dilemma each followed by small group discussions and a Q&A with the presenter.
The Documentary Accountability Working Group (DAWG)’s director Nataile Bullock Brown and founding member Molly Murphy will share their values-based framework and Sarah Wainio of the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA) will present a method of ethical inquiry from the Markkula Center of Applied Ethics.
During the second day of the workshop, participants will engage in facilitated small group discussions with fellow filmmakers, delving into the dilemmas they encounter in their documentary projects and exploring potential solutions together.
We ask guests to bring a compassionate and open mind as we explore these sensitive and complex case studies.
FILMMAKERS
ANDY SARJAHANI is an Iranian-American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer raised in a working class community outside the Arkansas Ozarks. He is interested in people, our relationship to place, and how that shapes our worldview. His work focuses on human ecology, the natural world, class, the American South and the experience of the Iranian diaspora, separately and when they overlap. His recent cinematography credits include Academy Award-nominated The Barber of Little Rock (The New Yorker, 2024), Southern Storytellers (PBS, 2023), and Untitled Brent Renaud Documentary (HBO, post-production).
His recent Director credits include The Smallest Power (Sundance, 2024); Wild Hogs and Saffron (Big Sky Doc Fest, 2024); American Grail: A Quest for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker (Big Sky Doc Fest, 2024), and Black Ag (Hot Springs Doc Fest, 2023).
His personal work has been supported by The Pulitzer Center, ITVS, The Gotham, HBO Documentary Films, The New Yorker, Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), DOC NYC, New Orleans Film Society, Southern Documentary Fund, Reel South, and PBS.
His debut feature documentary, Iranian Hillbilly was a Southern Documentary Fund 2022 grant recipient and the winner of New Orleans Film Festival 2022 South Pitch and is currently in early production. He was a 2022 New Orleans Film Society Emerging Voices Fellow, 2023 CAAM Fellow, 2023 PBS Wyncote Fellow and 2024 HBO/Gotham Documentary Development Fellow.
BO MCQUIRE was born the queer son of a Waffle House cook and his third-shift waitress in Hokes Bluff, Alabama. The first movie he truly fell for was the music video for Reba McEntire’s Fancy. He was a Ryan Murphy + Half Initiative Mentee and one of FilmmakerMagazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” His feature debut, Socks on Fire, won the jury prize for best documentary feature at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. He belongs to the first church of Dolly Parton.
DARESHA KYI writes, produces, and directs both narrative and documentary films and television in Spanish and English. A graduate of NYU Film School, she recently completed Mama Bears, her second feature documentary about how conservative, Christian mothers are transformed when they decide to accept their LGBTQ children, which premiered at SXSW 2022 and has won numerous awards.
In 2018 she was commissioned by the ACLU to direct Trans In America: Texas Strong, which garnered over 4.5 million views online, screened at SXSW, and won two Webby Awards and an Emmy. In 2017 she co-directed and produced Chavela, a multiple award-winning documentary about iconic singer Chavela Vargas that was distributed by Music Box Pictures and screened in over 40 countries.
Daresha’s films have been funded by ITVS, NEA, IDA Enterprise, Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, and many other foundations and she has an extensive background in television producing segments, shows and series for FX, WE, AMC, Telemundo, and FUSE, among other networks.
MATTHEW HASHIGUCHI is a documentary filmmaker whose work explores the lives of America’s underdogs, often focusing on individuals trying to achieve the American Dream within oppressive or unsupportive systems. He is a recipient of a 2019 Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund Award and 2021 American Stories Documentary Fund Award for his documentary, The Only Doctor, which held its world premiere at the 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival. His prior feature-length documentary, Good Luck Soup, was broadcast nationally on PBS World’s America ReFramed, received a 2016 Documentary Fund Award from the Center for Asian American Media and premiered at the 2016 Cleveland International Film Festival. In addition to traditional documentary film, he has created virtual reality films and web-based interactive media that has been presented at festivals throughout the world. In addition to filmmaking, Matthew is an Associate Professor in Multimedia & Film Production at Georgia Southern University.
SPEAKERS
MALIKKAH ROLLINS is the Director of Industry and Education at DOC NYC and a co-founder of DocuMentality, an initiative designed to elevate the conversation around mental health in the global documentary industry. She’s been invited to speak or mentor with various film organizations such as TIFF, EFM, Documentary Campus, Sundance and Gotham Labs. She is a member of Brown Girl Doc Mafia, on the board of Women in Film and Video-DC and was an independent doc producer for 6 years. When she’s not busy watching films, Malikkah likes to plot her next international travel adventure.
LAURA ASHERMAN is a documentary filmmaker, educator, and Director of Ethics and the Arts at Emory University. Her recent work explores the Anthropocene through documenting humans’ relationships with animals. Interested in pushing the boundary of documentary and fiction, Laura employs stop-motion animation and elements of absurdity to address pressing social issues. In 2023 she earned an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University, where she participated in an anti-racism fellowship at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics. In 2022, she directed Crisis of Substance, a Southeast Emmy-winning PBS documentary about the opioid epidemic in Georgia. Through her production company, Forage Films, Laura has directed and shot documentaries aired on PBS, VICE, and HBO and content for brands such as Red Lobster, Parents Magazine, and Colgate. Her independent films have played at RiverRun, Maryland, Sidewalk, Atlanta Jewish, and Cucalorus film festivals, among others.
NATALIE BULLOCK BROWN is the proud director of the Documentary Accountability Working Group, a collective she helped to found in 2020, which released a values-informed framework for documentary filmmakers that emphasizes care, consent, and collaboration as a pathway to ethical storytelling. She is also documentary film producer; a 2023 Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center Documentary Film Fellow; a 2023 DOC NYC New Leader; and a 2021 Rockwood Institute JustFilms Fellow. Natalie is director/producer of a documentary work-in-progress that explores the impact of messaging about beauty and aging on Black women, and was a producer on award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt’s PBS documentary, HAZING, as well as his PBS NOVA film, Lee and Liza’s Family Tree. She has also produced with filmmaker Resita Cox for her upcoming film, Basketball Heaven. Natalie is an adjunct professor at North Carolina State University where she served as an Assistant Teaching Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies for five years. Natalie was the StoryShift Strategist for Working Films, where she guided the organization’s work in promoting accountable documentary storytelling. And for nearly 12 years, Natalie was an assistant professor of film and broadcast media in the Department of Media & Communications at Saint Augustine's University. She also served 12 years as co-host of Black Issues Forum, a public affairs program on UNC-TV, North Carolina’s statewide public television network. Natalie was an associate producer on documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ 10-part PBS series, Jazz. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Film Production from Howard University, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Northwestern University.
MOLLY MURPHY is Director of Partnerships and Innovation at Working Films. She started her work positioning film for change nearly two and a half decades ago, and has since planned and directed impact campaigns, designed and led dozens of trainings, facilitated partnerships and coordinated coalitions that have leveraged the power of documentaries to make a positive impact on the biggest issues of our time. She is a founding member of the Documentary Accountability Working Group, which is catalyzing and cultivating a culture of care throughout the documentary ecosystem. She also serves on the board of Justice for My Sister, which resources non-binary, foster, and youth of color to tell stories through a gender equity, racial justice, and trauma-informed lens.
The unofficial ethics librarian of the industry, SARAH RACHAEL WAINIO is building a library of free ethics resources for filmmakers with the Documentary Producers Alliance. You can see her work on television on The Food Network, Magnolia Network, Netflix, TLC, and Max. She produced the first three seasons of MTV’s seminal show Teen Mom: Young + Pregnant, bringing the real-life consequences of unplanned teen pregnancy to a national audience. Sarah's film credits include The Death And Life Of Marsha P. Johnson (Netflix), 32 Pills: My Sister’s Suicide (Max), and Busy Inside (PBS). She earned an MFA in Social Documentary Film from the School of Visual Arts and has a dual degree in Psychology and Philosophy from Fordham University. Sarah is one of DOC NYC and A&E’s 2023 Documentary New Leaders, recognized for her leadership and work to date promoting greater inclusion and equity in the field. Sarah is Secretary of the board of the Documentary Producers Alliance. She lives in New York City with her cats Theodora and Tovah.
When and Where?
Friday, April 12, 2024 - 10am - 6pmSaturday, April 13, 2024 - 10am - 4pm
Miller-Ward Alumni House
815 Houston Mill Rd NE, Atlanta, GA 30329
PARTNERS AND SPONSORS
REGISTRATION FEES
- Free for Emory and Spelman students and faculty
- 50% off for other students/teachers
- $80 Early Bird, $100 Regular
Registration Opens on Monday, March 4.
Early Bird Ends on Friday, March 15.
Registration Closes on Monday, April 8.