Filmmakers in Conversation: The Filmmaker-Subject Relationship
Description
The relationship between documentary filmmakers and their subjects is one of ongoing interest. Filmmakers, who have obligations to both viewers and subjects, face a number of pressures and ethical challenges, alongside many positive opportunities. Join the documentarians behind Audrie & Daisy, The Return, National Bird and Trapped to explore the complexities and potentials involved in navigating this essential element of nonfiction filmmaking.
Participants will include:
Bonni Cohen
Bonni Cohen is the cofounder of the Catapult Film Fund and of the San Francisco–based documentary production company Actual Films. She has produced and directed numerous award-winning films, including The Island President (2011), The Rape of Europa (SFIFF 2007) and Wonders Are Many (SFIFF 2007). She executive produced Art and Craft (SFIFF 2013) and 3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets (SFIFF 2015), which had its premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and aired last fall on HBO.
Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega
Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway first collaborated in 2009, with Better This World, which won Best Documentary Feature and Bay Area Documentary Feature at SFIFF in 2011. Since then, as codirectors at Loteria Films, they’ve produced the feature El Poeta (2015) and several New York Times Op-Docs while working on The Return and its accompanying social impact transmedia campaign, The Return Project (thereturnproject.com). Both have taught in the Media Studies department at UC Berkeley.
Sonia Kennebeck
After earning a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Washington DC’s American University, Sonia Kennebeck worked as a broadcast producer and as an investigative reporter for German news program Panorama. Among her documentary projects are The Men of Gorch Fock (2008) and Sex – Made in Germany (2013).
Dawn Porter
Dawn Porter is an award-winning filmmaker whose 2013 documentary, Gideon’s Army, won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award, the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. Porter’s other films include Spies of Mississippi (PBS 2014) and Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper, a documentary chronicling President Obama’s program to help young men and boys of color succeed. Prior to her work as a filmmaker, Porter was director of standards and practices at ABC News and vice president of standard and practices at A&E Television Networks. Her latest documentary, the highly acclaimed Trapped, focuses on the difficulties facing reproductive health clinics in states that have passed TRAP (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) laws.
Jon Shenk
Jon Shenk is an award-winning director and cinematographer based in San Francisco. He directed and photographed The Island President, which won Best Documentary at the 2011 Toronto Film Festival. He was the director of photography for the Academy Award–winning short documentary Smile Pinki (2009) and won an Emmy Award for Blame Somebody Else (2007). Shenk directed and photographed Lost Boys of Sudan (SFIFF 2003), a 2004 Independent Spirit Award winner, and codirected and photographed Democracy Afghan Style (2004). Early in his career, he directed and photographed The Beginning (1999), a chronicle of George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode I.