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Be The Media! Workshop: Participatory Design in Journalistic Process
April 1, 2023 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT
With Directors Zara Katz and Lisa Riordan Seville, and Documentary Participant Kristal Bush
Join us in this workshop to learn about the art of co-creation from the film team of A Woman on the Outside, discussing how the directors centered Kristal’s voice and the active collaboration between the film team and participants in the documentary process. A focus will be on how the team grappled with both the journalistic process and the ethical questions of documentary today, as well as how they developed the cinematic language to incorporate Kristal’s self-documentation and the filmmakers’ footage. They will share the importance of spending time together, relationship and trust building, and how to collaborate on a story.
Curators: Branda Miller.
Sponsored by: iEAR Presents! and the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Rensselaer, made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of The Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Masks are encouraged and will be available at this event. If you are feeling unwell or have any symptoms of illness please stay home and rest.
After the workshop, at 7pm, A Woman on the Outside will be screened at the Sanctuary, followed by a panel discussion.
Director’s Statement:
More than a quarter of women in this country have had a loved one incarcerated. For Black women like Kristal, the odds are even higher. To love someone who’s locked up isn’t a marginal experience – it’s an American one. For six years, we have collaborated with Kristal and her family to make a film about their experience, through the female lens. Braiding Kristal’s photos, videos and voice with our verite footage, we strove to go beyond a story about prison to tell one of family, love and how women care for themselves while caring for others.
Zara Katz (Director/Producer)
Zara Katz is a filmmaker and photo producer for editorial, documentary and branded content, specializing in crafting character-driven visual stories. Katz is currently Photography Director at NBC News.com, and has worked with outlets including The New York Times Lens blog, Time magazine, Medium, The Guardian U.S., Pop-Up Magazine and Lifetime/A+E Networks. She was the Senior Photography Producer on a Getty Images/Dove campaign photographed by more than 100 women and non-binary photographers, which won the Silver Glass Lion at Cannes in 2019.
Lisa Riordan Seville (Director/Producer)
Lisa Riordan Seville is an award-winning reporter and independent filmmaker whose stories explore how money, power and policy shapes the lives of everyday people. Her investigative and enterprise work has appeared across NBC News platforms, on BuzzFeed News, The Guardian U.S., Lifetime/A+E Networks and WNYC Radio. It has been recognized with a Peabody, a Hillman Award and a Sigma Delta Chi from the Society of Professional Journalists, among others. Her most recent piece was a cover story for New York Magazineabout the deaths of 15 men in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
We are committed to lowering the barriers to access for events at The Sanctuary for Independent Media. For people who are hard of hearing or deaf, blind or low-vision, or whose physical limitations can interfere with a satisfying experience, let us know two weeks in advance so we can make appropriate arrangements.
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