{"id":903,"date":"2022-05-17T05:29:12","date_gmt":"2022-05-17T09:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/?p=903"},"modified":"2022-05-17T05:29:14","modified_gmt":"2022-05-17T09:29:14","slug":"where-the-creative-meets-the-social-and-the-political-a-doc-and-the-burgeoning-world-of-impact-producing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/2022\/05\/17\/where-the-creative-meets-the-social-and-the-political-a-doc-and-the-burgeoning-world-of-impact-producing\/","title":{"rendered":"Where the Creative Meets the Social, and the Political: A-Doc and the Burgeoning World of Impact Producing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Naren Roy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chances are, somewhere along the way, you\u2019ve really wanted to share something important to a wider audience and it\u2019s been an uphill battle to simply make your voice heard. For those of us with any degree of experience in creative visual arts like filmmaking, we can attest to the struggle of getting our message out there more than most. It\u2019s not like there\u2019s a clear set of guidelines that coaches any of us on how to leave an impact through the work we are doing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Impact. We\u2019d all love for it to be prefaced with a qualifier like \u201cfar-reaching\u201d or \u201cincredibly positive\u201d when describing our passion projects. Documentary filmmakers tell stories about things that matter and have the power to amplify voices which might not otherwise be amplified. So who can amplify the voices of makers themselves? They can, of course–in coalition with each other and the communities of which they are part of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It takes dedication to stick with this kind of coalition building in addition to the organizing and creative work that goes into the entire documentary process in the first place. Thus, I\u2019ve been so incredibly impressed to discover the Asian American Documentary Network<\/a>. Also known as \u2018A-Doc\u2019, the network has 1000+ members, consisting of Asian American documentary filmmakers (including affiliates like curators, writers, programmers) who build solidarity and network together with the goal of increasing \u201cthe visibility and support of Asian Americans in the documentary field\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to A-Doc Leadership Team member Emily Hong – a Haverford Faculty member in Visual Studies and Anthropology – the network serves the very practical purpose of allowing filmmakers and their affiliates to seek support on a variety of fronts from ongoing projects to hearing about new opportunities and gigs altogether. One central aspect of staying in touch consists of a members\u2019 Slack Workspace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As important as networking and support are, A-Doc network fulfills multiple purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI see it as internal community building, then there\u2019s the coalition building and then there\u2019s the external \u2018shifting the industry\u2019 work,\u201d explains Hong. \u201cAll of that is inspiring or exhausting in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mix of internal and external work for the filmmaking genre is especially striking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre asian American stories even visible and when they are, what are the narratives around those stories?\u201d Hong offers. \u201cI think those are some of the questions that we are concerned with in addition to questions around access and diversity [in doc filmmaking],\u201d says Hong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leadership team A-Doc member Renee Tajima-Pe\u00f1a puts it a different way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you look at the numbers, it\u2019s kind of outrageous. The percentage of philanthropy dollars that go to any Asian American organization or projects; it\u2019s minuscule, especially compared to our population in the United States.\u201d said Tajima Pe\u00f1a, in an interview<\/a> with Asian Cinevision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To that end, A-Doc is a continuation of the work of so many years in the making as Tajima-Pe\u00f1a tracks in a recent article<\/a>. Co-founders S. Leo Chiang and Grace Lee recognized \u201calthough the documentary was experiencing a \u201cgolden age,\u201d many BIPOC filmmakers still felt shut out of the field\u201d according to Tajima-Pe\u00f1a\u2019s article. Thus A-Doc was born in 2016. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being a student in the Visual Studies minor program at Haverford, I\u2019ve been parsing out the program\u2019s learning goals by asking myself two questions. How can I follow my own path to becoming more visually literate in an increasingly intersectional world? What determines how visual representations are used ethically? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To me, the first question has to do with a free and personal search for how one can be a \u2018maker\u2019 and then develop technique collectively. Thinking about ethics of the visual is more challenging, but has to do with exactly the kinds of intersectional work A-Doc members are doing in developing their voices within the larger documentary filmmaking industry so that in turn, representations of their film\u2019s collaborators really make it as they should. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this summer\u2019s iteration of the VCAM \/ HCAH\u2019s DocuLab<\/a>, myself and four other bi-co students will be working amongst film teams from A-Doc on the distribution, marketing, and wrap-up of docs in late\/post production. This summer opportunity will allow me to juxtapose various communities of filmmaking I\u2019ve been part of. Drawing on the very real and raw experiences of student filmmaking, the core tenants of visual studies, and the experiences of professionals out in the field (from makers to impact\/distribution strategists) I\u2019ll be working with can further a holistic understanding of filmmaking. Through three different film projects including professor Hong\u2019s Above and Below the Ground<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> and two others, I hope to understand the emerging field of impact producing<\/a> and how it is executed, its challenges, and triumphs. Seeing myself or my peers as stakeholders in the issues which we care about, as creative thinkers who also have maker\u2019s potential, this is an opportunity to learn some of the ins and outs of how professional documentary makers came to be where they are today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Give A-Doc a follow on Instagram & Twitter @aadocnetwork <\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Naren Roy Chances are, somewhere along the way, you\u2019ve really wanted to share something important to a wider audience and it\u2019s been an uphill battle to simply…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/tricofilmfest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}